Rolf Dobelli Profile Picture

Keynote SpeakerRolf Dobelli

Novelist, non-fiction writer and entrepreneur, author The Art of Thinking Clearly, The Art of the Good Life & Stop Reading the News

Rolf Dobelli (born in 1966) received his MBA and PhD in philosophy from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is a serial entrepreneur, thinker and writer. He co-founded getAbstract. He also founded WORLD.MINDS, a community of some of the world’s most distinguished thinkers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, including Nobel... Read more

Biography

Rolf Dobelli (born in 1966) received his MBA and PhD in philosophy from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is a serial entrepreneur, thinker and writer. He co-founded getAbstract. He also founded WORLD.MINDS, a community of some of the world’s most distinguished thinkers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs, including Nobel prize winner Joe Stiglitz, Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), Henry Kissinger, historian Niall Ferguson, philosopher Daniel Dennett, Henry Kravis, General David Petraeus and many others. He regularly writes for Europe’s most esteemed newspapers, including Germany’s Die Zeit, FAZ („Germany’s New York Times“), NZZ, Die WELT, and Switzerland’s Sonntagszeitung. From 2003 until 2008, Dobelli hosted a weekly television show about books and business topics on Bloomberg Television Germany. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, POLICITO, Financial Times, Harvard Management Update and many other U.S. and European business publications.

Dobelli is best known as the author of The Art of Thinking Clearly, an instant success which spent 30 weeks in the number one spot on Germany’s Der Spiegel bestseller list and was the most popular non-fiction book for the entire 2012. He is also known for his book The Art of the Good Life, which was the most sold non-fiction book in Japan by a non-Japanese author in 2019. His books have reached the bestseller lists in Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, Ireland, India, Korea, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. Dobelli is member of edge.org, The Royal Society of Arts and PEN and serves on the boards of The Stern Stewart Institute and of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce. Besides the non-fiction works, he has written seven novels published by Diogenes. Critics and readers praise Dobelli as “a new voice in German fiction” and one of the few fiction writers who thoroughly understands the business world, from both an academic and a practical point of view. Rolf Dobelli does not consume news, with the exception of the magazines The New Yorker, Foreign Affairs, Science and Nature — hence his book Stop Reading the News.

Popular Talks by Rolf Dobelli

  • The Art of Thinking Clearly
  • The Art of the Good Life: How to detect and avoid thinking errors
  • Stop Reading the News
  • How to improve the quality of your decisions
  • How to get rid of toxic emotions
  • Transforming Your Thinking
  • Decision Making