“David Barboza, Shanghai correspondent at ‘The New York Times’ on China”
RSA Animate – The Divided Brain
“Renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our ‘divided brain’ has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.”
David S. Rose – Pitching to VCs
“Thinking startup? David S. Rose's rapid-fire TED U talk on pitching to a venture capitalist tells you the 10 things you need to know about yourself -- and prove to a VC -- before you fire up your slideshow.”
Ken Robinson – Schools kill creativity
“Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.”
RSA Animate – Language as a Window into Human Nature
“Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings.”
A look at China
“James Fallows of the Atlantic on China.”
Roger McNamee – Disruption and Engagement
“Ten years from now we will interact with the internet in completely different ways. Tech investor Roger McNamee identifies six changes that are already transforming the ways we consume and create content.”
RSA Animate – Crisis of Capitalism
“Radical sociologist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism, towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that could be responsible, just and humane”.
RSA Animate – Choice
“Fusing sociology, psychoanalysis and philosophy, Professor Renata Salecl shows that individual choice is rarely based on a simple rational decision with a predictable outcome. Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?
RSA Animate – The Internet in Society: Empowering and Censoring Citizen?
“Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? Author and journalist Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on ‘cyber-utopianism’ – the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.”
Hans Rosling – Global population growth
“The world's population will grow to 9 billion over the next 50 years -- and only by raising the living standards of the poorest can we check population growth. This is the paradoxical answer that Hans Rosling unveils at TED@Cannes (July 2010) using colorful new data display technology (you'll see).”
Celebrating verges
In his book, Hidden History, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin writes a prologue titled “The Fertile Verge”.
“American creativity…has flourished on what I call the Fertile Verge. A verge is a place of encounter between something and something else. America was a land of verges—all sorts of verges, between kinds of landscape or seascape, between stages of civilization, between ways of thought and ways of life…. The creativity, the hope, of the nation was in its verges, in its new mixtures and new confusions….
“On these verges—gifts of our geography, our history, our demography—we find three characteristic ways of thinking and feeling. First, there is our exaggerated self-awareness. On the verge we notice more poignantly who we are, how we are thinking, what we are doing. Second, there is a special openness to novelty and change. When we encounter something different, we become aware that things can be different, our appetite is whetted for novelty and its charms. Third, there is a strong community-consciousness. In the face of the different and the unfamiliar, we, the similars, lean on one another. We seek to reassure one another as we organize our new communities and new forms of community. These three tendencies are all both opportunities and temptations. They are sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory. Creativity in our United States has been a harvest of these hypertrophied American attitudes stiffed on the Fertile Verge.”
We celebrate these ideas and ideals -- on a global basis -- in the work we do with our partners and clients.
Introduction
Our team has curated articles, presentations and videos – representing a wide range of views – that provide insights into meaningful ideas shaping our world. Also included are reference materials specifically for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurially minded leaders.
We hope that something in this ever-growing collection catches your attention and stimulates discussion and more new ideas…perhaps even a new product or business.
Enjoy.