Parag Khanna
Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute, leading global strategist, world traveler and best-selling author
Parag Khanna: Biography highlights
Dr. Parag Khanna is a visionary strategic futurist and bestselling author. He is the founder and managing partner of FutureMap, a boutique advisory firm that marries rigorous data analysis, sophisticated scenarios, and cutting-edge mapping to generate foresight for confident decision-making.
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Futurists
TED Speakers
Full biography of Parag Khanna
About Parag Khanna
A world-renowned authority on globalization, Dr. Khanna was named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century” and featured on WIRED’s “Smart List”. His analyses are regularly featured in influential media sources such as CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, BBC, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME, The Economist, Financial Times, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy.
Khanna is the leading forecaster of how our complex global system is rapidly evolving, making him highly sought after by the world’s most powerful corporations. He delivers data-rich visualizations that distill geopolitical, economic, and technological megatrends into a comprehensive picture of our rapidly changing world. Khanna’s presentations are tailored and detailed, embodying his deep expertise and firsthand experiences in more than 150 countries. All of his engagements deliver strategically insightful and actionable value.
Khanna has provided his expertise and foresight to over thirty governments, including serving as an advisor to the U.S. National Intelligence Council and on the Singapore government’s Committee on the Future Economy. He currently serves on the advisory boards of the UAE’s Ministry of Economy, Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), Geoquant, and Datarama, and previously on the Innovation Advisory Board of DBS Bank.
Khanna’s newest book is MOVE: The Forces That Are Uprooting Us and Will Shape Humanity’s Destiny (2021), a bold roadmap to harness the world’s talent pool and regenerate our societies and economies amidst today’s onslaught of disruptions.
His book The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict, and Culture in the 21st Century (2019) earned high praise from Larry Summers, Jim Rogers, and many other luminaries. It was called “dazzling” by Kirkus Reviews and hailed as “authoritative… a standard reference,” by the Financial Times, which named the book to its Summer Books of 2019 list.
Khanna is also the author of a definitive trilogy of books on the future of world order beginning with the bestsellers The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008) and How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance (2011), and concluding with Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization (2016). These books garnered accolades from many leading authorities, including Eric Schmidt, Chuck Hagel, Fareed Zakaria, Mark Mobius, Robert Kaplan, Kevin Kelly, Martin Sorrell, and Klaus Schwab. The New York Times Book Review hailed Khanna as “a foreign policy whiz kid.”
Khanna also authored two other books, Technocracy in America: Rise of the Info-State (2017) and Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging Human-Technology Civilization (2011) (co-authored with his wife Ayesha Khanna, CEO of ADDO AI). The former was strongly endorsed by notable intellectuals such as Tyler Cowen and Lawrence Lessig, and the latter was celebrated by Alvin Toffler, Peter Diamandis, Peter Schwartz, and others. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and received feature coverage in leading publications in all major countries of the world.
Khanna was a featured speaker at TED in 2016 and TED Global in 2009, with his talks garnering more than three million views online.
Before founding FutureMap, Khanna was a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the National University of Singapore, as well as a senior fellow at New America and the Brookings Institution. In 2007, he deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior geopolitical advisor to U.S. Special Operations Forces. He also worked at the World Economic Forum in Geneva and the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Dr. Khanna holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics, a Bachelor of Science in International Affairs, and a Master of Arts in Security Studies from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He speaks German, Hindi, French, Spanish and basic Arabic. He has traveled to more than 150 countries and been honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
Watch Parag in action
CBRE Capital Markets
US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation
“Parag is a brilliant, energetic, and mesmerizing speaker who carried the opening day at our recent symposium, the largest annual gathering of geospatial intelligence practitioners in the world. Our almost 4,000 attendees bring wide-ranging areas of expertise regarding myriad emerging technologies, including remote sensing, data analytics, and intelligence for national security. They were universally blown away by Parag’s talk, and the concepts he raised were grist for superb conversations and debates during the entirety of our event.”
