145 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
American executive who served as CEO of Procter & Gamble twice (2000–09, 2013–16) — transforming it through outsourced innovation (Connect+Develop), brand portfolio rationalization, and customer insight — and who co-authored Playing to Win with Roger Martin.
American computer scientist who invented object-oriented programming, the Dynabook concept (the first laptop/tablet vision), and Smalltalk at Xerox PARC — one of the most visionary computer scientists in history, whose ideas about personal computing and education shaped the next 50 years of the field.
Sam Mendes's 1999 film depicting the suburban crisis of Lester Burnham — an American man's midlife revolt against his hollow suburban existence — winning five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director — one of the defining cultural statements of American suburban alienation.
American growth executive and investor who ran growth at Uber, is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, and is the author of The Cold Start Problem — the definitive book on network effects and how to launch products that depend on them.
American author who won the Pulitzer Prize for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) — a work of intense, microscopic observation of nature — and who wrote The Writing Life (1989), one of the most beloved accounts of the writing process and the demands of creative work.
American professional poker player turned decision consultant and author — who won the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions (2004) and wrote Thinking in Bets and Quit — applying poker's probabilistic thinking to business and personal decision-making.
American astrologer who wrote 36 Faces — the most comprehensive study of the decans (the three 10-degree faces of each zodiac sign) in modern astrology — and who practices and teaches traditional astrology with an emphasis on mythological depth.
American medieval historian at Loyola University Chicago who pioneered the history of emotions (emotional communities) and wrote A Short History of the Middle Ages — a widely used introductory textbook.
American entrepreneur and venture capitalist who co-founded Opsware (sold to HP for $1.6B) and co-founded Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with Marc Andreessen — author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, the most widely read management book for startup founders.
American NDE experiencer whose account Embraced by the Light (1992) was the first NDE book to reach #1 on the New York Times bestseller list — describing her detailed experience of the afterlife following her 1973 NDE during a hysterectomy.
American football coach turned business executive and coach who became the most important executive coach in Silicon Valley history — coaching Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, and many others — serving as a board member and advisor while demanding no payment.
American entrepreneur who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen — building it into the world's most valuable company through Windows and Office — and who became one of the world's most influential philanthropists through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, focusing on global health, education, and climate.
American executive who was Chief Creative Officer at Electronic Arts (1982–2008) — helping build it into one of the world's largest video game companies — and subsequently became a partner at Kleiner Perkins, investing in gaming, education, and consumer technology.
Mel Brooks's 1974 satirical Western — featuring a Black sheriff (Cleavon Little) appointed to a racist frontier town — which uses Western genre conventions to satirize American racism and Hollywood's erasure of race from the Western genre.
American technologist who co-founded Snap Inc. with Evan Spiegel and Reggie Brown at Stanford — serving as CTO — building the technical infrastructure for Snapchat's ephemeral messaging, Stories, and Spectacles hardware products.
American technologist who co-created Google Maps, co-founded FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook), served as Facebook CTO, became Salesforce co-CEO, chaired Twitter's board during the Musk acquisition, and co-founded Sierra (enterprise AI) — one of the most technically decorated executives in Silicon Valley.
American growth practitioner who was VP of Growth at HubSpot and co-founded Reforge — the most rigorous professional development program for senior product and growth leaders — known for frameworks on growth loops, retention, and product-market fit.
American entrepreneur who co-founded Airbnb with Joe Gebbia and Nathan Blecharczyk — building it from renting air mattresses in an apartment to the world's largest accommodation platform — and who rebuilt the company post-COVID by becoming deeply product-focused and re-centering on founders' instincts over professional management.
American spiritual teacher who developed 'The Work' — a four-question self-inquiry method for questioning stressful thoughts — after a profound awakening experience while staying in a halfway house. Her method is: Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought?
The Central Intelligence Agency — the primary US foreign intelligence service created in 1947 — which funded 20+ years of parapsychology research (Stargate, Grill Flame, Center Lane) based on evidence from the SRI remote viewing program that anomalous cognition might provide intelligence value.
American historian at Georgetown who wrote The Evolution of Civilizations and Tragedy and Hope — the latter an account of the Anglo-American financial network's role in 20th century history — who was Bill Clinton's mentor at Georgetown and became a conspiracy theory touchstone for his descriptions of elite networks.
