Transforming BarbieExecutive vice president and chief brand officer of Mattel, Lisa McKnight is credited with leading the transformation of the Barbie brand. Under her leadership, Barbie became the number one global toy property in 2020 and 2021, and she redefined Barbie’s global social mission with the launch of the Dream Gap Project in 2018, a mu…

Paul Polman is a business leader, campaigner, and co-author (with Andrew Winston) of Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive By Giving More Than They Take, a Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Together with Andrew, Paul is ranked #3 on the Thinkers50 Ranking. As CEO of Unilever (2009-2019), Paul demonstrated that business can profit t…

Andrew Winston is one of the most widely read writers and thinkers on sustainable business. His books on sustainability strategy include Green to Gold, The Big Pivot, and most recently, Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, which he co-authored with Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. Andrew and Paul are rank…

Atif Rafiq: Digital DisruptorProvocateur of the C-Suite, Atif Rafiq has been disrupting companies for more than 25 years in Silicon Valley, the Fortune 500, and through a variety of his own startups. Having begun his career in digital native companies including AOL, Yahoo, and Amazon, Atif was named the first chief digital officer in the history of…

Dane Jensen: Decoding the Power of PressureHow can we harness the positive powers of pressure? How can we mitigate the negative effects of pressure when the stakes are high?Dane Jensen is the CEO of Third Factor, an instructor at Queen’s University and the University of North Carolina, and author of The Power of Pressure. In this podcast with Deloi…

How to Tap into the Hidden Wisdom of the People Around YouWhy do people withhold information from each other? Why are some of the smartest, successful people the worst at learning from each other? Jeff Wetzler is on a quest to transform learning opportunities, both in business and in education. If we want to create a workforce for the future, with …

Neri Karra Sillaman: From Refugee to Fashion Revolutionary At age 11, Neri Karra Sillaman’s world was turned upside down when her Bulgarian-Turkish family was forced to flee their home country. Driven by a hunger for education and a better life, Neri grabbed an opportunity to study business management at the University of Miami, where she became in…

Marketer extraordinaire, Marcus Collins is a clinical professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. A former advertising executive who worked on iTunes + Nike sport music initiatives at Apple, Marcus contends that what we wear, what we eat, where we work, who we date, and just about every facet of our social living is informed b…

Amy Chang serves on the board of directors for The Walt Disney Company and Procter & Gamble, and has previously served on the boards of Cisco, Splunk, Marqeta, and Informatica.In 2018, Amy’s start-up business, Accompany, an AI/ML-based relationship intelligence platform serving Fortune 500 companies, was acquired by Cisco for $270 million. Post-acq…

What did we learn from our provocateurs in 2023? Who provoked us to think again and act differently? Which stories remain with us?The Provocateurs podcast series gives you direct access to the ideas, experiences, and insights of remarkable leaders from around the world. In 2023, in collaboration with Deloitte, Thinkers50 hosted an inspiring mix of …

Rescuing Levi’sA self-declared ‘brand guy’, Chip Bergh was appointed president and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. in 2011. During his tenure the company has experienced a dramatic turnaround marked by outstanding performance and reclaiming its cultural relevance. In short, Levi’s has become cool again! Along the way, Chip has shown himself to be a provo…

Rare Breeds – Marching To A Different DrumLeadership and brand expert Sunny Bonnell is the bestselling co-author of Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous, and Different (with Ashleigh Hansberger, 2019). Sunny and Ashleigh are also the creators of the Rare Breed Leadership Platform, and the hit YouTube show, Rare Breed TV. In thi…

The author of New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, Kim Scott joins Steve Goldbach of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to talk through the politics, practicalities, and purpose of feedback in the workplace. In this discussion, part of The Provocateurs podcast seri…

Author of The Anxious Achiever and Hiding in the Bathroom, Morra Aarons-Mele is also founder of the award-winning social impact agency Women Online. In this Provocateurs podcast episode, she joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 to set the record straight on normalising anxiety. Data shows that high achievers manage more anx…

Former professional poker player Annie Duke is a master of decision making. In this Provocateurs podcast, hosted by Stuart Crainer of Thinkers50 and Steve Goldbach of Deloitte, she challenges us to examine our own biases and self-narratives to focus on the things we can control, in order to make better choices. By sharing practical insights and str…

