The Big Think+ blog

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We have a new range of skills coming to Big Think+ this week, including communication, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence.

Culture of a company is like the character of an individual,” says Simon Sinek in his Big Think+ video, “Starting with Why: Build a Culture by Design.” We know that […]

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While fewer companies these days rely solely on interviews in deciding who to hire, interviews still have value in that they can reveal the difference between a candidate as a […]

If a new hire is expected to put in 40 hours, 50 hours, or even more at their job, their new position will be their life for as long as […]

Connecting with an audience, as any comic knows, means reading that audience. It’s energetic improv in real time—you need to notice who’s engaged, what’s engaging them, and build on that. […]

“Trust is so important to how we scale an idea. Without that trust, we don’t take risks. And without risk we don’t build that next big thing,” says Nilofer Merchant, […]

The Science of Productivity: Make Better Informed Choices, with Charles Duhigg, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter, The New York Times, and Author, Smarter Faster Better “Everything happens for a reason” might be a comforting […]

Mastering the Art of Sales and Persuasion: Ask the Right Questions to Elevate Motivation with Dan Pink, Author, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us In this lesson, Dan Pink teaches […]

Be the Most Productive Version of Yourself: A Millennial Insider’s Guide to Getting More Done, with Kathryn Minshew, CEO and Co-founder, The Muse Figure out your most productive time and […]

Social media wunderkind Baratunde Thurston says we’re living in an age of information overabundance, but that this needn’t be a problem. Just as supermarkets offer us many more choices of […]

You know it. Your employees know it. They’re likely to stay with your company only for just a short while. Two years, four years, seven years max. Yet you both […]

Chairman of JetBlue Joel Peterson considers trust, “smart” trust, a key element in a successful organization. Where there’s trust, a company is free to become a whole greater than the […]

Stanley Tucci has played a lot of different roles on movie sets, both in front of and behind the camera. As a director, though, Tucci stands in the center of […]

It’s probably always been the case that each generation’s creations and preoccupations shape the next generation in unexpected ways, producing young adults who seem nearly incomprehensible to their elders, especially […]

 “Just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.” In her Big Think+ video, “Empower Your People — Conversational Moves for Engaging Your Team in Creative […]

 Should you find yourself speaking to a group of people and not connecting, you’re stuck in a situation that seemingly benefits no one. For some people it seems to come […]

 “Doing any sort of creative work takes so much intellectual tussle that if there’s any way you can escape from it, you will.” So says Tina Brown, founder of the […]

 After his breakout performance as Breaking Bad’s Walter White — and after playing dad Hal in Malcolm in the Middle — it might seem that Bryan Cranston’s always been as […]

 “Self-talk has been the biggest thing in my life,” says former Navy SEAL David Goggins. He knows he’s not alone. He also knows it’s largely, to use his words, “a […]

 Is there anyone who hasn’t at one time or another found themselves procrastinating? It can gradually become a terrible trap: As a deadline looms, the task seems to grow bigger […]

 The way in which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Sherlock Holmes solves even the most challenging of mysteries is more than just dazzling fun. In fact, says Maria Konnikova, author […]

 “There is a kind of whispering campaign — more than a whispering campaign, sometimes a yelling campaign — against the value of objective truth.” So says biologist and author Richard […]

 Peer pressure is a powerful thing, even for adults. In his Big Think+ video, “Generate Better Conversations,” economist Tim Harford tells the story of an instructive study done in the […]

 Physicist and author of Einstein’s Dreams Alan Lightman once did a study of 30 of science’s great discoveries. He wanted to learn what he could about the creative process from […]

 Psychologist and author Dan Ariely understands the appeal of rational economics: If people can be expected to behave rationally, life is simple. You can predict their behavior and devise systems […]

 “Everything in society today that can be solved by straightforward analysis gets solved immediately,” says Leonard Mlodinow, theoretical physicist and author of Elastic. Unfortunately, many problems aren’t that simple. To work […]

 You can practically see them slipping away. Yes, they’re still in the conversation with you, at least physically, but you know: The other person has disengaged. Who knows where their […]

 Have you ever had the experience of giving up on a problem and coming back to it some time later to find its solution suddenly obvious? According to Barbara Oakley, […]