American Jungian analyst who translated Richard Wilhelm's German I Ching into English — producing the Wilhelm/Baynes version that became the standard English text for half a century — and who was an important bridge between Zurich Jungian psychology and the English-speaking world.
American growth executive who led growth at Grubhub (helped grow it from $1M to $1B in revenue), Eventbrite, Pinterest, and served as CPO at Reforge — known for frameworks on marketplace growth, retention, and building growth teams.
American researcher who worked on the symbolic dimensions of colour — connected to the broader circle of Jungian-influenced artists and researchers in the early 20th century who explored the psychological meaning of visual imagery.
American conservative activist and media personality who founded Turning Point USA — a conservative campus organization — and who hosts the Charlie Kirk Show podcast, becoming one of the most prominent voices in American right-wing youth politics.
American professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business who wrote Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments with his brother Dan Heath — translating academic research on cognition, decision-making, and persuasion into practical frameworks for business.
Tibetan Buddhist teacher who escaped Tibet in 1959 and became one of the most influential — and controversial — Buddhist teachers in the West, founding Naropa University and the Shambhala movement while becoming famous for heavy drinking, sexual relationships with students, and unconventional methods.
American statesman and general who served as National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, and 65th Secretary of State — the first Black American to hold the top three civilian national security positions — known for the Powell Doctrine.
American software developer and political blogger who wrote under the name Mencius Moldbug — developing neoreactionary (NRx) political theory arguing that democracy is a failing system, that modern Western institutions are controlled by the 'Cathedral' (university-media complex), and that monarchy is preferable to democracy.
American historical geographer at Syracuse who wrote The Shaping of America — a four-volume historical geography of the United States tracing how geography, colonization, and settlement produced the distinctive American regional landscapes — one of the most comprehensive geographical accounts of American development.
American author and co-founder of Thinkwell (educational publisher) who co-wrote Made to Stick, Switch, Decisive, and The Power of Moments with his brother Chip Heath — also wrote Upstream (2020) alone, about solving problems at their source rather than reacting downstream.
American entrepreneur and writer who co-founded Every — a bundle of newsletters about AI and business — and who has written extensively about AI tools, productivity, and the future of knowledge work, becoming one of the most widely read AI thinkers in the startup world.
American technology executive who served as VP of Operations at OpenAI and co-founded Anthropic with her brother Dario — serving as President — responsible for building the operations, go-to-market, and business infrastructure that supports Anthropic's frontier AI research.
American NDE experiencer whose three lightning-strike NDEs are among the most dramatic documented — Saved by the Light, At Peace in the Light — and who became a hospice volunteer, spending thousands of hours with the dying after his experiences.
American chess International Master who is Chief Chess Officer (CCO) at Chess.com — responsible for the chess product, community, and streaming content — known for his role in growing Chess.com into the world's largest online chess platform.
American brand naming consultant who founded Lexicon Branding — the firm that named BlackBerry, Pentium, Swiffer, Febreze, OnStar, and Dasani — considered one of the most successful naming consultants in history.
American technology journalist who was the personal technology columnist for the New York Times (2000–2013) and subsequently Yahoo Tech — known for accessible, consumer-focused technology reviews — author of numerous Missing Manual books on Apple products.
American venture capitalist at Greylock Partners who led investments in Facebook, LinkedIn, Pandora, and Tumblr — known for early consumer internet investing at Greylock.
American entrepreneur who co-founded HubSpot with Brian Halligan — the inbound marketing and CRM platform — serving as CTO — and who created HubSpot's famous Culture Code (a 128-slide document defining company values) that became a model for tech company culture transparency.
American environmental scientist and systems thinker who co-authored The Limits to Growth (1972) and wrote Thinking in Systems (published posthumously 2008) — the most accessible introduction to systems thinking — who spent her career analyzing complex systems from global ecology to local agriculture.
American inventor and engineer who invented the computer mouse, developed hypertext and groupware, created the GUI concept, and gave 'The Mother of All Demos' (1968) — demonstrating word processing, video conferencing, hypertext, and collaborative real-time editing 40 years before they became mainstream.
