Thinkers & Ideas

In Design Love In: How to Unleash the Most Powerful Force in Business, Marcus Buckingham argues that love—not engagement, satisfaction, or motivation—is the only feeling that reliably changes the behavior of employees and customers, and that it can be deliberately designed into business.
Buckingham is one of the world’s foremost researchers on human performance. He is a former senior vice president at Gallup turned New York Times–best-selling author, having written First, Break All the Rules. In his new book, he draws on decades of research to show that the relationship between experiences and outcomes is not linear—only experiences so positive that people describe them as “love” actually drive loyalty, productivity, and advocacy.
In his conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses why love is categorically different from engagement, the five feelings that make up a loving experience, three disciplines leaders can use to design love into their organizations, and why common practices like outsourcing and large spans of control are fundamentally unloving.
Key topics discussed:
01:16 | Why love is categorically different from engagement or satisfaction
04:43 | The nonlinear relationship between experiences and outcomes
08:24 | How experiences drive behaviors that drive outcomes
12:34 | Designing love in: the five feelings and three disciplines
16:00 | Can love be designed into products, not just experiences?
19:13 | The three disciplines: walk the stage, equip the people, sequence the scenes
27:39 | Spans of control and the one-to-12 rule
30:17 | The limits of artificial experience–making
Additional inspirations from Marcus Buckingham:
First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (Gallup Press, 2016)

In this special episode, Rich Lesser, BCG’s global chair, and Martin Reeves, former chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, reflect on the shocks and surprises that shaped the first half of the decade and what they reveal about the future. They explore the traits leaders need today: building trust, staying geopolitically aware, and adopting AI in a people-centered way.

In The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations, B. Joseph Pine II argues that an economic shift is underway, in which transformations—not commodities, goods, services, or experiences—will become the highest form of value creation.
Pine is an internationally acclaimed author, known for having coined the term “experience economy” in the 1990s. He works as a speaker and advisor to Fortune 500 companies. In his new book, he suggests that most companies compete by improving what they sell, while missing what customers actually want: to become different people.
In his conversation with Adam Job, senior director at the BCG Henderson Institute, Pine discusses the evolution of economic value creation, the North Star for transformation businesses, and how to scale from one to many transformation journeys.
Key topics discussed:
01:01 | The evolution of economic value creation
03:35 | How to get into the transformation business
10:35 | The North Star for transformation businesses
15:07 | Scaling beyond individual transformation journeys
16:46 | Different types of transformation journeys
20:37 | Making transformations last
24:12 | Taking the first step toward the transformation economy
Additional inspirations from B. Joseph Pine II:
The Experience Economy, With a New Preface by the Authors: Competing for Customer Time, Attention, and Money, co-authored by James H. Gilmore (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019)

In The Doom Loop: Why the World Economic Order Is Spiraling into Disorder, Eswar Prasad argues that we are caught in a destructive feedback loop between economics, domestic politics, and geopolitics.
Prasad is a professor of Trade Policy and Economics at Cornell University, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In his new book, he explores how globalization, international institutions, the rise of “middle power” countries, and technological innovations had the potential to promote shared prosperity—but instead are driving global instability.
In his conversation with Nikolaus Lang, global leader of the BCG Henderson Institute, he discusses the breakdown of the rule-based system, implications for trade policy in Europe and elsewhere, and the role AI plays in driving global instability.
Key topics discussed:
01:20 | The doom loop driving global instability
06:41 | The positive aspects of globalization and middle powers
12:02 | Implications for European trade policy
15:51 | The breakdown of the rule-based system
18:36 | The role of AI and other technologies in the doom loop
23:57 | Reasons for remaining optimistic
Additional inspirations from Eswar Prasad:
The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance (Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2023)

In The New Geography of Innovation: The Global Contest for Breakthrough Technologies, Mehran Gul examines how innovation works in different countries around the globe—diving deep into the ecosystems that produce great technology companies.
Gul is a writer and leading technology thinker, having served as the Lead for the Digital Transformation of Industries at the World Economic Forum. His book, which was nominated as a Financial Times best business book of 2025, he discusses why the United States remains at the world’s technological frontier, with only China being a true challenger.
In his conversation with Nikolaus Lang, Global Leader of the BCG Henderson Institute, he talks about how innovation ecosystems are converging, the role of statecraft in fostering innovation ecosystems, and the main forces that will shift the global innovation landscape in the coming decade.
Key topics discussed:
01:22 | Attributes of successful innovation ecosystems
06:57 | US vs. China talent pool
10:26 | What China gets right about innovation
13:20 | Why Europe lags behind on innovation
18:54 | The role of intentional statecraft in fostering innovation
23:31 | The convergence of innovation ecosystems around the globe
26:34 | Implications for businesses
28:56 | How the global innovation landscape will evolve in the next decade