Forward Thinking

Asia’s economies will continue to have momentum “because when we know the secret, we are not going to give up that enlightenment” says influential Chinese economist Justin Yifu Lin.

A British economist talks about longevity and how we can adapt to living for longer.

From growing up in a small village in turbulent postcolonial Guinea-Bissau to a career at the United Nations, a leading African development economist talks about his belief in pan-Africanism and multilateralism.

“Our economics, the economics I get to do, my colleagues at the university when I walk down the hallway, this is just the most exciting water-cooler conversation in the world.” Two University of Michigan professors talk about their highly relevant—joyous—take on economics.

“I really worry that people are not taking this seriously enough … this fundamentally is going to be a shift in how we work and how we interact at a level that’s as big as anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.” A leading business school professor talks about why he thinks the technology underlying ChatGPT is so transformative that he is betting his career on it.

“A boring world might lead us to terrible stagnation, which we don't want. We need innovation in front of all the issues we are dealing with.” A former central banker and economist talks about the difficult balances that need to be struck.

Why are some countries rich and some poor? A leading economist finds the answer in the interactions of economies with the rest of the world, through trade, capital flows, and—notably—migration. “I think that migration could be the key to economic development that we haven’t discovered yet,” he says.

“Let’s stop putting our heads in the sand like ostriches, pretending that problems don’t exist,” says an economist noted for his early warning about the global financial crisis. “If you don’t address them individually and collectively, eventually they will overwhelm us.”

“I’m increasingly talking about the need to build a planetary restoration industry,” says a prominent investor in sustainability. “This, to me, is one of the great industries that we need to be building together over the next decades, and indeed beyond—the next centuries.”

A leading economist uses a historical lens to gain insights into the economic consequences of pandemics, likely trends in wealth and globalization, and whether current economic turbulence signals the start of a new era.

“There’s a lot of scare stories in the media saying hybrid doesn’t work,” says a leading economist. “My one piece of advice is just be intentional, be organized. Basically, get folks in on two, three days a week … and be really tough about having them come in. And then let them work from home on the other days.”

“This is certainly the most exciting, contentious, uncertain time when it when it comes to trade policy, certainly in my lifetime,” says a leading trade economist. “And I just had one of those big, round number—half century—birthdays, and so I’ve been around for a fairly long period of time.”

Persuaded by her parents to study science and engineering, Jayshree Seth retained her humanities mindset while becoming the first chief science advocate at the 3M company.

Many people think that hunger and climate change happen to poor people in faraway countries and won’t affect them, says a leading food systems expert. “But that is a naïve perception of the world.”

A prominent economist, author, podcaster, and talent investor discusses how to better match human talent to opportunities, de-bureaucratize philanthropy, achieve higher-quality governance, and identify fields of likely progress, and how to get it all done.

The co-founder and co-CEO of a new think tank, the Institute for Progress, talks about its mission to accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding the future of humanity.

The leader of a cutting-edge institute talks about innovative new materials that “eat” carbon and may enable cotton growing without irrigation, as well as the potential for building the world’s shortest supply chain in two 40-foot containers.

A leading economic geographer talks regional growth and inequality, discontent and populism, innovation, migration, and development policies and strategies.

An eminent European economist discusses the economic challenges arising from the war in Ukraine, the spreading economic turbulence, and the need to work together to nurture global public goods.

Born in India and now a professor in Texas, Avinash Collis talks about his work on creating a data dashboard that will enable us to measure the true value of the digital age.

The World Trade Organization’s first African—and first female—director-general reflects on the impact of the pandemic on trade, the imperative to ensure that vaccines reach Africa and other emerging economies, and how to ensure that trade is more inclusive in the years ahead.

“Having a computer science degree should not be a prerequisite for being one of the only people in control of what happens next. It’s about democratizing. It’s about giving folks agency so we can make collective decisions about what happens next rather than it being that technical power race. I don’t know if we can call it race to the—I’m going to call it the bottom, race to the dystopia.”

The former British politician who led the United Kingdom’s winning bid to host COP26 is now focused on coordinating an effective business contribution to the net-zero transition. She sees momentum building. “CEOs left COP saying, ‘We get it. Net zero is the thing we have to do.’”

One of the tech world’s sharpest analysts talks about the frontier and how we got here, connecting the metaverse, Web3, and crypto with everyone from industrialist Henry Ford to writer Voltaire to historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.

A leading US financier discusses the route to carbon neutrality, what the pandemic taught us about resiliency, and the true meaning of stakeholder capitalism.

A leading US economist talks about what has changed in the pandemic, the rise of China, the globalization of trade, and spreading automation.

“Our social contract is broken. And that is at the heart of why our politics is so divided and so many citizens around the world are disappointed and frustrated.” “Modern society is killing Mother Nature. And if you kill Mother Nature, you kill ourselves. We really need to achieve a social contract between us and other humanity and also Mother Nature. And this conversation is only beginning.” Two stark views on the state of today’s social contract.

“William Blake talked about the dark Satanic mills, these inhuman pieces of tangible capital. Intangible capital is in some ways about what makes us human. It’s about ideas, and it’s about relationships. It’s about expressiveness. Some people may ask whether we should be making that the basis of the economy. But we would argue that this is actually making those things that matter to us as humans more central to our thriving.”

A leading economist and business school dean reflects on globalization, concluding that “we’ve learned people want to know policies will matter for them”, and that “a lot of us underestimated the possible magnitude of distribution pressures from freer trade and immigration and flows of capital.”

The first female CEO of the United Kingdom’s Royal Academy of Engineering reflects on the evolving role of engineering in a dematerializing world, its vital role in science and sustainability—and collaborating with a Formula One world champion.

Two US leaders focused on developing a more skills-based labor market explore ways to broaden opportunity for workers while helping companies plug talent gaps.

The director of one of Europe’s most influential think tanks reflects on how to better prepare for the next pandemic, and turns his attention to the challenges of postpandemic economic recovery in an era of rising climate risk.

A Nobel laureate explores postpandemic prospects, explaining why his cautious optimism about the economic recovery has been replaced by concern related to the slow vaccine rollout in lower-income economies, fragile supply chains, and extreme weather events.

One of the US Navy’s first female fighter pilots, the engineering and robotics professor talks about the promise and peril of automation in airplanes and cars, predicting a “very distinct shift away from replacing human reasoning to augmenting human reasoning.”

“I’m looking at theater over the course of the next generation. And ensuring that theater is accessible to the many, not just the few.”

In addition to the moral argument, the former White House economic adviser explains that gender diversity is “a matter of human capital. It’s a matter of talent. It’s a matter of the evidence mounting over time.”

The influential economist connects the dots between artificial intelligence, productivity, wages, and inequality, and how to counterbalance the impacts of automation.

This researcher is making sure more AI information flows back from China to the West, and his insights are surprising.

How could AI help create jobs even in rural areas, and what would it take? In this podcast episode, Kevin Scott shares his ideas with James Manyika.

“If you look back at episodes of these periods when there has been technical change, and some big cataclysmic event in the economy, things end up being quite different a bit later.”

The Nobel Prize–winning economist talks job loss and creation after the pandemic, plus what economic researchers should be addressing today.

The leaders of Ginkgo Bioworks and the BIO organization discuss the future of biological technologies, from developing vaccines faster to changing how we produce food.