American sociologist at Penn who coined the term WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) — author of The Protestant Establishment and Philadelphia Gentlemen — who studied the American ruling class and argued that its closure to meritocratic talent (Jews, Catholics, Blacks) caused its decline.
Ronald Spector's 1985 history of the American war against Japan (1941–1945) — covering the entire Pacific War from Pearl Harbor through the atomic bombings — one of the standard scholarly histories of the Pacific campaign.
American computer scientist and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios — who invented computer graphics algorithms (Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces, texture mapping) and led Pixar and later Disney Animation to produce 20+ consecutive critically and commercially successful films through a distinctive creative culture.
American Jungian analyst who wrote Ego and Archetype, The Anatomy of the Psyche, and The Christian Archetype — providing the most detailed Jungian analysis of Christian symbolism (particularly the Mass and Christ as a symbol of the Self) and the most precise formulation of the ego-Self relationship.
Growth executive who has led growth at SurveyMonkey, Miro, Amplitude, and Duolingo — and who is one of the most prominent voices on product-led growth (PLG) and self-serve SaaS business models — known for her frameworks on growth loops, monetization, and the transition from sales-led to product-led.
Cuban-American painter and physicist whose large-scale paintings combine poetic imagery with philosophical inquiry — he holds a PhD in applied physics from Cornell and an MFA — and whose work explores memory, loss, and meaning at the intersection of art and science.
American author and blogger who wrote Barking Up the Wrong Tree — synthesizing social science research on what actually makes people successful, happy, and productive, often finding that conventional wisdom is wrong.
American entrepreneur and author who wrote The Lean Startup — the most widely read book on new product development — and created the lean startup methodology: validated learning, build-measure-learn loops, minimum viable products, and pivots.
American technologist who was CEO of Novell, then CEO of Google (2001–11), Executive Chairman of Alphabet (2011–17) — widely credited with bringing adult supervision to Google's founders and scaling it into a global company — now active in AI policy and national security technology.
David Hackett Fischer's 2012 comparative history of the United States and New Zealand — arguing that Americans organize social life around freedom while New Zealanders organize it around fairness — and that these different founding values create distinctive national characters.
American Celtic punk band from Los Angeles — combining traditional Irish folk instruments with punk energy — known for songs about Irish immigration, drinking, social injustice, and the Celtic diaspora experience.
American mechanical engineer who developed Scientific Management — the first systematic theory of workplace productivity — through time-and-motion studies, task standardization, and performance-based pay — whose ideas transformed industrial production and were applied worldwide.
American astrologer who wrote Hermetica Triptycha and developed an original approach to Hermetic astrology — particularly focused on the Venus cycle and its symbolic dimensions — contributing to the revival of traditional astrological symbolism.
American product executive who created Google AdSense, led product at Facebook Ads and Square, and is known for his 'Ace' framework for hiring and evaluating product talent — one of the most influential voices on PM hiring and career development.
American private equity investor and Stanford Graduate School of Business professor — founder of Alpine Investors — known for a GSB lecture that went viral about living the life you want rather than conforming to external expectations.
American writer who invented cosmic horror — the genre in which the universe is governed by vast, indifferent, incomprehensible forces before which human civilization is utterly insignificant — creating the Cthulhu Mythos and a body of short fiction that transformed horror literature.
American Jungian analyst who developed Voice Dialogue with his wife Sidra Stone — a therapeutic method for giving voice to different subpersonalities or 'selves' within the psyche — extending the Jungian concept of the complex into a practical therapeutic technology.
American historian and prolific alternate history novelist who has a PhD in Byzantine history from UCLA — writing Guns of the South (what if the Confederacy received AK-47s), In the Balance (alien invasion during WWII), and Household Gods — the most prolific American alternate history author.
American historian who wrote A History of Latin America — one of the standard American university survey histories of Latin America — providing comprehensive coverage from pre-Columbian civilizations through the mid-20th century.
American scholar of comparative religion who wrote The World's Religions — the most widely used world religions textbook in the United States — and Forgotten Truth — arguing for the perennial philosophy's account of a common metaphysical hierarchy underlying all the world's major religious traditions.
American author and biochemistry professor who wrote more than 500 books — including the Foundation series, the Robot series, and the Three Laws of Robotics — and who is considered one of the Big Three of science fiction alongside Clarke and Heinlein.
