Accelerated Minds

What draws some people to big risky ideas that might someday change the world, and what compels them to keep trying, again and again, even after repeated failures and at great personal expense?

Why are some people compelled to take big risks on big ideas, attempting to change a market or, indeed, the world in ways that others find delusional? And why do they keep trying, again and again, often after repeated failures and at great personal expense? Neil Seeman is one of those people: an internet entrepreneur steeped in North American start-up culture. He is also the son of one of Canada's most important brain scientists. Drawing on his own business experience and his father's research into the brain's processing of risk and reward, Seeman explains the entrepreneurial mindset-the world's primary wealth creation engine-is in fact a form of addiction. The highs experienced by individuals when they are solving problems or making breakthroughs are so enormously generative and exciting, and the lows so tormenting and debilitating, that they live on an unsustainable hamster wheel of constant striving and often wind up destroying the very things that they helped create. With compassion and deep insight, he suggests ways in which the vital energies of the entrepreneurial class can be directed in A more constructive and sustainable manner.

Neil Seeman is a Canadian writer, Internet entrepreneur and mental health advocate. At the University of Toronto, he teaches at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and is a senior fellow in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME), The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Massey College, and the Investigative Journalism Bureau. Neil is a regular contributor to Nikkei Asia,The Toronto Star, and Healthcare Quarterly. He has published his research on mental health topics in Nature, Synapse, and in other leading academic journals. He is the co-author of three books on mental health, including: Obesity and the Limits of Shame, which was a finalist for the Donner Book Prize and was selected as an “outstanding” title by the University Press Books Committee. Neil is a graduate of the University of Toronto Law School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.