“The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.” Seeing the “Water” - A Different View of The World: Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor at Large, U.S. of the Financial Times uses her perspective as an anthropologist to explain a wide variety of business and cultural phenomena. She predicted the 2008 financial crisis. Discover how she sees the world today including new phenomena such as crypto currencies, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), artificial intelligence and gaming.
Her new book is Anthro Vision: A New Way to See in Life and Business. Anthropologist Ralph Linton said, “The last thing a fish would ever notice would be water.”
Solving the World's Biggest Problem and Creating the Impossible Burger with Impossible Foods Founder Patrick Brown
Meat production is one of the world’s greatest contributors to climate change. Patrick Brown, the creator of the Impossible Burger and the Founder of Impossible Foods, wanted to figure out how to make delicious, affordable meat from plants that is better for the environment and consumers. Learn about his journey from Stanford University professor to creating the Impossible Burger and how he built Impossible Foods into the multibillion-dollar company it is today.
The Latest Findings in Behavioral Science and How They Can be Used to Make Your Life Better with Harvard Professor & Nudge Co-Author Cass Sunstein
Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard and one of the founders of behavioral science. He has written two books with Nobel Laureates, including Nudge with Richard Thaler. We are unknowingly influenced by our environments, by how choices are framed, by the people we are with, and a myriad of seemingly insignificant factors. Learn the latest findings in behavioral science and how they can be used by everyone - governments, businesses and individuals - to make peoples lives better.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: The Greatest Threat Facing the World Right Now and Individual Rights to Privacy
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discusses the greatest threats, cyber, surveillance, the information being collected on each one of us and individual rights to privacy. Learn how we can protect ourselves against future health or biological threats.
General Catalyst Chairman and Former American Express Chairman & CEO Ken Chenault: Leadership, Race & Creating Diverse Workforces
Former American Express Chairman and CEO and current General Catalyst Chairman and Managing Director Ken Chenault, shares his thoughts on leadership, race, creating diverse workforces, responsible innovation, and his hope for the future. Ken covers his early life, growing up, his experience leading American Express for nearly two decades through crises and digital transformation, and the advice he gives founders and CEOs building innovative, enduring companies backed by General Catalyst.
Upon Ken’s retirement from American Express, Warren Buffett, the company’s largest shareholder stated, “Ken's been the gold standard for corporate leadership and the benchmark that I measure others against.” Ken is recognized as one of the business world’s experts on brands and brand management. He has been honored by multiple publications including Fortune Magazine, which named him as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders in its inaugural list in 2014 and, most recently, in 2021.
Ken serves on the boards of Airbnb, Berkshire Hathaway, Chief, Guild Education, and the Harvard Corporation. He is a co-founder of OneTen, a coalition of leading executives coming together to upskill, hire and advance one million Black Americans over the next 10 years into family-sustaining jobs with opportunities for advancement. He also serves on the boards of numerous nonprofit organizations, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Advisory Council for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Risk vs. Opportunity in the Market: Investing the Assets of Michael Bloomberg with Steve Rattner
Manager of Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets, Steven Rattner, shares what he is investing in now and how he views the opportunities and risks in the market. As a former Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and former head of Obama’s Auto Task Force, he also provides insights on government.
Steve is also the Economic Analyst for MSNBC’s Morning Joe and a Contributing Writer for the The New York Times Op-Ed page.
What Leaders and Corporate Boards Can Learn From Boeing’s Mistakes: Harvard Business School’s Sandra Sucher
Boeing’s fall from grace didn’t happen overnight. Sandra Sucher shares five key mistakes made by the CEO and the board of directors.
Her upcoming book is The Power of Trust.
Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence & Synthetic Biology To Usher In A New Age of Drug Discovery: James J. Collins
Jim Collins, co-inventor of the technology behind COVID vaccines, shares a revolutionary approach to drug discovery. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, he discovered an amazing new class of antibiotics, which he named halicin after Hal, the murderous robot in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Professor Collins' patented technologies have been licensed by over 25 biotech, pharma and medical devices companies. He is known as one of the founders of the new field of synthetic biology and is a professor at MIT and affiliated with the Broad Institute and the Wyss Institute.
Hard Won Wisdom From An Entrepreneur: Ellen Marie Bennett
Ellen Bennett created a multi-million dollar business with clients ranging from 2 star Michelin restaurants to Martha Stewart and Google, without any design or business experience. She shares her hard won and unconventional wisdom of what worked. Her memoir and playbook is Dream First, Details Later.
