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In a wide-ranging interview, the former Dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management describes his 15-year run at the helm of Canada's top business school. Along the way he describes the origins of Integrative Thinking and how Design Thinking relates to it; why capitalism is still badly broken; and why hedge funds are "really, really bad" for the economy.

In a wide-ranging interview, the former CEO and chairman of The Coca-Cola Company, Neville Isdell, discusses his decision to take on the role of CEO after he had already retired from the company; the inherent challenges of working with a world-famous brand; and how Africa is the final frontier for business. In a sidebar to the interview, Coca-Cola's VP of Innovation, David Butler, describes the wide variety of global initiatives Coca-Cola is undertaking to make Isdell's vision of 'Connected Capitalism' a reality.

The 'founding mother' of the organic, locally-grown and slow-food movements describes the roots of her vision and the importance of teaching young children how to eat. She describes how she created a new model for fine dining that took the best elements from intimidating French restaurants and relaxed, 'cheap and cheerful' restaurants to create a welcoming environment with top-calibre service. She also describes how her food philosophy evolved, beginning with the teachings of Maria Montessori and the importance of educating all five of the senses.

David Rock, founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute, believes that the secrets to high performance lie in our ability to master humankind's greatest asset: the brain. In this interview, he argues that the brain requires three things to function optimally: moderate stress, positive affect (i.e. emotion) and a good night's sleep. He also shows that workplace engagement and productivity are closely related to the brain's primal 'threat and reward' function, which has repercussions for manaaqgers.

Harvard Professor and Thinkers50 member Amy Edmondson introduces the concept of 'teaming' and discusses the critical importance of embracing it and adopting a mindset of 'execution as learning'. She defines teaming and also indicates the importance of continuous learning to effective teaming.

It's a fact of organizational life: some employees are more talented than others. Douglas Ready explains how to retain your 'high-potentials' (HiPos), who represent the top three-to- five per cent of your organization's workforce on two key dimensions: performance and living the company's values. He also discusses some of the downsides of being labeled a HiPo.

The former Medtronic CEO and current Professor of Management Practice at Harvard describes the importance of following your True North and explains why he refers to the past 10 years as "leadership's lost decade". He describes five types of leaders that often lose sight of their True North and get derailed. He also talks about the importance of leading an "integrated life" and shows that authentic leadership entails a transition from 'I' to 'we'.

In an interview, one of the epidemiologists who helped eradicate smallpox talks about taking on five current global threats on behalf of the Skoll Global Threats Fund: climate change, pandemics, water scarcity, nuclear proliferation and Middle East conflict. He describes his early career and what it taught him about hope and collaboration. While he argues that our system is inarguably "breaking at the seams," the good news is, he remains optimistic about finding solutions.

In this interview, the founder of the Linux operating system, which runs everything from Google to the New York Stock Exchange to Japan's high-speed rail system, describes his evolution from student hacker to the founder of open-source pioneer Linux. He touches on the unique merits of open collaboration, the perils of centralized vs. distributed environments, and why Linux is even more interesting from a social standpoint than from a technical standpoint. In the end, says Torvalds, the most important thing about open source is not any one ideology: it's that everybody can adapt it for their own personal needs and objectives.

In this interview, best-selling author and social media expert Charlene Li talks about the new openness and the implications for leaders everywhere. According to Li, these include embracing four objectives of openness: learn, dialog, support and innovate. She describes each in detail and shows that just as there is a continuum of openness for organizations, there is also a continuum of openness for leaders. She describes four 'openness archetypes' and the particular challenges faced by each, as well as the need for every organization to clearly define its 'sandbox'. In the end, she shows that leaders never really had total control over their customers and employees; what they have to give up now is the need for control.

In this interview, the director of Lincoln Centre's educational initiatives argues that what we think is what we see: most of us interpret new information in ways that bend toward our preconceptions and confirm them, and this tendancy shapes how we move through the world as individuals. Unfortunately, this tendency is magnified exponentially when we join together in groups. He provides several tools for avoiding such 'path dependence'-- including thinking inside the box and 'making room for awe' -- and explains why imagination is our greatest renewable resource.

