"The biggest thing is customer obsession. The product is important for sure, but you really need to go to great lengths to delight your fans or your customers."

"[While] the history of space activities is remarkable, central control [by the government] meant that there really was no mechanism for a normal person or company to benefit from space activities. Today, that is fundamentally changing."

"The main thing [that has changed] about business is dematerialization. Modern businesses are all about people. The relationships between people are not primarily transactional they are largely social. And managing these relationships is key to running a successful business in the 21st century."

"Uncertainty is a part of life. We would not want to go to see a movie where we knew the ending. Similarly, entrepreneurs [are] impelled to proceed with their venture because they may not know where it is going."

"Psychological targeting is the ability of algorithms to penetrate our minds to decode our psychology. […] The moment they understand what is driving your behavior your needs, motivations, preferences, and fears they can also influence your behavior."

"What worries me about AI is that we've got this huge potential for summarizing information and expanding simple instruction sets but instead we’re going to use it to send more emails."

"AI is an umbrella term, so it’s very important to look into the specific applications you’re thinking of using at your company to see if there are real technical advances that power them. […] The people who are working at your organization are best positioned to evaluating whether AI might be used to carry out their tasks."

"Managing in the age of outrage is not managing outrage. Managing outrage is crisis management, and we’ve done that for years now. The age of outrage is capturing this zeitgeist at the moment."

"Just like human beings, businesses age. And, like organisms, they fight aging at every level. […] But the truth is, as you age, you’ve got to change how you behave, how you manage, and how you invest."

"Prediction is useless unless you work to make certain things happen and undermine the possibility of other things. [Without agency], what’s the point of prediction?"

"Habituation is diminishing sensitivity to a stimulus. [But] knowledge of habituation makes you more alert to what’s not ideal and more willing to take steps to move things into the right direction."

"There is no theoretical reason why we can't live beyond our current natural limit of 120, although this would require major breakthroughs in aging research."

"Complex systems thinking is the dominant tool for modeling in epidemiology. Companies use it to model their inventory systems. But using it in economics is harder because the agents have more agency and are complicated."

"We gave a large number of workers access to GPT-4, without training. The people who had access to it got work done 26% faster and got 12.5% more work done. […]. To put that in context, when steam power was put into a factory in the early 1800s, it improved performance by 18 to 22%."

"Einstein said that intuition is a gift, and reason is its servant. However, we have created a society that celebrates the servant, and has forgotten the gift."

"If I were a CEO […] I would focus on the technologies, products, and innovations that would bring a competitive advantage for my company in a market that will go to zero emissions one way or another."

"Even with new green technologies, if we keep trying to produce more for the sake of economic growth, we […] cannot make a fast transition to decarbonize the economy. Therefore, I argue that it is necessary to reduce what is unnecessary."

"We all seem to have collectively lost sight of what it means to be a good business, in the ethical sense."

"[Friction creates] the feeling that you’re trying to accomplish [something], but there’s something about the system that makes it difficult or impossible for you to get it done. […] When people feel excessively burdened, they’re less creative. They tend to leave the organization. They just give up."

"In a world like this, you better ask yourself every single day whether your company has three characteristics: One is resilience, the second is optionality or open-mindedness, and the third is agility."

"Business today is built upon knowledge layers—information on customers, supply chains, markets…. All these layers will now be updated with…new technology, [enabling] optimized decision making, personalization, and customization."

"We have no examples in our data of successful culture change that did not start at the top. […] If the business leader […] is not building the story then it is not culture change."

"We need to understand that the core tenets of what makes us human, the heart, are just as important as the attributes of the head."

"Your working relationships strongly determine your success and your happiness. Stop leaving it to chance. Actively manage them—do not just hope, maybe it’ll be different this time."

“Too often when we tackle the biggest subjects of our time, we get stuck in what I call the aspiration trap. (…) A big bet… is really an effort to embrace a big goal to find fresh innovative solutions that could help us actually solve those problems.”