Self-confessed contrarian thinker and provocateur since childhood, Martin Lindstrom is an international branding expert and one of the world’s leading authorities on the metaverse. Here he joins Geoff Tuff of Deloitte and Des Dearlove of Thinkers50 in a fascinating conversation about branding as an emotional construct, the power of small data, and …

Shelley Zalis is a pioneer for online research, becoming the first female chief executive ranked in the research industry’s top 25, and today she works with Fortune 500 companies, impact organizations, and conscious leaders to advance equality in the workplace. And she mentors women all over the world. Shelley is the CEO of The Female Quotient, an …

Jim Stengel is the President and CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, which works to build brands and companies by activating their purpose. He has authored the books ‘Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies’ as well as ‘Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups.’ He is also a speaker …

Tiffani Bova: The Inside Track on Growth Tiffani Bova is the global growth evangelist at Salesforce and the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller GROWTH IQ: Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business. Tiffani is a true change maker whose thought-provoking and forward-thinking insights have brought her international a…

Stuart Crainer, Des Dearlove, Steve Goldbach, Stacy Janice and Geoff Tuff marshall their thoughts and make sense of our podcast episodes from the year. What have they learned? What has surprised them? Which guests really made them re-think and re-set? There are plenty of inspiring stories to choose from. We have had some amazing guests: Valerie Rai…

What is peanut butter and jelly leadership? And why does every business leader need a podcast? Ben Fanning is the host of the top ranked Lead the Team podcast, where he interviews world-class CEOs about their everyday success strategies that can apply to businesses of 1 to 100,000. In this fascinating episode, Ben, who is also a professional speake…

Tom van der Lubbe is the visionary and inspirational co-founder of Viisi, a Dutch financial services company that offers customized mortgage solutions. Founded in 2010 at the height of the financial crisis, Viisi is a remarkable company. Its purpose is to change the world of finance, to make the industry better, more sustainable and more focused on…

It isn’t every day you get to meet a real-life astronaut! Dr Charles Camarda – (Charlie to his friends) was selected as an Astronaut Candidate in 1996 and flew as a Mission Specialist on STS-114, NASA’s Return-to-Flight mission immediately following the Columbia disaster of 2003, which claimed the lives of its seven crew. He was responsible for ini…

Trained at Columbia, the National Institute of Health and Harvard before joining the faculty at Duke University in 1973, Bob Lefkowitz is a Nobel Prize winning scientist who is best known for showing how adrenaline works via stimulation of specific receptors. He is also a cardiologist and the author of the memoir, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way …

Julie Carrier is a trailblazer in the field of young women’s leadership. The CEO of Girls Lead Worldwide and founder of The Leadership Development Institute for Young Women, she researches and brings evidence-based, applied-neuroscience leadership coaching and development to girls and young women in high school through a set curriculum. Shortlisted…

Hubert Joly has been described as ‘a visionary’, and ‘one of the most gifted leaders of our time.’ As CEO of the electrical retailer Best Buy, Joly led a turnaround that Amazon’s Jeff Bezos described as ‘…remarkable – a case study that should be taught in business schools around the world.’ Now a lecturer at Harvard Business School and a member of …

The Posse Foundation identifies public high school students with extraordinary academic and leadership potential and places them in supportive, multi-cultural teams. Since 1989, Posse’s partner colleges have awarded $1.6 billion in scholarships and more than 10,000 scholars have so far been selected. Posse scholars graduate at a rate of 90 percent.…

Dambisa Moyo is a true pioneer. Zambian-born, she serves on the global corporate boards of the 3M Corporation, Chevron, and Condé Nast. Her compelling combination of contrarian thinking with measured judgment, plus a uniquely wide ranging curiosity, can be seen in her succession of bestselling books: Edge of Chaos: Why Democracy is Failing to Deliv…

Valerie Rainford: Passion Plus PurposeIf passion and purpose are the currency of business, then Valerie Rainford has a lifetime of wealth from which to draw. Now, the founder and CEO of Elloree Talent Strategies, she is author of the award-winning memoir Until the Brighter Tomorrow: One Woman’s Courageous Climb from the Projects to the Podium. Her …

