Between Worlds

When Roy walked into my apartment in Hong Kong. it felt like I was about to get a spirited lesson from the blind sensei Stick, from the comic series Daredevil. I had grown up watching Roy as a kid, playing characters in the Bruce Lee and Jackie Chain Kung Fu movies I loved. Since retiring from film, Roy has gone on to become a global expert in creativity and innovation, founding Innovea, a company specializing in high performance and well-being for both business and education sectors. Roy also teaches as an assistant professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design where he focuses on creative and higher order thinking as both a teacher and researcher. In this podcast episode, we shared a fascinating discussion on the power of meditation and mindfulness, and its links to creativity and break-through thinking.

Talking to Robyn Benincasa about performance - a world champion adventure racer, a CNN hero and a full time firefighter - was a bit like interviewing Sarah O’Connor about her thoughts on Judgement Day. Robyn is the ultimate adventure addict. She holds three Guinness World Records for distance paddling, and has competed in the extreme sport of adventure racing from the jungles of Borneo to the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, the rivers of Fiji to the rainforests of Ecuador and the desert of Namibia. These experiences have given her a unique perspective on what it takes to build successful teams, and what leaders need to become, if they want to inspire commitment rather than simply securing compliance.

Ted C. Fishman is a global expert on populations, demographics and emerging markets. When we met up in Chicago, he slipped through the crowded hotel lobby to greet me, in a wonderful Indonesian batik shirt - like a covert character from a Graham Greene spy novel. Ted is a veteran journalist, essayist and former member and trader of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. His most recent book, Shock of Gray, The Aging of the World’s Population and How it Pits Young Against Old, Child Against Parent, Worker Against Boss, Company Against Rival, and Nation Against Nation looks at how the aging of the world is propelling globalization, redefining nearly every important relationship we have and changing life for everyone young and old. He also wrote the international bestseller, China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World, which describes the effects of China's emergence as a world power on the lives and businesses of people across the globe. In this podcast, we had a wide-ranging chat about the future impact of shifting population demographics on global growth, the rapid urbanization of China and how technology has impacted daily life there, as well as Ted’s latest journeys and insights about the Indonesian market.

Sage and I used to hang out in Shanghai years ago, when he was an analyst covering the Chinese market. Since then, he has returned to the US where he now runs China Luxury Advisors, a consultancy that helps brands and destinations prepare for the next wave of Chinese consumers. Sage first visited China in 1987, and has studied and embraced the language and culture ever since. He has worked in China as a researcher, investor, entrepreneur, journalist and advisor, with a specialization in digital, mobile and strategy. We caught up in Palos Verdes, the beautiful beach town just outside of Los Angeles, to talk about the future of destination marketing, why WeChat is the operating system for life in China, and the challenge for brands in navigating an increasingly complex and multicultural world.

You might say Jeremy always had activism in his blood. At the tender age of 8, he pressed his family’s fax machine into service to lobby leaders on issues like children's rights and nuclear non-proliferation. Since then, he has founded GetUp, an Australian political organization and internationally recognized social movement phenomenon that today has more members than all of Australia's political parties combined. He also co-founded Avaaz, the world’s largest online citizens’ movement, now with more than 40 million members. Now Jeremy runs Purpose, which helps bring social movements to life with a combination of digital smarts, creative storytelling and community building infrastructure. Jeremy and I debated together many years ago at University, so it was great to catch up with him in New York and talk about how technology is is a powerful force for social change against the backdrop of increasing gun violence, racial and religious tension and the divisive US election.

Chetan Dube is the cool math professor you always wished you had at college. Impeccably attired and capable of switching between anecdotes about a childhood spent in New Delhi, Paris and London with deep dive explanations of probabilistic vs deterministic neural networks - he is one of the most interesting personalities in the emerging world of AI and cognitive computing. After founding his company IPsoft, he developed Amelia, a “virtual service-desk employee”, that understands the semantics of language, and can solve business process queries just like a human being. Over coffee in his office in New York, we spoke about the impact of AI on the design of companies, and in particular, the rise of the cognitive enterprise, in which software platforms will be able to understand, learn and anticipate customer needs, even before they know them.

Valerio Cometti is one of the world’s foremost industrial designers. Founder of V12 Design and based in Milan, he and his team have created product designs for some of the world’s leading furniture, fashion and luxury automotive brands. Having originally trained as a mechanical Engineer, Valerio bases much of his approach on a product engineering core, thanks to a deep understanding of manufacturing processes. I visited him at his studio in the bohemian Navigli district, where we talked about the values of Italian design, the challenges of bringing great products to life, and the future of data-driven wearables.

Andy Stalman is an expert in launching and nurturing brands in Latin America. Author of “Brandoffon. Branding the Future” and CEO of Cato Partners Europe & LatAm, he also lectures as a visiting professor at a number of business schools and companies worldwide. We have spoken and shared meals together a number of times, from Bogota to Madrid, and I was keen to get his views on the challenges of engaging Hispanic consumers, as well as the secrets behind successful Spanish companies like Zara and Santander.

Alibaba is one of the world’s most dynamic and powerful digital brands today, and yet it originates not from Silicon Valley but from China. As a former Vice President at the business, Porter Erisman had front-row seats to the development of Alibaba from Jack Ma’s apartment into what it is today. In his book, ‘Alibaba’s World’, Porter details the rise of the company against the backdrop of China’s digital revolution and the challenges faced by US web giants trying to crack the local market. In our conversation, we discussed how Jack Ma wrote the operating system for e-commerce to work in China, what brands can learn from the innovative ways that Chinese sell things online, and how everything from wealth management to insurance will soon be re-invented by these new digital platforms as they move from retail to financial services.

Bryan Kramer is one of the most social people around - not only in person, but with over 300,000 fans and followers, a maven in the personal branding and marketing space. His latest book, “Shareology: How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy”, explores the history, art and science of sharing, and illustrates why sharing is what gives us a unique competitive advantage as individuals and brands. In a unique sharing experiment conducted in his recent TED Talk @ IBM titled “Why Sharing is Reimagining Our Future”, Bryan witnessed the true power of sharing when inspiration combined itself with reach and technology. The results were stunning – 21 million impressions in just 4 hours, spanning the globe to over 10 countries. We caught up to chat about why remembering human values is so important for brands and leaders, as they try and design authentic communications.