"Everyone thinks they understand [incentives] because we all use them. But it turns out that there is an advantage to thinking about them in a more organized and systematic way."

"If we are to be able to harness the upsides [of these technologies], we have to take a cold hard look at their potential downsides. Too often, people fall into one or other camp—naive techno optimists […] or modern-day Luddites. That does not cut it anymore."

"Intelligent failures are intelligent because they're the only way to get some valuable new knowledge that you need to make progress."

"I think the post-generational society is a huge opportunity for companies – if they are willing to get rid of some of their assumptions: For example, that younger people bring in new skills and, therefore, a company is better off if it has a younger labor force. That can be true, but we shouldn't forget about some of the benefits of age diversity."

"I think if you look back over the last 1,000 years, very few societies have been well set up for automatic shared prosperity. I think it's always a fight — it’s always a discussion."

"Abstraction is the enemy. You get too far away from how life is lived. And the place I found where that is the most extreme is in executive suites."

"We spend a lot of time thinking about the ideas we want to communicate, but we think a lot less about the specific words we use to express those ideas – and that's a mistake, because subtle shifts in the language that we use can actually have a big effect on our impact."

"The first component of the good jobs system is investment in people, but the secret sauce are the four operational choices that make employees work better. […] Focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train, and operate with slack.”

In conversation with the world's leading sustainability economics thinkers about conceptualizing paths to a sustainable future.

"Non-disruptive creation is when you create a new market where there once wasn't any. So there's no displacement of industries, companies, or jobs. In a sense, it's the flip side of disruption."

“As humans, we have a tendency to think fast – we really like to take our first thought and run with it. This causes us to act very spontaneously. In management, that’s a huge problem […]. You need to slow down first and think about what it is you're doing. […] And then you can move fast – and that is also key to success [because] the longer a project is, the more risk it is exposed to, including black swan risks.”

“The problem is we’re getting hit with a volume, velocity, and pace of [microstresses] that our minds weren’t really designed to absorb.[...] Our bodies are reacting to this, and we slowly take ourselves out of things that add meaning to us.”

"Brainstorming produces, at best, a sort of okay idea. We either rely on that or we rely on some brilliant human being that might just have the right revelation. [But] to stay ahead of the curve, you have to have your employees know how to come up with useful novel solutions systematically to the problems that they are presented with."

"We can never assume that our comfortable, safe lives in a democratic capitalist society are going to go on forever if we don’t do anything for it. The system is wonderful, but it’s also fragile."

“It's time to bridge different domains and show how technology and finance are driving forces for sustainability. With this book, we wanted to tear down barriers and maximize the synergies between these three distinct fields.”

“It's not that intermediaries are bad, but we need to be smart about the role they play, and smart about the risks associated with their size and their multiplicity.”

“Uncertainty requires the ability to make shifts in resource allocation, shifts in KPIs, structural change in budgets, and a modular organization structure.”

"To stay smart in a smart world is not just a question of whether deep neural networks can be made smarter, but also how we can be made smarter. Smart technology needs smart citizens."

"We believe that if you're a lifelong learner, you can learn from the research that people are doing in business and improve your business, improve your life, and improve your career by taking it in."

"If hospitality is about making people feel seen, the best way to treat them is not like a commodity, but as a unique individual. Unreasonable hospitality means that one size fits one."

"Complex systems thinking is the dominant tool for modeling in epidemiology. Companies use it to model their inventory systems. But using it in economics is harder because the agents have more agency and are complicated."

"Einstein said that intuition is a gift, and reason is its servant. However, we have created a society that celebrates the servant, and has forgotten the gift."

"Intelligent failures are intelligent because they're the only way to get some valuable new knowledge that you need to make progress."

Listen to Roger L. Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Rita McGrath, Professor of Strategy at Columbia Business School, and Martin Reeves as they debate the nature of competitive advantage.

"The difference between a hobby and a business is making $0 or making $1. And the difference between a business and a great business is getting a second dollar from a customer who paid you a first dollar already."