American anthropologist at Macalester College who wrote Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World — arguing that Genghis Khan's empire created the modern world through free trade, meritocracy, religious tolerance, and the first global trade network.
American political theorist who wrote The Managerial Revolution, The Machiavellians, and The Suicide of the West — beginning as a Trotskyist intellectual and ending as a founding figure of National Review conservatism — whose managerial revolution thesis (that a new class of managers, not capitalists or workers, would come to control modern society) anticipated the professional-managerial class analysis.
American Jungian analyst who has written over a dozen accessible books on Jungian psychology — The Middle Passage, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, What Matters Most, Swamplands of the Soul — making analytical psychology accessible to a general educated audience.
American molecular biologist who co-discovered the double helix structure of DNA with Francis Crick (1953) — winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1962) — but who is also notorious for using Rosalind Franklin's data without credit and for making racist statements that ended his institutional career.
American entrepreneur who founded WP Engine (managed WordPress hosting) and Smart Bear Software — and who writes the ASmartBear blog — known for rigorous thinking about SaaS business models, pricing, and bootstrapping vs. VC funding.
American entrepreneur who founded Amazon in 1994 in a garage — building it from an online bookstore to the world's largest e-commerce platform, AWS (cloud computing), Whole Foods, Washington Post, and Blue Origin — one of the most consequential businessmen in history.
American entrepreneur who founded Trilogy Software in 1990 while at Stanford — a pioneering enterprise software company known for its aggressive sales culture — and who built a reputation for intense recruiting and training programs that influenced Silicon Valley culture.
American journalist who wrote the 'Inside' series — Inside Europe, Inside Asia, Inside Latin America, Inside USA, Inside Africa — providing accessible accounts of world regions for American audiences in the mid-20th century.
American computer scientist who coined the term 'artificial intelligence' (1955), organized the Dartmouth Workshop (1956) that launched AI as a research field, invented the Lisp programming language (1958), and developed the concept of time-sharing computing.
American playwright and screenwriter who wrote Doubt (Pulitzer Prize 2005), Moonstruck (Academy Award screenplay), and Danny and the Deep Blue Sea — whose work consistently explores moral certainty, doubt, and the mystery of other minds.
American marketing professor at Wharton who wrote Contagious: Why Things Catch On — the most cited popular book on viral marketing and social transmission — and Invisible Influence, The Catalyst, and Magic Words — studying why some products, ideas, and behaviors spread while others don't.
British-American actor who was one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of the first half of the 19th century — famous for his Iago, Richard III, and Shylock — and father of Edwin Booth (the most famous 19th century American Shakespearean) and John Wilkes Booth (Lincoln's assassin).
American publisher and author who founded Science to Sage magazine — exploring the intersection of science, consciousness, and sacred geometry — and who has worked to bridge alternative science and mainstream research.
American writer, performer, and Jungian scholar who is the daughter of comedian George Carlin — and who has processed her relationship to her father's legacy and her own psychological development through Jungian analysis, writing A Carlin Home Companion.
Chinese-American science fiction writer who wrote The Grace of Kings and The Wall of Storms (Dandelion Dynasty), translated Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem into English, and whose short fiction The Paper Menagerie won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards.
American philosopher who developed integral theory — a comprehensive meta-theory synthesizing psychology, spirituality, evolutionary biology, sociology, and postmodern theory through the AQAL framework (All Quadrants All Levels) — writing Spectrum of Consciousness, Sex Ecology Spirituality, A Brief History of Everything, and more than two dozen other books.
American entrepreneur who co-founded Instagram with Mike Krieger — serving as CEO — building it from a photo-sharing app into one of the most influential social media platforms in history; sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012 and left Facebook in 2018 over disagreements with Zuckerberg about editorial independence.
American computer scientist who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin — developing the PageRank algorithm that powered the world's best search engine — and who led Google as CEO (2011–15) and Alphabet as CEO (2015–19) while guiding the company's expansion into AI, autonomous vehicles, and life sciences.
American economist who served as Chief Economist of the World Bank, US Treasury Secretary, President of Harvard, and Director of the National Economic Council under Obama — one of the most prominent and controversial economists in public life.