How to Get People to Say Yes: The Godfather of Influence Dr. Robert Cialdini
Warren Buffett recommends Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, which has sold over 5 million copies, as one of the best business books of all time. Dr. Cialdini shares his latest findings on how we can all use the tactics of influence and persuasion to get people to say “yes” to us. He recently published a new version of Influence.
How the World’s Greatest Investors Win in Markets and Life: William Green
William Green shares investing and life lessons from the world’s legendary investors. Learn the surprisingly simple rules they follow to stack the odds in their favor in both investing and in life. Discover their common approaches to investing, such as sublime indifference to crowd sentiment. William Green is the author of Richer Wiser Happier.
The Empathy Diaries and How Tech Changes Us and Our Relationships: MIT’s Sherry Turkle
Founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self Sherry Turkle shares her personal discoveries with empathy and how tech changes our relationships. She also reveals the implications of constant connection and artificial intimacy.
Investing in Positive Social Outcomes with Social Impact Bonds: Tracy Palandjian
Learn from Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance, about using impact investing and social impact bonds for a wide range of social purposes from improving high school graduation to reducing recidivism. Social Finance is an impact investing and advisory nonprofit that has mobilized over $150 million to transform the lives of more than 20,000 individuals across a wide range of issue areas including workforce development, education, and health. To find out more visit socialfinance.org.
A Unique Model of Innovation - Making Breakthrough Discoveries and Turning Them Into Real World Products At an Unheard of Pace: Don Ingber
The Wyss Institute For Biologically Inspired Engineering accounts for 25% of Harvard’s intellectual property startups each year, with discoveries and startups ranging from healthcare to energy, robotics, architecture, and manufacturing. Find out from Wyss founding director Don Ingber how their unique model works and how they make breakthrough discoveries in such a wide range of fields and bring them to market so quickly.
Getting The Odds On Your Side: Legendary Investor Howard Marks
Howard Marks, co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management with $150BN under management, talks about the most important things in investing and how the real accomplishment is to have profit potential disproportionate to the risk. Learn how to get the odds on your side and find out why diversification is not a magic elixir and why stock prices could go much higher.
Harvard Business School’s Bill Sahlman: What I’ve Learned from Reading 10,000 Business Plans and Investing in Hundreds of Startups
Of the 10,000 business plans Bill Sahlman has read, only 3 companies met their plan. Find out what it takes to succeed. Entrepreneurs have to be really good at running tests and execution trumps idea. Jeff Bezos is the most effective experimentalist in history. Bill Gates did not invent word processing, the spreadsheet, or presentation graphics; rather he took ideas and out executed everyone else.
Former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard, Larry Summers: The Big Trends Shaping the World Today
Former Secretary of the Treasury and President of Harvard Larry Summers talks about the defining trends of the 21st century, including how we are going to achieve collective solutions, the shift in the center of gravity of the world’s economy and culture to the east, the upcoming transformation in education, the hard choices facing the leading universities, and the exponential growth in what information technology will be capable of.
Working for Jeff Bezos and the Secrets of Amazon’s Success
With nearly 30 years of combined Amazon experience, former Amazon Vice Presidents Colin Bryar and Bill Carr reveal the proven way Amazon innovates and scales businesses. Colin spent all day every day with Jeff Bezos for 2 years as his technical advisor. Bill led the launch and growth of the Kindle, Amazon Music, and Prime Video. Find out how Amazon’s success is due to a well-defined set of principles and practices which they reveal here and illustrate with stories. Find out also what Jeff Bezos is really like and why his siblings hated to go to movies with him.
Princeton Psychology Professor, Eldar Shafir: Why Having Too Little Makes People Perform Worse and Become More Impatient, Impulsive and Careless
Learn how scarcity of anything — money, food or social connections — affects our daily lives and leads us astray. Scarcity reduces both intelligence and control. Having too little preoccupies and taxes the mind, making life much harder. "Even smiling and being pleasant is hard when your mind is taxed. The employee snaps at rude customers ... The parent snaps at the child ... The server rings up the wrong item.” Learn about the latest cutting edge behavioral science to find out how the poor can escape the scarcity trap and how we can all manage scarcity for better satisfaction and success.
Marshall Van Alstyne: Why Platform Companies (Facebook, Amazon, Airbnb and Uber) Are the Opposite of Traditional Companies, Why They Become So Enormous, and How They Can Be Regulated
Find out why platform companies dominate traditional businesses and why 7 of the 10 largest companies in the world are platform companies. Learn how they outcompete traditional companies while employing just a tiny fraction of the number of people, how they are completely different from companies of the past, and why platforms beat products all the time.