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In my book Mastery,I propose a radical new way of looking at human intelligence and high achievement, countering the various misconceptions we have about talent and genius. I make the case that mastery is a latent power within us all, the gift of millions of years of brain evolution. It is a power that we … Read more

Below is the transcript of a speech Robert did at Yale in October along with the Q&A that followed. For those of you who would prefer to listen to an mp3 of the speech, you can do that here. Host: Welcome everybody. So, it’s a pleasure to have all of you here, and a particular … Read more

In closing, I wanted to tell you about a dream I had a couple of months ago–I mean the kind of dream you have in your sleep. I dreamt that it was the year 2070 and that I was walking on the crowded streets of some city. People seemed oddly happy and there was a … Read more

Now, as I was writing about Napoleon Bonaparte for my book The 33 Strategies of War, in 2003 and 2004, I became intrigued by a company that seemed to exemplify–in an almost uncanny way–the Napoleonic model I have just outlined. That company was Google. I initiated an informal study–gathering as much material and contacts within … Read more

Napoleon came to power in one of the most chaotic moments in history–the French Revolution. The French people had overthrown a monarchy that had existed for hundreds of years and established a new kind of political order. But because it was so new, nobody quite understood what it all meant. The Revolution led to terror … Read more

Now, I know that this is not the usual way that people discuss what is currently taking place in the world. Instead, we hear much about the banking industry, the corruption within it, and its preying upon helpless consumers; the new trading technology that makes it harder to think and act for the long-term; the … Read more

Now at the same time that this wave was building something else was going on, something rather strange. We have gone through two economic bubbles in a very short period of time. Economic bubbles generally occur for two reasons. The first and the one that most people focus on is that businesses are generally flush … Read more

Now, in the 1990s something else came into being that sped this process along even further. And this was more like warp speed, a sudden acceleration into the future. I am talking about the Internet, or more specifically the world-wide web as it evolved in the early 1990s. The web suddenly provided people three new … Read more

In anthropology there is a concept known as historic fatality. What this means is that occasionally there emerges a certain idea, a certain way of doing things that is so immensely seductive to human beings that eventually it spreads around the globe and forever changes our way of life. One of the greatest examples of … Read more

The following is an amalgamation of two talks I gave recently: the first at the Emirates Festival of Literature in Dubai, and the second at the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore. Both of these talks were geared for a business audience. I plan on posting in eight digestible installments or you can read the … Read more