Ideas & writing
Conversations that go beyond achievement.
Through Thought Economics, Vikas explores how people think, what drives them and what their experience reveals about business and society. Founded in 2007, the journal brings together more than 600 interviews across entrepreneurship, science, culture and public life.
Why it matters
A wider lens on leadership.
Thought Economics asks questions that reach beyond a single profession or industry. What shapes judgement? Where does creativity come from? What does responsibility mean when you have influence? These conversations inform Vikas's writing and the perspectives he brings to audiences and leaders.
Since 2007, Vikas has sat down with more than 600 of the people who actually shape the world: 20 Nobel laureates, presidents and prime ministers, astronauts, Olympic champions, Oscar winners and the founders of Virgin, Netflix, Slack, Blackstone and Bumble. Not to catalogue what they have achieved, but to find out how they think. Thought Economics is read in more than 120 countries, was a Webby Awards Official Honoree five years running, and its archive is held by the University of Salford.
Selected conversations · Thought Economics, since 2007
Selected conversations.
Sir Richard Branson on building Virgin. Daniel Kahneman on why we misjudge risk. Maya Angelou on why we write. Usain Bolt on what it takes to be the fastest person alive. Melinda French Gates on where philanthropy goes wrong. Jane Goodall on who we are. Read the interviews that interest you, or explore the full archive.
- Sir Richard BransonFounder of Virgin
- Melinda French GatesPhilanthropist and founder of Pivotal Ventures
- Maya AngelouPoet, author and civil rights activist
- Usain BoltOlympic sprint champion
- Daniel KahnemanPsychologist and Nobel laureate in economics
- Jane GoodallPrimatologist and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute
- Sir James DysonInventor and founder of Dyson
- Ratan TataIndustrialist and former Tata Group chairman
- Steve BallmerFormer Microsoft CEO
- Sheryl SandbergBusiness leader and founder of LeanIn.Org
- Mark CubanEntrepreneur, investor and television personality
- Matthew McConaugheyAcademy Award-winning actor and author
- Buzz AldrinApollo 11 astronaut
- Shaquille O’NealBasketball champion and entrepreneur
- Hans ZimmerFilm composer and music producer
- Muhammad YunusNobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Grameen Bank
- Yuval Noah HarariHistorian and author of Sapiens
- Malcolm GladwellAuthor of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers
- Arianna HuffingtonCo-founder of The Huffington Post and author
- Bear GryllsAdventurer, television presenter and author
Business leaders & founders
- Stephen A. SchwarzmanCo-founder, Blackstone
- N. R. Narayana MurthyCo-founder, Infosys
- Marc RandolphCo-founder and founding CEO, Netflix
- Whitney Wolfe HerdFounder, Bumble
- Jack WelchFormer CEO, General Electric
- Robin LiCo-founder, Baidu
- Jerry YangCo-founder, Yahoo!
- Steve CaseCo-founder, AOL
- Stewart ButterfieldCo-founder, Slack
- Ed CatmullCo-founder, Pixar
- Kiran Mazumdar-ShawFounder, Biocon
- Tory BurchFounder, Tory Burch
- Kevin O’LearyEntrepreneur, investor and Shark Tank personality
Interviewees, not endorsements. Some links open a themed article containing several interviews. Explore the full interview archive.
600+
in-depth interviews
20
Nobel laureates
120+
countries of readership
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Latest conversations
New on Thought Economics.
7 October 2026
Different, Not Wrong: A Conversation with Dave Plummer on Autism, Task Manager and Coding with AI
In this interview, I spoke to Dave Plummer, the Microsoft engineer who wrote Windows Task Manager, about growing up undiagnosed autistic, why Microsoft’s whiteboard interviews suited him, rebuilding…
Read the interview
5 October 2026
Is AI Conscious? Professor Susan Schneider on Why That’s the Wrong Question
In this interview, I spoke to Professor Susan Schneider, the philosopher who held NASA’s astrobiology chair, about why asking whether ChatGPT is conscious is a category mistake, how consciousness…
Read the interview
1 October 2026
Who Decides What a Country Is? Michael and Liam Bates on Sealand, Sovereignty and Belonging
In this interview, I spoke to Michael and Liam Bates of the Principality of Sealand, a wartime fort in the North Sea that Britain tried to cut off, mercenaries seized and a German diplomat came to…
Read the interview
29 September 2026
The Original Sin of Artificial Intimacy: A Conversation with Sherry Turkle on Chatbots, Empathy and Why We Have Abandoned Each Other
In this interview, I spoke to Sherry Turkle, the MIT psychologist who has spent forty years studying our relationships with machines, about her new book Artificial Intimacy: why a chatbot cannot be a…
Read the interview
28 September 2026
The End of Hand-Written Code: A Conversation with David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) on AI, Omarchy and the Future of Programming
In this interview, I spoke to David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of Ruby on Rails and co-owner of 37signals, about why he stopped writing code by hand, why AI is ending programmers’ monopoly on the…
Read the interview
23 September 2026
From Refugee to the US Cabinet: A Conversation with Carlos Gutierrez on Ambition, Trust and the American Dream
In this interview, I spoke to Carlos Gutierrez, former US Secretary of Commerce and the youngest chief executive in Kellogg’s history, about fleeing Cuba as a child, selling cereal from a van in…
Read the interview
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Books
In print.
Michael O'Mara Books, 2021
Thought Economics
Conversations with the Remarkable People Shaping Our Century
A distillation of interviews with nearly 100 of the most influential, interesting and impactful people in the world.
Buy on AmazonOn the book, Thought Economics
“Stimulating, intelligent and enjoyable discussions of the most important issues of our day.”
“From entrepreneurs to athletes, and world leaders to entertainers, this is a fascinating collection of interviews with some of the world's most influential individuals.”