In this interview, negotiations expert and author Doug Stone describes the ways in which difficult conversations threaten our identity. We all view ourselves a certain way, he says: 'I'm a hard worker' or 'I'm a caring boss' -- and the conversations that feel the most difficult for us are the ones that have the potential to threaten that self image. He shows that we make some systematic thinking errors when we are deciding whether to avoid or raise an issue with someone: we tend to focus on the costs of raising the issue and the benefits of avoiding it, but we don't think about the benefits of raising it and the costs of avoiding it. He goes on to describe how to reap these benefits via 'learning conversations', provides tools for dealing with difficult conversations, and advises on the best way to deliver difficult messages.

In this interview, the author argues that 'winner's brains' - the brains of highly successful individuals in a wide range of fields -- operate quite differently than the average brain. He describes the five 'brain power tools' that are characteristic of the winner's brain, including an 'opportunity radar' and a 'goal laser'. He also explains how we can all take better care of our brains throughout our lives and work toward developing a winner's brain.

In this interview from Rotman Magazine, the Wharton risk expert states that the hallmarks of the 21st century will likely be more and more unthinkable events, previously-unseen contexts, and pressure to react extremely quickly - even when we cannot predict the cascading impact of our actions. He explains the important role of 'creeping risks' and describes the three top risks for 2010, as outlined in his report for the World Economic Forum: underinvestment in infrastructure; fiscal crises; and chronic disease. In the end, he explains one of the key ironies of living in an interconnected world: that being selfish today means taking care of others.

Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Elinor Ostrom discusses the challenges posed by the world's common-pool resources (CPRs) and how to approach collective-action dilemmas. She presents seven 'design principles' for well-managed CPRs and talks about some of the key challenges to implementing them, explains what 'nested attributes' are and describing the benefits of collective management and 'polycentric' systems.

Arts Education champion and Stanford Professor Emeritus Elliot Eisner discusses how the Arts can inspire business and how we can continue to develop artistically throughout our lives. Unlike our brains, he says, our minds are not entirely given at birth: they are a form of cultural achievement. The kind of mind you develop is profoundly influenced by your experiences and learning opportunities, and as a result, artistry can be fostered by how we 'design' the environments we inhabit. Eisner argues that as we learn in and through the Arts, we become more qualitatively intelligent and our consciousness is affected in many ways: our senses are refined so that our ability to experience the world is made more complex and subtle; our imaginative capacities are promoted so that we can envision what we cannot actually see, taste, touch or hear; and we experience the world in new ways.

Each year in March, 800 delegates from 60 countries convene for the Skoll World Forum, a gathering of the world's leading social entrepreneurs organized by the Skoll Foundation. Prominent figures from the social, academic, finance, corporate and policy sectors engage for three days of debates, discussions and work sessions focused on scaling solutions to some of the world's most pressing issues. This article summarizes one of the panels, "Leadership for Change," which featured five prominent business leaders/social entrepreneurs: Hasbro's Chairman Alan Hassenfeld; Cisco's Senoir VP, Corporate Affairs, Tae Yoo; Amamex International's Founder and CEO, Fadi Ghandour; Pitney Bowes' past Executive Chairman Michael Critelli; and Intel's General Manager, Sustainability, William Swope. Each discusses their organization's approach to CSR, sample initiatives and leadership lessons.

In this May 2009 interview, Harvard Business School Professor and SSRN chairman Michael Jensen defines 'integrity', explains how it differs from morality and ethics, and argues that the effects of out-of-integrity behavior are significantly more damaging than most of us believe. He explains that people are not the only ones that can have integrity: objects and systems can have it too - indeed, they can only obtain maximum performance by maintaining integrity. He describes the distinction between the integrity of design, the integrity of implementation and the integrity of use. Reflecting on the 2008-09 finance crisis, the author says that putting the economic system back in order is deceptively simple: "people have to start honoring their word. If they do, trust will materialize almost instantly."

For years, Rotman School of Management Vice Dean Jim Fisher has been bringing Shakespeare's Henry V to business-school classrooms, and in this interview he explains why. He explains how, despite having the cards stacked squarely against him, Henry ends up with the outcome he wants. As he shows, this involves a recognition that with your authority, all you can do is get people to do the minimum necessary to keep their job: everything they give you over and above the minimum, they volunteer to do - every shred. Along the way he provides tips from bringing Henry's approach into the modern day workplace.

The 39th President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and co-founder of the Carter Center discusses his remarkable staying power as a thought leader. President Carter describes his early years, what led him into politics, his 62-year marriage to Rosalynn and the hopes he has for the Obama administration. He also touches on his unwavering dedication to achieving peace in the Middle East, his goals for the U.S. and the globe-spanning initiatives of the Carter Center.