Matt McFadyen was youngest Australian to ever reach the North Pole. Since then, he has become a seasoned sailor and polar adventurer - leading a number of record-breaking expeditions both on some of the most extreme environments on the planet, as well as through virtual simulation with other business leaders. Thankfully it was in the relative safety of the Soho Grand Hotel over coffee and breakfast, that we caught up to talk about surviving crisis, how to build high performing teams, and understanding the true meaning of failure.

Dan Gregory, a behavioural researcher & strategist, is the author of ‘Selfish, Scared and Stupid: Stop Fighting Human Nature And Increase Your Performance, Engagement And Influence’. He studies behaviour and belief systems, in other words, the things that make us buy and the things that make us buy in. In this fast paced discussion on human behaviour, we spoke about the power of identity, why design is more powerful than motivation or discipline, preventing ‘failure’ in brand or product interaction, and the importance of cultivating cognitive agility.

Luke Williams is the Executive Director of Entrepreneurship and the founder of the W.R. Berkley Innovation Lab at NYU Stern. He is also a fellow Australian. We met some years ago when we were both speaking at a digital conference in Norway where he was talking about his book, Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business. Having previous worked at frog design, Luke is also a profilic inventor, with over 30 US patents and more than 100 products to his name. Catching up over coffee in the lobby of the new Edition Hotel in NYC, we chatted about the challenges of leading disruptive innovation, the dangers of aspiring innovators trying to mimic the personality traits of Steve Jobs, and why every company should be building a portfolio of unconventional ideas.

I met Sean when we both in Tokyo speaking at an intimate summit for banking executives. As an information junkie myself, I was fascinated by the company he co-founded, Quid, which offered analysts and decision makers a visual platform for seeing patterns in complex data. Not surprisingly, Sean’s background is also a nexus of complexity. He is a physicist, decathlete, political advisor, and a TED fellow. Sean studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he received a PhD for his research on the mathematical patterns that underlie modern war. In our conversation we talked about the power laws behind violence and insurgency, what Kasparov learnt from his infamous chess defeat by Big Blue, the merits of creative exploration through visualization and the art of defining the 21st century concept of manliness.