Between Worlds

When I was growing up, my parents despaired about my refusal to open a book. They sought out doctors and teachers, convinced I had some kind of learning disability. Finally, someone worked out that the problem was not reading, but rather what they were giving me to read: I was bored with the picture books. Taking a personalized approach to teaching kids to read has long been a challenge for traditional educators, but is now within reach with new technologies like LightSail Education, an award winning literacy platform for K-12. I spoke with its founder and CEO, Gideon Stein, about how data and adaptive learning is changing the classroom, and why literacy, even in this digital age, remains a foundational skill.

What if the best way to come up with a brilliant plan for the future of your company was to hire a sci-fi writer? Ari Popper does just that. He connects companies with storytellers to create visions and prototypes of what the future of their products and customers might look like. Ari previously ran the market research company, Brainjuicer USA, but it was a science fiction writing course at UCLA that made him realise the power of creating compelling stories for companies. I was introduced to Ari after a speech I gave at Visa’s incredible new San Francisco headquarters. In the spirit of a Silicon Valley startup, Visa had commissioned Ari’s team to create an interactive, high impact data wall that provided a real time view into the company’s universe. When I visited him at their lab in Burbank, we chatted about the power bringing ideas from fiction to life as prototypes, comic books, and immersive installations.

‘Walk with me’, said Tim Kring, gesturing for me to follow him into the edit suite, where he and his team were busy putting the final touches on his new show, Heroes Reborn. If you were one of the 76 million people watched the original Heroes series during its three-and-a-half-year run, you would already know exactly who Tim is. Tim is one of Hollywood’s most successful writers and producers, best known for shows like Strange World, Crossing Jordan, and Touch. He is also an Emmy award winning pioneer in transmedia storytelling. When we finally sat down for a chat, we talked about the shifting behavior of TV audiences in the digital age, how the next generation think about entertainment, why interconnectedness is such a big theme in his work, and how he uses storytelling as a strategy to create social change.

Michael Keferl runs the Tokyo office of the global innovation consultancy, Mandalah. But I knew him from the early 2000s, when he was the genius behind one of my favourite, and in fact, one of the most popular blogs in the world at that time - CScout Japan. CScout was the go-to emporium for all things weird and wonderfully Japanese. When we caught up in Tokyo, Michael gave me a behind the scenes tour of the city’s latest retail, technology and subcultural trends. Later that day, sitting at a sidewalk cafe in Shibuya, we debriefed on what we saw, discussing the evolution of mobile technology and payments in Japan, interactivity and politeness, why ramen fanatics keep notebooks, Astro Boy’s influence on modern robotics, the fall of Mt Gox, and why this tiny island continues to be a source of inspiration to innovators.

What does it take to create a great culture? If anyone knows, it is Robert Richman. He wrote the book on it, The Culture Blueprint, and after embedding himself at Zappos, co-founded Zappos Insights, the program that helps leaders learn the secrets behind the online shoe company’s game-changing employee culture. Over breakfast at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood, we talked about the system dynamics of what connects people, why great cultures are noisy, how Zappos is able to constantly re-invent itself, creating a startup mentality inside big companies, the power of re-imagining meetings, and why culture is like an operating system.

Refik Anadol sculpts with data, not stone. When he frets about permanence, he is not concerned about the effects of wind and rain on his structures, but whether his algorithms and data sources will continue to be relevant as things change around them. Refik is foremost of a new generation of 21st century artists that have begun to creatively interpret a data-driven world, using its native protocols. Originally from Istanbul but educated at UCLA, he is best known for his recent collaborations with Frank Gehry, Microsoft and the LA Philharmonic to stage an immersive orchestral performance that projection mapped the inside of the Disney Hall, based on real time musical data and the live movements of the conductor. I visited Refik in his new studio in Silverlake where we talked about computation in art, the challenge of designing algorithms that stand the test of time, the beauty of a hundred years of seismic data, and how one might make emotions visually manifest with a little help from a 48 channel EEG and a team of neuroscientists.

