Chetan Dube is the cool math professor you always wished you had at college. Impeccably attired and capable of switching between anecdotes about a childhood spent in New Delhi, Paris and London with deep dive explanations of probabilistic vs deterministic neural networks - he is one of the most interesting personalities in the emerging world of AI and cognitive computing. After founding his company IPsoft, he developed Amelia, a “virtual service-desk employee”, that understands the semantics of language, and can solve business process queries just like a human being. Over coffee in his office in New York, we spoke about the impact of AI on the design of companies, and in particular, the rise of the cognitive enterprise, in which software platforms will be able to understand, learn and anticipate customer needs, even before they know them.

Adam Alter is the author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave’, which examines how the world shape our thoughts and feelings beyond our control. I met up with him at NYU Stern, where he is an Associate Professor of Marketing with an affiliated appointment in the New York University Psychology Department. We spoke about his research on judgment and decision-making and social psychology, as well as his new book, which asks why so many people today are addicted to so many behaviors, from incessant smart phone and internet usage to video game playing and online shopping.

One day Rob Lilwall, an ordinary geography high-school teacher, decided to drop everything to cycle from Siberia to London via China, Australia and Afghanistan. The journey took 3 years, covering over 50,000 km. He didn’t stop there. Soon after, he attempted another trip from Mongolia to Hong Kong. 5,000 km. In winter. On foot. An adventurer, author and motivator - Rob and I caught up to talk about overcoming obstacles, the call to adventure, and how to survive being chased by bandits in Papua New Guinea.

Siimon Reynolds - a successful entrepreneur, an award winning author and speaker and now a leading high performance coach for CEO's and entrepreneurs, is also one of my good friends. After becoming a Creative Director of a top advertising agency at just age 21, Siimon went on to win almost every major advertising award for creativity in the world, including the Gold Lion at Cannes, TV Commercial Of The Year, Magazine Ad Of The Year, Newspaper Ad Of The Year, and Agency Of The Year twice. Catching up at his home in LA, we spoke, strangely enough, not just about what it takes to achieve success - but more importantly, about what leaders can learn from failure - based on his most recent bestselling book, ‘Why People Fail’.

Geoff Colvin is the author of the bestselling book, ‘Humans Are Underrated’, which outlines the capabilities that will keep human beings from being made utterly obsolete by tomorrow’s robots, algorithms and machine intelligences. A longtime editor and columnist for Fortune, Geoff is also the author of ‘The Upside of the Downturn’, ‘Angel Customers & Demon Customers’, and ‘Talent is Overrated’. We spoke about the rising influence of AI, the skills leaders will need to survive them, and the challenges of integrating across traditional company silos to deliver on the kinds of innovative experiences that customers now demand.