Applying the logic of professional gambling to leadership might not strike you as obvious, but Rasmus Andersen is no ordinary thinker. Currently running two football teams with the assistance of data and machine learning, he is also a provocative thinker on human performance. When he became curious about why certain towns and cities produced so many top athletes, he decided to find out himself, venturing from Africa to Korea, in search of the secrets of talent clusters. Those experiences became his bestselling book, ‘The Goldmine Effect’. More recently, in ‘Hunger in Paradise’, he explored why success can be the undoing of companies, even at the peak of their powers. We met up for a coffee in London to talk about what might really drive talent and high performance in the 21st century.

Manoj Narang is one of the world’s leading thinkers, and provocateurs, when it comes to the future of investing. A proponent of high frequency trading, he previously founded Tradeworx before setting up electronic trading and asset manager Mana Partners, with a $1 billion under management. What makes Mana interesting, especially for my research on algorithmic leadership, is Manoj’s vision for tomorrow’s investment manager, is super smart humans augmented by smart AI. When I caught up with him in NYC, he gave me a master class in the secret structures of the investment markets, and how they will be shaped and influenced by machine learning and algorithms.

Yossi Ghinsberg is a true adventurer. Although best known for his story of survival when he was lost in an uncharted part of the Bolivian Amazon jungle for three weeks in 1981, he has since led a life of inspiration, motivation and raising awareness for humanitarian causes. His bestselling book, ‘Jungle’, was recently released as a major motion picture starring Daniel Radcliffe. Over a cup of coffee we chatted about life, the universe, and the magic that happens when you find yourself off the beaten track.

One of the hardest things for any algorithmic leader is knowing when do nothing at all. This is not an entirely new dilemma. Test pilots in the early days of the space program, struggled with the idea of not having manual controls - even when their own interventions led to deadly mistakes. So just when do humans make good decisions? To get to the bottom of that, I chatted with Jason Collins, a behavioral economist, who has written extensively on these ideas at the Behavioral Scientist, and currently runs the data science team at a major financial regulator. He previously co-led PwC Australia's behavioral economics practice.

Peter Sheahan is one of the smartest people I know, and the perfect choice for our first podcast guest of 2018. An expert on business transformation, he runs Karrikins Group with staff in more than 23 cities across seven countries. He is the author of seven bestselling books, including the recently released ‘Matter: Move Beyond the Competition, Create More Value, and Become the Obvious Choice’. When our paths crossed again recently, we caught up over a meal and spent some time debating recent market moves by players like Amazon and CVS, and what it really takes for established companies to fundamentally reinvent themselves.