American Jungian analyst who wrote The Cassandra Complex — a Jungian analysis of the archetypal pattern of the woman who speaks truth but is not believed — exploring the psychology of women who carry prophetic knowledge that the collective refuses to hear.
American scholar who worked at the intersection of Jungian psychology and performance — exploring the psychological dimensions of voice and dramatic interpretation — associated with the C.G. Jung Institute of Chicago.
American historian who wrote The Stream of American History and Whiskey Rebels — providing narrative popular histories of American political and social development from a traditional perspective.
American product manager and entrepreneur who spent 7 years at Airbnb as a product lead — and who left to create Lenny's Newsletter and Lenny's Podcast — building the most influential product management media brand in the tech industry.
Samuel Francis's posthumously published (2016) major theoretical work extending Burnham's managerial revolution thesis — arguing that American democracy is being displaced by a permanent managerial elite that uses cultural liberalism as its ideological weapon and Middle American workers as its principal opposition.
American astrologer who created the Rodden Rating system for birth data reliability — the standard by which astrological birth data is classified by accuracy — and maintained the most comprehensive database of celebrity birth data, now at Astro-Databank.
American author who founded HowStuffWorks.com (1998) — one of the most visited education websites in history — and who wrote Manna (2003), a science fiction novel about two possible futures for AI and automation: one dystopian (managed poverty) and one utopian (abundance).
American entrepreneur and convicted securities fraudster who became notorious in 2015 for raising the price of the antiparasitic drug Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — becoming the public face of pharmaceutical price gouging — and who was subsequently convicted of securities fraud.
Josh Safdie's 2024 film about Marty Reisman — a legendary American ping pong champion from the 1950s–60s — known for the Safdie brothers' characteristically intense character study approach applied to the world of competitive table tennis.
American social worker, political scientist, and management consultant who pioneered the concepts of power-sharing, participatory management, and conflict resolution in organizations — decades before they became mainstream — and who influenced Drucker and the entire human relations school of management.
American developer who co-created WordPress (the CMS powering 43% of the web) and founded Automattic — the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, Jetpack, and WooCommerce — one of the most successful fully distributed companies in history.
American amateur historian who compiled The Great Big Book of Horrible Things — a statistical ranking and analysis of history's worst atrocities by death toll — referenced in the History 102 context for his systematic approach to quantifying historical violence.
American Jungian analyst who wrote The Heroine's Journey — arguing that Joseph Campbell's hero's journey model describes a masculine developmental arc, and that women need a different model, a 'heroine's journey' that involves reconnecting with the abandoned feminine after striving for success in the masculine world.
American comedian, writer, and director who made The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights — one of the great American comedy filmmakers — who has EGOT status and is famous for Jewish comedy, genre parody, and transgressive humor.
American education policy expert and co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation — who wrote Disrupting Class (with Clayton Christensen) — arguing that online education represents a disruptive innovation that will transform K-12 schooling.
American economist and Harvard Business School professor — author of Competitive Strategy (1980) and Competitive Advantage (1985) — who created the Five Forces model, the value chain concept, and generic competitive strategies (cost leadership, differentiation, focus) — the most cited strategy scholar in history.
American executive who worked at Google, Facebook, and Lambda School and Quip — known for writing 'Give Away Your Legos' — her essay on the psychology of scaling organizations (what happens to individuals as a company grows and roles specialize away from generalists).
American cultural critic and historian who wrote The Reenchantment of the World, Coming to Our Senses, The Twilight of American Culture, and Why America Failed — arguing that American culture represents a uniquely hollow form of civilization built entirely on hustling, materialism, and the absence of inner life.
American product executive who is the longest-tenured non-founder at Facebook/Meta — leading product and growth in user experience for nearly 20 years — known for her role in Facebook's growth from 1 million to billions of users.
Executive Director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) — a nonprofit focused on AI alignment research — known for essays on rationality, motivation, and the urgency of AI alignment, and for the 'replacing guilt' framework for productivity and motivation.
American researcher and engineer who co-authored Accelerate — the definitive empirical study of software delivery performance — and developed the DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, MTTR, change failure rate) that became the standard for measuring engineering team performance.
American venture capitalist and technology investor — previously at Shasta Ventures — known for consumer and marketplace investments and for writing about product and growth.
American Jungian analyst who has worked extensively with dreams and contributed to the Jungian community through clinical practice and writing.