The Provocateurs, a collaboration between Thinkers50 and Deloitte, is a new podcast series profiling the world’s boldest leaders and the moves they make. These are people who have accomplished incredible things by ‘provoking’ the future they desire – in business and for society overall. Often overcoming human biases and acting with imperfect data a…

Dan Toma and Stuart Crainer discuss the impetus of his book, The Corporate Startup. Is it possible for large corporations to understand the innovations lifestyle movement? How can innovation be accounted for so that its KPIs are meaningful?Von Thinkers50

Businesses are interested in sustainable development, but they don't know where to start. Hoek, author of The Trillion Dollar Shift, argues that "Business for Good is Good Business".Von Thinkers50

Stuart Crainer and Michael Jacobides discuss ecosystems. Success is as much about helping other firms to innovate as it is about being innovative yourself. Companies need to change the questions they are asking. We are now shifting from a product that is defined in terms of its individual goodsand services to something that can cross the boundaries…

How should businesses allocate their spend between trying to disrupt markets, versus their core business. How has it changed over the last seven years?Von Thinkers50

The future of customer experience is happening now, in China. What is causing Europe and North America to lag behind? What is the future of voice assistants, and how are smart companies using them to enhance and advance the customer experience?Von Thinkers50

What is digital transformation? In this Brightline Initiative Podcast recorded in London, Stuart Crainer interviews Karolin Frankenberger, co-author of the book The Business Model Navigator. The two discuss digital transformation - not cutting edge technology, or digitizing products or processes, but rather holistic transformation of businesses wit…

In this Brightline Initiative Podcast recorded in London, Stuart Crainer interviews Steve Goldbach, co-author of the book Detonate. In the book, Goldbach observes that executives are very clear about their fears of disruption, and have done very little in the way of actually challenging orthodoxies within their organizations.…

Stephen Frost, CEO of the Inclusion Consultancy, Frost Included, in conversation with Stuart Crainer.Von Thinkers50

Marshall Van Alstyne in conversation with Thinkers 50 founder Des Dearlove. The two discuss Fake News and how its ramifications run more deeply than most people acknowledge.Von Thinkers50

In this conversation between Des Dearlove and Marshall Van Alstyne, Professor at Boston University and author of Platform Revolution, the two discuss the nature of platforms and the three requirements for something to qualify as a platform.Von Thinkers50

Alex Hill, Cofounder and Director of The Centre for High Performance, discusses his research to discover seven long-lasting organisations.Von Thinkers50

How are failures connected? How can complex systems be fixed and improved with simple tools?Von Thinkers50

Would you buy a Jaguar if you knew it was 3D-printed? What other technological revolutions are underway that might radically shift power in corporations and around the world?Von Thinkers50

Thinkers50's Stuart Crainer interviews Ricardo Vargas, Executive Director of the Brightline Initiative, about why we need to be aware of the gap between new business ideas and their implementation.Von Thinkers50

Stuart Crainer interviews Dan Pontefract on his books, Flat Army, The Purpose Effect, and now Open to Think.Von Thinkers50

The Qi Effect: in our organizations, we design and implement processes, procedures and rules to control events and produce our desired outcomes. The problem is events are not as predictable as they seem to be, so we create new rules to deal with those problems. It creates a bureaucratic nightmare.The antidote? Qi. Qi (pronounced chee) stands for Qu…

In this podcast brought to you in partnership with the Brightline Initiative, Stuart Crainer is in coversation with Sheena Iyengar, professor of business at Columbia University, and best-selling author of “The Art of Choosing,” which was named one of the best business books of 2010 by the Financial Times. In this conversation, Iyengar discusses The…

Howard Yu, author of "Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied", discusses the common pain point of executives whose products can be copied at any moment.Von Thinkers50

In this podcast brought to you in partnership with the Brightline Initiative, Des Dearlove discusses Tendayi Viki and 1508’s new report, Innovation Made Tangible. Tendayi and 1508 maintain that in the last several years innovation has become the most important part of many business leaders’ toolkit, and over 70% of C-Suite leaders view innovation a…

Andrew Kakabadse explains how the Five Qs affect leadership and governanceVon Thinkers50