The Big Ideas

What are the big ideas set to change the world of work now and in the future? Thinkers50 founders Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove spend their time scanning the world of business ideas. Here is their selection of big ideas to investigate now.

Collaborative Consumption/Rachel Botsman
Co-author of What’s Mine is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live (HarperCollins) and a visiting lecturer at Oxford University, Saïd Business School, Botsman’s TED talk on the collaborative economy has been watched by more than 2 million people. www.rachelbotsman.com

Peers Inc./Robin Chase
The incorporation of the peer-to-peer economy into the business world, championed by co-founder of Zipcar and transportation entrepreneur. Book of the same title published by Public Affairs (2015). A doer and a thinker. Unusual. www.robinchase.org

Nine Visions of Capitalism/Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars
Long-term Anglo-Dutch writing duo provide new visions for the future of capitalism based on unlocking the true meaning of wealth creation. Lots of reinventing capitalism ideas, but this is the most coherent.

Exponential Organizations/Salim Ismail, Michael Malone and Yuri van Geest
Ismail is an entrepreneur, former VP of Yahoo, founding executive director of Singularity University; Malone a leading journalist and author; and van Geest a digital consultant and speaker based in the Netherlands. Authors of Exponential Organizations (Diversion, 2014). www.exponentialorgs.com

Return on Character/Fred Kiel
Co-founder and principal of KRW International, Kiel talked to 100 CEOs and researched for seven years to bring evidence to bear on how and why character is the bedrock of effective leadership. Proof positive. www.krw-intl.com

Blue Ocean Leadership/W Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne
INSEAD professors and authors of global bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy (HBR, 2005), turn their attention to leadership and re-constitute it as a service. www.blueoceanstrategy.com

Collaborative Intelligence/Dawna Markova and Angie McArthur
Markova (ex-MIT) and McArthur of Professional Thinking Partners champion the concept of CQ in 2015 book Collaborative Intelligence (Random House).

Onlyness/Nilofer Merchant
“The thing that only that one individual can bring to a situation,” explains the Silicon Valley-based ex-exec Merchant, author of 11 Rules for Creating Value in the Social Era (HBR, 2012). Working now on new book.

The Culture Map/Erin Meyer
Cultural relativity applied to the contemporary business world by INSEAD professor and author of The Culture Map (Public Affairs, 2014). www.erinmeyer.com

Behavioral Fitness/Lee Newman
Workplace behaviors can be fine-tuned and improved in similar ways to how we improve our bodies. Positive psychology meets leadership courtesy of IE Business School professor and former consultant. www.leenewman.org

Holacracy/Brian Robertson
Philadelphia-based entrepreneur and former CEO, author of Holacracy (Portfolio, 2015) which provides an antidote to hierarchy. www.holacracy.org

Leading from the Emerging Future/Otto Scharmer
Scharmer is founding chair of MIT IDEAS program and the Presencing Institute. Awful name, we know. Author of Leading from the Emerging Future (Berrett Koehler, 2013), Theory U (Berrett Koehler, 2009), and Presence (Crown, 2008). www.ottoscharmer.com

Leadership Capital Index/Dave Ulrich
Prolific author from the University of Michigan’s Ross School, provides an index by which investors can gauge leadership strength of an organization. Important now tool for investors. Book out later this year (Berrett Koehler). www.daveulrich.com