This wasn’t the essay I intended to write this week, but I read an article in Canada’s Globe & Mail that struck me as so dangerously over-simple, I simply had to sit down and mess it up. It’s an opinion piece by Joe Berridge, an urban planner, titled “Welcome to...

I want to swing your attention back to AI for a moment. I’ve just read an important new book on the subject, and it has gifted me a new framework for thinking about the subject. I find it so useful and powerful that sharing it with you took priority over some other...

This week, I’m taking the ideas that are coming out of this global Renaissance Expedition to New Zealand, where the Ellen MacArthur Foundation will be hosting Ōhanga Āmiomio, the world’s first Pacific Summit on the Circular Economy. I’ll be speaking alongside systems...

Don’t just do something; sit there! Happy February! For this letter, I’ve consolidated a couple weeks of research and writing into one “long read” for you. Best served with a morning cup of coffee. And if you’re on-the-go, I unpack it further with my pal Scott Jones...

Happy New Year! (Can I still say that? I say it all January…in part because my friends in China are just about to celebrate theirs. February 5th, Year of the Pig. Damn, those ancient astrologers had some predictive powers, eh?) Thanks for the many kind holiday notes....

This will be my last letter of 2018, and I want to begin it by thanking you for being a kind, patient and generous reader during the year. These letters are important to me. Imagining that you are waiting for them compels me to make time to write to you, even when...

Should we (still) ‘let social media run amok’? Ah, Brexit. To be in London is to be confronted at all times, from all sides, from traditional and social media, with commentary, predictions and hand-wringing about what the future holds for this country: Will the vote...

Says the Futurist: “The future is just over the horizon!” To which the social scientist replied: “Isn’t ‘the horizon’ an imaginary line that moves farther away as you approach it?” A Useful Shorthand On Thursday, I spoke at the Centre for Workplace Leadership’s 2018...

I was on stage at the Oslo Business Forum earlier this week. (Email me if you’d like a copy of my slides.) The day opened with CNN anchor Richard Quest and also included Andrew McAfee from MIT, but the star attraction for the 3,000 business leaders who came to the...

“I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appear from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses.” -Henry Kissinger, Financial Times, July 2018 It’s been a long, hot summer. And I spent most of it far away from...

After my last letter (which took a deep dive into my friends’ research on the “power of doubt”) and with Donald Trump here in Europe for meetings with NATO, the Queen of England and Vladimir Putin all in the same week, now felt like the ideal...

Last week, I helped open OXSCIE 2018, a global summit on the future of education at Oxford University. It was a special event, focussed mainly on challenges in the developing world. Delegates were a balance of education policy makers, academic researchers, donors and...