"We need to measure the results for patients and learn from the individuals and groups of patients what really works. (...) Value-based healthcare is one that is truly patient-centric and closer to the inner purpose of people working in the sector.”

"In this world of data and digital ecosystems, your competitors aren't just those who offer similar products. Your competitors can also be those who have access to similar data."

"If we can frame uncertainty in terms of possibility, rather than potential loss, we will approach it with greater calm, resilience, and courage."

A powerful exploration of the changing nature of trust. The book leverages interdisciplinary research, alongside key business case studies, to help elaborate the four components of trust: competence, motives, means, and impact.

"Ideaflow is a way to measure how well you're generating a volume of options to any given problem. Every solution starts as an idea."

Listen to Roger L. Martin, Professor Emeritus and former Dean at Rotman School of Management, as he discusses his new book, A New Way to Think, exploring the importance of human ingenuity, change, and, competitive advantage in reinventing the future.

Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal, professors at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, discuss their new book. Sharing insight into how to get people to say yes to a new idea or innovation, arguing that people are most persuaded by ideas that they generate themselves.

The world-renowned business advisor and author provides an overview of how leaders — of both traditional and digital companies — can increase their chances of success in the digital age.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla shares the story of the creation of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine on our Thinkers and Ideas podcast.

Building on his knowledge and experience as a corporate philosopher, Brabandere suggests that firms should focus on creatively reinventing themselves with new tools, rather than using current digital tools to optimize existing processes or systems.

Listen to the University of Chicago Professor discussing his new book that focuses on the necessity of scaling ideas and the things that help and get in the way of doing this.

“There's an irony as organizations become successful, they learn and that learning gets embedded in systems and processes and metrics. The very things that are making them successful, also make it more difficult for them to become explorers.”

Organizational scholar and professor at Harvard Business School, Ranjay Gulati shares insight into his latest book, introducing the concept of “deep purpose” in achieving company-wide commercial value and social good.

Ron Adner, a Tuck Professor and ecosystem thought leader, discusses his new book, which deals with the intersection of ecosystems strategy and competitive disruption, with Martin Reeves.

The authors argue that history is flooded with examples of companies, governments, and individuals who faced problems that could have been solved with openness. The book analyzes these examples to warrant the overall premise of opening up strategy.

This book focuses on the scatter inherent in decision-making. Learn more about how noise differs from bias, how it arises, and how it can be reduced through what the authors call decision-making hygiene.

How can we better use the uniquely human capability of framing to generate new options and structure decision-making effectively? An important book for anyone involved in problem-solving with valuable lessons on how to improve one's ability to frame and reframe.

In the absence of excessive regulation or anti-competitive practices, industries are observed to evolve toward an optimal market structure described by the Rule of Three. The authors, building on Bruce Henderson's original research, explore how the rule works in today's global environment.

This book is a guide on business model design for leaders. The authors argue that business model innovation does not replace traditional strategy, but instead complements it by providing new opportunities to disrupt the market or reinvigorate an established firm by creating an advantaged system of activities.

In this book, Guillén, the new Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School, outlines eight interlocking trends that will reshape society as we know it by 2030.

Sameer Hasija, professor at INSEAD discusses insights from a new book he coauthored with Ian Woodward, Paddy Padmanabhan, and Ram Charan. The authors argue that in order to avoid being disrupted, leaders need to go through “phoenix encounters” in which they contemplate and simulate their own disruption.

In their new book, John Kay and Mervyn King argue that statistical models have only limited value in guiding business decision making. In an uncertain world, decision making should be guided by developing and critically challenging reference narratives, to figure out “what’s going on here?”

Loizos Heracleous, professor at the Warwick Business School and Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College and Saïd Business School, probes how some organizations manage to break tradeoffs between competing goals like cost and differentiation. He also explains the mindset and moves leaders need to help their organizations achieve this.

Harvard Business Review Press author Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg says that 85% of companies he surveyed for his new book don’t consider themselves to be good at framing problems correctly. The good news: according to his research, you can learn how to get better at solving the right problems.

