VIJAY V. VAITHEESWARAN is an award-winning journalist, author, and public speaker. The Financial Times recently proclaimed him to be “a writer to whom it is worth paying attention.”

Vijay is currently Economist magazine’s China Business & Finance Editor. He joined the editorial staff in 1992 as its London-based Latin America correspondent, and opened the magazine's first regional bureau in Mexico City. From 1998 to 2006, he covered the politics, economics, business and technology of energy and the environment. From 2007 to 2011 his portfolio encompassed innovation, global health, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

His new book on the future of global innovation, published by Harper Collins, is “Need, Speed and Greed: How the New Rules of Innovation Can Transform Businesses, Propel Nations to Greatness, and Tame the World's Most Wicked Problems". Kirkus Reviews has called it “the perfect primer for the postindustrial age.”

Vijay is a life member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an advisor on sustainability and innovation to the World Economic Forum, and a regular speaker at the Clinton Global Initiative. He has taught at NYU’s Stern Business School, and his commentaries have appeared on NPR and the BBC, in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

He has had the honor of addressing groups ranging from the US National Governors’ Association and the UN General Assembly to the Technology, Entertainment & Design (TED), Aspen Ideas Festival, and AAAS conferences. He also serves as chairman of the Economist's provocative series of conferences on innovation known as the Ideas Economy.