Brett King has made a career of terrifying bankers. He has written numerous bestselling books on financial innovation; was voted American Banker Innovator of the Year in 2012; hosts a radio show on Fintech with millions of listeners; and if that wasn’t enough, is also the founder of a startup called Moven - the world's first downloadable bank account. Despite being at serious risk of being drowned out by a melodramatic cafe soundtrack, we chatted about the art of breaking banks, re-imagining traditional financial concepts like credit by using context and wearable devices, and why banks struggle with the challenges of digital transformation.

David Epstein is the New York Times bestselling author of The Sports Gene, an investigative journalist, and a long time contributor for Sports Illustrated where he co-authored the report that Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez had used steroids. He has also been a crime writer, has lived in the Sonoran desert, on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, and in the Arctic. Fortunately, it was in Soho, New York City that I was able to meet up with him where we talked about the intersection of sports and genetics, the physiology of elite athletes, why Kenyans are such great marathon runners, Belgian Blue cattle, the origins of cognitive ability, and how to find the world’s best fighter pilots or bob sled drivers.

Visiting Tokyo is like stepping off a subway station into a parallel universe of strange technologies, animated characters and perfectly wrapped pieces of fruit. Long before the iPhone existed, Japan led the world in smartphone technology and gaming. To this day, it remains a primordial soup of emerging consumer trends and digital innovations. One of my key contacts in Tokyo is Serkan Toto. German by birth, he has been based in Japan since 2004 and runs a game industry consultancy called Kantan Games. I’m not the only one to enjoy talking to Serkan - he has been quoted everywhere from the New York Times to Techcrunch. In our conversation we chatted about the future of mobile games, the curious persistence of flip phones in Japan, and why a Korean communications company decided to incubate the global messaging hit, LINE, in the country that infamously asked the world to say, Hello Kitty.

I met Sean when we both in Tokyo speaking at an intimate summit for banking executives. As an information junkie myself, I was fascinated by the company he co-founded, Quid, which offered analysts and decision makers a visual platform for seeing patterns in complex data. Not surprisingly, Sean’s background is also a nexus of complexity. He is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, and a TED fellow. Sean studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. In our conversation we talked about the power laws behind violence and insurgency, what Kasparov learnt from his infamous chess defeat by Big Blue, the merits of creative exploration through visualization and the art of defining the 21st century concept of manliness.

Despite being the founder of arthouse movie streaming platform, Efe Cakarel, is not what you might call a conventional cinephile. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, got an MBA at Stanford and then worked at Goldman Sachs - before throwing it all in to dedicate himself to the world of film. In his office, situated in the heart of London’s Soho, and surrounded by old film posters, vinyl records and computer equipment - we talked about the influential behaviours of Asian consumers, the dynamism of emerging markets, the economics of online streaming and the paradox of infinite choice.

I caught up with Aaron Dignan for breakfast at the Soho Grand Hotel in New York. Aaron is the CEO of digital transformation firm, The Ready. Aaron is, however, no ordinary consultant. The first line of his bio explains that he “dressed up like a super hero for 180 straight days of the first grade, which marked the beginning of his life as an iconoclast, observer, theorist, and performer”. Over coffee and French Toast, we chatted about complexity theory, the many strange but important lessons of ants and bees, the dangers of innovation departments, Artificial Intelligence and the enduring power of networks.

Tariq Krim describes himself as a dreamer and a doer. He is founder and CEO of Jolicloud, a pioneer in personal cloud computing. Prior to Jolicloud, Tariq founded Netvibes, the personal startpage used by millions around the world. Sitting in a beautiful courtyard in Paris, enjoying the late afternoon sun - we had a far reaching conversation ranging from the rise and fall of French innovation, the slow-tech movement, culture, luxury, and the future of consumer product design.