Margaret Heffernan, a Texas-born, Cambridge-educated author and former media CEO argues that because the future is inherently unpredictable we need to stop force-fitting models for prediction onto business strategy and elsewhere, as doing so only provides us with a false sense of certainty and security.

Listen to Roger L. Martin, professor and former dean of the Rotman School of Management, as he analyzes the growing inequality in American society as a threat to the democratic-capitalism underpinning its historical success, and proposes countermeasures for leaders and citizens.

Ecosystem Edge focuses on how to start and manage ecosystems. Listen to Peter J. Williamson, professor of international management at the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School and Fellow of Jesus College as he discusses insights from the book, including ecosystem strategy and innovation.

Alex Osterwalder, the founder of Strategyzer and coauthor of The Invincible Company, decodes how some of the world’s leading companies have built superior business models and reinvented themselves, and shares some lessons on how to achieve this.

Read our interview with Steve Blank drawing on his forthcoming book about innovation, differences between large corporations and startups, strategic ambidexterity, and the disruption and reimagination of companies in the context of the COVID crisis.

Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School, discusses her new book, Seeing Around Corners, a guide to anticipating and capitalizing on disruptive inflection points shaping markets.

"We have no examples in our data of successful culture change that did not start at the top. […] If the business leader […] is not building the story then it is not culture change."

"[Friction creates] the feeling that you’re trying to accomplish [something], but there’s something about the system that makes it difficult or impossible for you to get it done. […] When people feel excessively burdened, they’re less creative. They tend to leave the organization. They just give up."

"A bunch of geeks, largely clustered in Northern California, iterated and experimented their way into a better operating system for a company. They have upgraded the company."

The rapid changes brought on by Covid-19 were unprecedented, but remote work (and the concerns that accompany it) is not new. In her book, Neeley provides evidence-based answers to these pressing concerns as well as practical guidance for internalizing and applying best practices.

"Flexibility is more than where people work. It's rethinking how and when we work that allows us to unlock the potential in people, improve organizational performance, and build more inclusive organizations."

Burnout is real, and it has increased significantly since the pandemic struck. Moss's new book attempts to explain burnout and provide strategies to navigate these challenging times.

Join Lynda Gratton is a Professor of Management Practice at London Business School as she explains how to deliberately redesign work taking into account not only the specifics of each job, but also a range of other technological, social and ethical factors.

Lachenauer, the CEO of BanyanGlobal argues that family businesses can represent both the best and worst forms of capitalism. He outlines what separates the best from the worst, and describes the steps needed to build enduring family businesses.

Moyo argues that today’s boards have three main tasks: shaping the company strategy, selecting leaders (in particular, the CEO), and safeguarding the company’s culture, ethics, and values. She provides valuable advice on how these central tasks can be executed effectively.

Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini’s new book highlights bureaucracy’s social, economic, and strategic shortcomings and proposes "humanocracy" as an alternative management model.

"AI is an umbrella term, so it’s very important to look into the specific applications you’re thinking of using at your company to see if there are real technical advances that power them. […] The people who are working at your organization are best positioned to evaluating whether AI might be used to carry out their tasks."

"If we are to be able to harness the upsides [of these technologies], we have to take a cold hard look at their potential downsides. Too often, people fall into one or other camp—naive techno optimists […] or modern-day Luddites. That does not cut it anymore."

"We gave a large number of workers access to GPT-4, without training. The people who had access to it got work done 26% faster and got 12.5% more work done. […]. To put that in context, when steam power was put into a factory in the early 1800s, it improved performance by 18 to 22%."

"Business today is built upon knowledge layers—information on customers, supply chains, markets…. All these layers will now be updated with…new technology, [enabling] optimized decision making, personalization, and customization."

Kai-Fu Lee, CEO of Sinovation Ventures, discusses his new book, AI 2041, sharing his thinking and predictions on AI’s potential applications and explores human deillemmas which arise as a result.