Goldman Sachs Asset Management
“Parag brought a sophisticated and optimistic vision for the future of the world economy to our colleagues.”
Barclays
“Parag was a highly rated keynote speaker at our recent European conference. During a particularly challenging and volatile time in the markets, his speech focusing on the mega-trends shaping the macro environment offered a thought provoking and cutting edge perspective for our clients.”
SAS
“Parag’s keynote was exactly the macro view we needed to stimulate conversations on the intersection of financial services and emerging digital technologies. Very stimulating for our executives and clients.”
Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan
“Volatility has returned to global markets, but Dr. Khanna made a very persuasive case for the huge continued long-term opportunities in emerging markets, especially Asia. His presentation on the growing attractiveness of infrastructure as an asset class was first-rate.”
Clyde & Co.
“Clyde & Co. is rapidly expanding worldwide in vital industries such as insurance, transport and infrastructure. Parag provided a sharp and rapid-fire perspective on how these crucial sectors are evolving in a volatile world and mapped out pathways that benefited all our partners. Our collective view was: ‘Wow!'”
Financial Times Live
“Dr. Khanna’s opening keynote address at our recent foreign direct investment forum was engaging, insightful and stimulating for our diverse audience of senior decision makers from government and international corporations. His thought provoking perspectives set the scene perfectly for the day ahead.”
Campden Wealth Management
“Parag’s insight and analysis on the crucial role multi-generational families play in the world economy, and the range of investible assets that present great opportunities for the years ahead, provided Campden Wealth’s community with a stimulating and essential contribution to our North American Family Investment Conference.”
Baker & McKenzie
“Our partners and clients are seeking to understand and be confident in the face of Asia’s complex dynamics. Parag delivered the keynote address at our recent ASEAN Connections client forum in Singapore. He demonstrated a unique ability to simplify the complex and interlink geopolitical, economic and business concepts into engaging and informative discussion points, complete with the latest data and striking visuals.”
UPS
“UPS’s clients are looking at logistics and digital solutions on a global scale. Dr. Khanna’s concept of the ‘supply chain world’ and his detailed analysis of the current trends in globalization and obstacles to smoother integration was exactly what we were looking for.”
HSBC
“I’m pleased that Parag was able to speak at our Sustainable Financing Forum. We have received exceptional customer feedback. Customers and other attendees made special mention of the quality of the speakers, the depth and breadth of insights shared and relevance of the subject matter. Please extend my thanks to Parag for his valuable contribution and for sharing his insights with such clarity.”
Albemarle Corporation
“Dr. Khanna was a ‘home run’ at this year’s ECC Conference. His presentation on his original work in Connectography was a perfect fit for our conference theme of innovation. Parag was an excellent speaker with a unique presentation on taking a different perspective on world geography. His research and theories gave our conference some great insights on where we might best focus our efforts to insure sustainable future growth in global commerce.”
Investor AB (Sweden)
“Investor AB’s 100th anniversary celebration was a major milestone in one of Europe’s leading family firms. Dr. Khanna’s opening keynote speech was inspirational to our senior management and the heads of our many portfolio companies. His vision of the future is precisely what we believe all investors should focus on.”
Economic Club of Chicago
“Parag offered our members a knowledgeable and fascinating perspective on the ways in which an increasingly urban world will renegotiate the historical boundaries of our geopolitical landscape. The various visuals and extensive research he provided made for a fact-packed program that fully engaged everyone in the room.”
Parag's speaking topics
THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD: Global Trends and Scenarios
Like the 14th century Black Death, the coronavirus has caused profound worldwide loss of life, significant restructuring of trade patterns, major reordering of geopolitical relations, and substantial disruption to our daily lives. What radical changes lie ahead in the post-pandemic world?