Retired US Army Major who was one of the military's primary remote viewing trainers in the STARGATE program — trained by Ingo Swann in Controlled Remote Viewing (CRV) — and who wrote The Essential Guide to Remote Viewing after leaving the military.
American Zen teacher who wrote The Three Pillars of Zen — the most influential introduction to Zen Buddhism for Western practitioners — and founded the Rochester Zen Center, one of the first major Zen training centers in America.
American Jungian analyst and Zen Buddhist practitioner who has written extensively on the intersection of Jungian psychology, Buddhism, and feminist psychology — The Self in Transformation, Women and Desire, The Resilient Spirit — and who has developed an integrative approach drawing on all three.
American singer (née Alice Richardson) who married Ananda Coomaraswamy and became a celebrated performer of Indian classical music in both India and the West — one of the first Westerners to master and perform Indian art music at a high level.
American author who wrote Fahrenheit 451 (the dystopia of book burning and television), The Martian Chronicles, and Something Wicked This Way Comes — known for poetic, lyrical science fiction that prioritized human emotion over technical detail.
Christopher Lasch's 1994 posthumously published argument that the American elite has abandoned the virtues of middle-class democracy — cosmopolitan, mobile, credentialed, and contemptuous of provincial working-class culture — inverting the concern about a revolt of the masses by pointing to the elite's abandonment of democratic norms.
American historian who wrote UFOs and the National Security State — the most comprehensive historical account of US government engagement with UFO phenomena during the Cold War — and who has become one of the most prominent advocates for UAP disclosure.
American management professor at UCLA Anderson School — author of Good Strategy Bad Strategy — who is considered the most rigorous academic writer on competitive strategy and who coined the concept of 'kernel of good strategy' (diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions).
American astrologer and writer who has written the Free Will Astrology column since the 1980s — a widely syndicated horoscope column known for its philosophical depth, literary references, and encouragement of self-determination — rejecting fatalistic astrology in favor of a more empowering, exploratory approach.
American author who won six Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards — known for The Chronicles of Amber (a 10-volume epic fantasy), Lord of Light, and This Immortal — blending mythology, philosophy, and science fiction into a distinctive lyrical style.
American Jungian analyst who wrote Psyche Speaks — a Jungian study of words as carriers of psychological meaning — and who has contributed to the Jungian understanding of language, particularly the psychological depths concealed in word etymology and the dream's use of language.
American physicist and biotech entrepreneur who wrote Loonshots — arguing that organizations naturally suppress radical innovation ('loonshots') the same way water freezes, and that the key leadership skill is managing the phase transition between the 'artists' (innovators) who pursue loonshots and the 'soldiers' (operators) who run the core business.
American entrepreneur who co-founded Loopt, ran Y Combinator as president (2014–19), and became CEO of OpenAI — releasing ChatGPT (2022) and GPT-4 — making him the most prominent face of the AI revolution and the central figure in debates about AI safety and deployment.
American entrepreneur who founded Walmart in 1962 — building it into the world's largest retailer — through relentless cost reduction, rural market focus, supply chain innovation, and a distinctive employee culture of autonomy with accountability.
American paleoconservative political theorist who wrote Leviathan and Its Enemies — extending Burnham's managerial revolution thesis to argue that the middle American working class faces permanent subjugation under an alliance of corporate and government managers — and who was fired from the Washington Times for his white nationalist views.
American community organizer from Chicago who wrote Rules for Radicals and Reveille for Radicals — the foundational texts of American left community organizing — whose tactical manual for power-building through local community organizations influenced generations of activists.
American entrepreneur who founded Price Club in 1976 — the first warehouse club retailer — whose model of selling bulk goods at slim margins to fee-paying members inspired Costco and Sam's Club, creating an entirely new retail category.
American convert to Orthodox Christianity who became a hieromonk in California — writing Nihilism, Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future, and The Soul After Death — a significant figure in American Orthodox intellectual life whose writings on the nihilist trajectory of Western thought influenced a generation of traditionalists.
American marketing executive and prolific author who wrote Tribes, Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, The Dip, and Linchpin — and who has published a blog post every day for 20+ years — known for contrarian, aphoristic takes on marketing, leadership, and creativity.