The creator of the Exponential View newsletter and community published a new book on how technology impacts economies and companies, and how this force can be best harnessed.

New York Times tech columnist and best-selling author Kevin Roose focuses on how people can be happy and successful in a world where our lives are increasingly structured by technology.

In a sequel to his NYT bestseller, Rise of the Robots, Martin Ford claims that the best way to understand the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy and society is to see it as a utility analogous to electricity — in fact, “the electricity of intelligence.”

Why do we need ethical and fair algorithms? A thought-provoking conversation with Michael Kearns of the University of Pennsylvania on the pervasiveness of algorithms, differential privacy, and the importance of socially aware algorithm design.

Listen to Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School discuss his new book about how AI is changing the way we think about competition, organization and business models.

"Prediction is only useful if it's going to change something that you do. You wouldn't check your weather forecast app every day if it didn't help inform your clothing or routine. Prediction has to inform a decision."

"In a world like this, you better ask yourself every single day whether your company has three characteristics: One is resilience, the second is optionality or open-mindedness, and the third is agility."

“The United States simply could not hold up the world the way it had before. So, this inflection was both an economic and a political one." "I don't know how you call the inflection point, but I would say that we are nearing one.”

"My dream capitalism is a capitalism that will be as innovative as America's and as protective and inclusive as the Danish system. And I think it's possible."

"We're now moving into a fourth phase of globalization where it's really going to be services rather than stuff that's at the heart of global value chains.”

"If you want to understand what’s going on with trade conflicts and the global economy, you have to understand class conflicts within these countries.”

"Instead of inflation being easy to control as it relatively has been after Paul Volcker took the measures to bring inflation down, inflation will become much harder for a combination of government and the central bank to bring back under control."

Luciano Pietronero is an Italian statistical physics and full professor at the department of physics at University of Rome Sapienza. He was the founder and director of the Institute of Complex Systems of CNR from 2004 to 2014. Luciano’s research activities have been on fundamental and applied problems in the areas of condensed matter theory, […]

"The economic challenge of the 21st century is one of distribution—how does society share its income—when our traditional way of doing so, paying people for their work, might be less effective than it was in the past.”

"There is no theoretical reason why we can't live beyond our current natural limit of 120, although this would require major breakthroughs in aging research."

"If I were a CEO […] I would focus on the technologies, products, and innovations that would bring a competitive advantage for my company in a market that will go to zero emissions one way or another."

"We all seem to have collectively lost sight of what it means to be a good business, in the ethical sense."

“Too often when we tackle the biggest subjects of our time, we get stuck in what I call the aspiration trap. (…) A big bet… is really an effort to embrace a big goal to find fresh innovative solutions that could help us actually solve those problems.”

This book outlines a framework to help leaders build "net positive companies" that profit by contributing more to the world than they use or take.

"Organizations need to understand that they cannot allow the standards and the reporting efforts to drive their strategy. It's the other way around."

Georg Kell, along with Herman Bril and Andreas Rasche, are the co-editors of Sustainable Investing: A Path to a New Horizon, a unique combination of perspectives from academics and practitioners on how corporate sustainability and sustainable investing are converging and driving change in markets.

In her latest book, Novogratz explains that continued technological advancement and market solutions alone won’t solve the defining problems of our time, like inequality and climate change. She calls for a moral revolution to reimagine and reform technology, politics, and business.

Hertz’s latest book focuses on why loneliness has become a defining condition of the 21st century. The author argues that loneliness is not merely a mental health crisis — it is also a physical health crisis, an economic crisis, and a political crisis that has profound implications for individuals and businesses.

The executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program explores how societal shifts in recent decades have upended the traditional rules of business and offers new rules to make businesses successful in their new social contexts.

In her new book, Rebecca Henderson, professor at Harvard Business School, argues why and how we need to reimagine capitalism if we want to solve today’s big issues.

Sachs' new book describes the dynamics of globalization across history and how it has influenced and has been influenced by economy, culture, geography, and technology.