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REMEMBER THAT JUNIOR HIGH TEACHER OR
college professor who made you want to know
more about … everything? Fareed Zakaria, 49, is
that kind of contagious polymath, managing to
bring serious topics alive for a large audience
in print and on television. As a columnist for
Time
and the
Washington Post
,
a bestselling
author and the host of his own CNN show,
“
Fareed Zakaria GPS,” he can talk about solar
energy technology, German economic policy and
sectarian violence in theMiddle East with equal facility and vigor.
No ma er the subject, however, the Harvard- and Yale-educated
Mumbai-born Zakaria almost always ends up talking about the
importance of innovation.Whether inbooks like
The Post-American
World
or on his show, Zakaria is preoccupied with what makes the
next big thing happen. He spends a great deal of time exploring
where innovation comes from, looking hard at the countries, indi-
viduals and industries that become dynamos of the new guard.
In the process, Zakaria has discovered that true innovation isn’t
merely the product of a great idea, but a ripple that tends to spread
out in unforeseen ways. For instance, in talking with Len Baker—
whom he calls “one of the founding fathers of the Silicon Valley
venture capital industry”—he learned that although Isaac Merri
Singer invented the first commercially successful sewingmachine,
the more profound effects came from Singer’s selling it to women
(
demonstrating that they could indeed operatemachinery), creating
the installment plan and introducing the concept of the trade-in.
Real innovation changes not only industries, but also the world.
You can’t get to the end of what Zakaria knows, much less what
he’s interested in. Still, resolving to do our best, we gave him a call.
THE
HEMI
Q&A:
FAREED ZAKARIA
BRAINMAN
From top, Zakaria
interviewing Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao;
chatting with South
African President
Jacob Zuma; his
updated bestseller;
posing with wife
Paula Throckmorton
Zakaria and daughter
Lila last year
