Critical Thinking
Looking probably isn’t something you need to practice. People believe they can apprehend a painting at a glance. They read coworkers’ messages and assume they understand a situation. Or they […]
What do communist dictators Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong have in common with U.S. Presidents like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan? Hint: It’s the same thing they have in […]
Sometimes the value of soft skills feels almost secretive—like some scrap of knowledge handed down through an ancient society of corporate recruiters. Of course, that’s not the case or that’s […]
In recent years, women have made incredible strides in the business world. Forty-one women currently lead Fortune 500 companies. While that remains an unacceptably low percentage (8 percent) overall, it […]
Identity politics has become a highly contentious element within modern political discourse. Those who support this approach believe it bolsters the presence and power of those who would otherwise be […]
Anti-human business practices deteriorate their charges, and there’s perhaps no greater warning of this end result than the life of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. Nobel invented dynamite in 1867 with […]
Even a year like 2020 couldn’t prepare Americans for the first few weeks of 2021. The year’s opening act was a siege on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of […]
For many, 2020 will not be remembered as a “best of” much. We don’t need to repeat the reasons here; it’s sufficient to point out that a 100-year pandemic was […]
Quick! There’s a runaway train on the tracks. Some dastardly evildoer has knocked the driver out cold and tied five people to the tracks ahead. The train is barreling down […]
There’s a fortune to be made in data and silicon, and everyone is out for their share. Artificial intelligence is this century’s gold rush. Its promises scintillate in them there […]
Smiling makes us feel happier. If you strike a superhero pose, you’ll feel more assertive and confident in your abilities. We all have a limited pool of self-control that can […]
Let’s talk about swans. All swans are birds or, more specifically, waterfowl. They are large and sport long, slender necks. They migrate south for the winter, traveling in that eye-catching […]
During a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs related an anecdote about an experience he had shortly after dropping out of college that conveys one of the qualities […]
One of Socrates’s best-known claims was that “I know that I know nothing.” It’s no fluke that this quote has survived more than 2,000 years or that Socrates is nearly […]
Why should customers buy from you instead of your competitors? That’s the question at the heart of making a sale in a competitive market, says Matt Dixon, Global Head of […]
When it comes to hiring great salespeople, the statistics do not paint a pretty picture. In the U.S., roughly a third of all salespeople leave or are fired from their […]
Every day, humanity generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. Every minute, users are sharing nearly 500,000 tweets, watching more than 4 million YouTube videos, and conducting more than 3.6 million […]
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 […]
“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, […]
“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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Angie McArthur, CEO of Professional Thinking Partners and the co-author of Collaborative Intelligence, talks about keeping a relationship “clean.” She’s talking about dealing with misunderstandings before they have a chance […]
Negotiating is often a white-knuckle affair, but the stakes are rarely higher than when the FBI is trying to come to terms with a kidnapper. Chris Voss, now CEO of […]
For a startup, growth is a straightforward matter of scaling up: adding employees, setting up distribution channels, and so on. But, says David Butler in his Big Think+ video “Design […]
Disagreements are inevitable — we all have different experiences that lead us to be who we are and to what we believe. Almost as inevitable are distrust, suspicion, and even […]
Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, is a programmer. When he got the idea to begin posting free online classes, he was able to get the basic infrastructure in place […]