The global economy will become much more regional than global. There will be a revival in manufacturing near-shoring to ensure a solid national industrial foundation in areas ranging from electronics to pharmaceuticals, all powered by accelerated robotic automation and 3D printing. A true North American Union including Canada and Mexico may emerge to reinforce a full continental resource base free of dependence on turbulent regions. Europe will gradually add a fiscal and banking union to its existing common currency, and subsidize strategic industries to boost its competitiveness against the US and Asia. Asians have entered into a massive Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) that covers more than one-third or global GDP, but Asians too will seek to diminish their dependency on China, pushing back on its Belt and Road Initiative much as the plague weakened the Mongols’ grip on the medieval Silk Roads. Supply chains will rapidly diversify towards a “make where you sell” model to avoid bottlenecks.
How will geopolitical and market competition play out in this new global scenario? Will decoupling between regions be followed by new areas of mutually beneficial cooperation? Drawing on his deep expertise in geopolitics and geoeconomics captured in his books The Second World and Connectography, his vast knowledge of Asia’s rising weight in the global system embodied in The Future is Asian, and his active consultations with the most important governments and companies, Parag Khanna maps out the future of global capital flows, infrastructure investments, supply chains, industrial policies, accelerating growth sectors, and other major drivers of the next world order.
THE FUTURE IS ASIAN: Billions of People, Trillions of Dollars
Even more than before the pandemic, Asia remains the world’s economic growth engine, representing more than half the world’s population and fifty percent of global GDP. China’s decades-long growth boom continues with its post-pandemic recovery and new five-year plan, as well as surging portfolio capital flows into its bond and equity markets. But the next Asian growth wave is also recovering momentum as South and Southeast Asian powerhouses from India to Indonesia attract record capital inflows and become the new epicenter of global supply chains, especially under the framework of the new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Global asset managers are also taking big stakes in the region given its lower valuations and privatization initiatives, while multinationals are expanding their presence to access the burgeoning youth consumer base. Despite economic and political friction, Western companies need far more diversified strategies for Asia’s many unique markets from China and Japan to ASEAN and India.
The decade ahead will also witness an acceleration of Asia going global. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and Belt and Road Initiative all embody how dozens of countries across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean are knitting themselves closer together through trade, investment, and infrastructure networks that provide vital capital and technology for many developing countries to modernize and serve as the next destinations for Western overseas expansion as well.
Having provided extensive guidance to Asia’s governments and companies in the finance, energy, infrastructure, real estate, and technology sectors, Parag Khanna gives audiences an insider’s view of the new geographies and platforms of growth in the world’s new center of gravity.
MOVE: The New War for Talent
The coronavirus imposed the strictest lockdown in history, yet all the forces that compel people to uproot themselves are accelerating: labor shortages, political upheaval, economic crises, technological disruption, and climate change. Humanity is voting with their feet: Prepare for a world with billions of people on the move. This applies especially to youth: More than four billion millennials and Gen-Z are willing to go anywhere in search of stability and opportunity. As mankind reaches a demographic plateau, those societies overcoming their xenophobic tendencies and recruiting the next generation of migrants, citizens, entrepreneurs, service workers, and taxpayers will be the winners of tomorrow. Where and how should you invest to get an edge in the new war for talent?
Based on his visionary new book MOVE, Parag Khanna explains which geographies are best prepared for today’s turbulence and what factors are most crucial to attract a new generation of remote workers and mobile professionals. Dr. Khanna also includes the latest insights from FutureMap’s pioneering Climate Oases practice that applies big data models to forecast the cities best adapting to today’s complexity to become the innovation hubs of the future.
Australia's Asianizing Society
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The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict & Culture in the 21st Century
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Where will you live in 2050?
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Time for an ASEAN Dream
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Corporate America has a China problem
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Geotechnology and Global Change
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Supply Chain Global Governance
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The End of the Nation-State?
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Against Growth Market Pessimism
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“Business speakers have an impossible challenge to advise, inspire and keep their audience at the edge of their seats. In looking for the right speaker, we have the added pressure to ensure our clients walk away with value for the time they set aside to listen. Parag’s presentation was thought provoking and stimulating for our sophisticated clients.”