ML engineer and researcher known for work on ML systems, data validation, and AI reliability — UC Berkeley PhD — and for writing about practical ML engineering challenges.
American Jungian analyst who co-developed Voice Dialogue with her husband Hal Stone — contributing particularly to the understanding of the Inner Child, vulnerability in the psyche, and the psychology of the 'bonding pattern' — and whose work has influenced therapeutic approaches worldwide.
American consciousness researcher who studied remote viewing at the Monroe Institute and wrote Opening Minds — exploring the relationship between resonance, consciousness, and anomalous phenomena — and who has researched crop circle phenomena.
Mel Brooks's 1987 parody of Star Wars — featuring Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) and President Skroob — a satirical comedy that targets the Star Wars franchise and Hollywood science fiction.
American paranormal researcher who developed the concept of 'co-existing time lines' and 'time slips' — arguing that consciousness can access different time streams — and who has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and other alternative media platforms.
American science writer who wrote Where Good Ideas Come From, The Ghost Map, How We Got to Now, and Emergence — examining how innovation, cities, epidemiology, and complex systems work — one of the most popular science writers of the 21st century.
American Jungian analyst who has written on Jungian psychology from clinical and cultural perspectives — contributing to the ongoing development of analytical psychology as clinical practice.
American military historian and Texas historian who wrote Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans and This Kind of War (Korean War history) — considered the definitive popular historian of Texas.
Afghan-American writer who wrote Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes and The Invention of Yesterday — providing accessible accounts of Islamic world history and world history through a narrative lens.
American science fiction writer who has published only a handful of short stories and novellas — yet has won four Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, and four Locus Awards — known for philosophically rigorous explorations of language, consciousness, free will, and technology; his story Story of Your Life was adapted as Arrival (2016).
American mathematician who became the Unabomber — conducting a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed 3 and wounded 23 — and whose manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future argues that technological civilization has irrevocably destroyed human psychological freedom and that only its collapse can restore genuine human autonomy.
American information technologist who coined the terms 'hypertext' and 'hypermedia' (1963) and spent 50 years developing Project Xanadu — an idealized hypertext system with two-way links and automatic micropayment — whose concepts deeply influenced the World Wide Web (though the Web implemented them incompletely in his view).
American conservative news and media company founded by Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing — hosting The Ben Shapiro Show, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Candace Owens (formerly), and others — one of the dominant platforms of American conservative commentary in the 2020s.
American author who wrote the Hinges of History series — How the Irish Saved Civilization, The Gifts of the Jews, Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea — arguing that certain cultural traditions (Irish monks, ancient Israelites, Greeks) provided decisive gifts to Western civilization.
American author and podcaster who wrote The 4-Hour Workweek — the defining lifestyle entrepreneurship book — and hosts The Tim Ferriss Show — one of the most downloaded podcasts in history — known for deconstructing world-class performers' habits, routines, and tactics.
American entrepreneur and technologist who co-founded Athenahealth (health IT company), served as the second US Chief Technology Officer under President Obama, and co-founded Devoted Health — known for applying Silicon Valley product thinking to healthcare and government technology.
American author and IDEO partner who wrote The Art of Innovation and Creative Confidence (with his brother David Kelley) — capturing IDEO's design thinking philosophy for a general audience and making design thinking the dominant innovation methodology in business and education.
Technology executive who served as CEO of Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com) — referenced in the context of WordPress and Automattic's distributed company model.
The United States Army — which, alongside the CIA and DIA, funded the government's remote viewing research programs (Grill Flame, Center Lane, Stargate) — making it one of the three institutional clients for SRI's parapsychology research.
American statistician and management consultant who taught Japanese manufacturers quality control after WWII (helping create the Japanese economic miracle) and developed Total Quality Management — whose 14 Points and System of Profound Knowledge became the foundation of modern quality and continuous improvement movements.
American entrepreneur who co-founded Zapier — the no-code automation platform connecting 5,000+ web apps — building it into a profitable bootstrapped company reaching $140M+ ARR before taking any outside investment, one of the most successful bootstrapped SaaS companies in history.
American historian and philosopher who wrote The Story of Civilization (11 volumes, with Ariel Durant) — the most ambitious popular history of Western civilization ever attempted — and The Story of Philosophy, which introduced philosophy to millions.