WEBVTT 00:00:00.013 --> 00:00:03.856 Over the past six months, I've spent my time 00:00:03.856 --> 00:00:07.247 traveling. I think I've done 60,000 miles, 00:00:07.247 --> 00:00:10.169 but without leaving my desk. 00:00:10.169 --> 00:00:13.015 And the reason I can do that is because I'm actually two people. 00:00:13.015 --> 00:00:15.968 I look like one person but I'm two people. I'm Eddie who is here, 00:00:15.968 --> 00:00:20.369 and at the same time, my alter ego is a big green boxy 00:00:20.369 --> 00:00:24.049 avatar nicknamed Cyber Frank. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:24.049 --> 00:00:26.858 So that's what I spend my time doing. I'd like to start, 00:00:26.858 --> 00:00:29.920 if it's possible, with a test, because I do business stuff, 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:33.504 so it's important that we focus on outcomes. 00:00:33.504 --> 00:00:35.437 And then I struggled, because I was thinking to myself, 00:00:35.437 --> 00:00:37.905 "What should I talk? What should I do? It's a TED audience. 00:00:37.905 --> 00:00:40.713 It's got to be stretching. How am I going to make — ?" 00:00:40.713 --> 00:00:43.806 So I just hope I've got the level of difficulty right. 00:00:43.806 --> 00:00:45.870 So let's just walk our way through this. 00:00:45.870 --> 00:00:49.319 Please could you work this through with me? You can shout out the answer if you like. 00:00:49.319 --> 00:00:51.501 The question is, which of these horizontal lines is longer? 00:00:51.501 --> 00:00:52.647 The answer is? 00:00:52.647 --> 00:00:55.371 Audience: The same.Eddie Obeng: The same. 00:00:55.371 --> 00:00:57.118 No, they're not the same. (Laughter) 00:00:57.118 --> 00:01:00.747 They're not the same. The top one is 10 percent longer than the bottom one. 00:01:00.747 --> 00:01:04.056 So why did you tell me they were the same? Do you remember when we were kids at school, 00:01:04.056 --> 00:01:06.511 about that big, they played the same trick on us? 00:01:06.511 --> 00:01:08.848 It was to teach us parallax. Do you remember? 00:01:08.848 --> 00:01:11.995 And you got, you said, "It's the same!" And you got it wrong. 00:01:11.995 --> 00:01:15.831 You remember? And you learned the answer, and you've carried this answer in your head for 10, 20, 30, 40 years: 00:01:15.831 --> 00:01:19.711 The answer is the same. The answer is the same. So when you're asked what the lengths are, 00:01:19.711 --> 00:01:22.280 you say they're the same, but they're not the same, because I've changed it. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:22.280 --> 00:01:26.447 And this is what I'm trying to explain has happened to us in the 21st century. 00:01:26.447 --> 00:01:28.745 Somebody or something has changed the rules 00:01:28.745 --> 00:01:30.802 about how our world works. 00:01:30.802 --> 00:01:33.708 When I'm joking, I try and explain it happened at midnight, 00:01:33.708 --> 00:01:37.544 you see, while we were asleep, but it was midnight 15 years ago. Okay? 00:01:37.544 --> 00:01:40.159 You didn't notice it? But basically, what they do is, 00:01:40.159 --> 00:01:42.831 they switched all the rules round, so that the way to 00:01:42.831 --> 00:01:46.423 successfully run a business, an organization, or even a country, 00:01:46.423 --> 00:01:49.104 has been deleted, flipped, and it's a completely new 00:01:49.104 --> 00:01:53.384 — you think I'm joking, don't you — there's a completely new set of rules in operation. (Laughter) 00:01:53.384 --> 00:01:55.194 Did you notice that? I mean, you missed this one. 00:01:55.194 --> 00:01:57.029 You probably — No, you didn't. Okay. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:57.029 --> 00:02:01.371 My simple idea is that what's happened is, 00:02:01.371 --> 00:02:05.365 the real 21st century around us isn't so obvious to us, 00:02:05.365 --> 00:02:08.410 so instead we spend our time responding rationally 00:02:08.410 --> 00:02:11.583 to a world which we understand and recognize, 00:02:11.583 --> 00:02:14.002 but which no longer exists. 00:02:14.002 --> 00:02:16.211 You don't believe me, do you? Okay. (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:16.211 --> 00:02:21.115 So let me take you on a little journey of many of the things I don't understand. 00:02:21.115 --> 00:02:23.707 If you search Amazon for the word "creativity," 00:02:23.707 --> 00:02:26.074 you'll discover something like 90,000 books. 00:02:26.074 --> 00:02:28.878 If you go on Google and you look for "innovation + creativity," 00:02:28.878 --> 00:02:33.137 you get 30 million hits. If you add the word "consultants," it doubles to 60 million. (Laughter) 00:02:33.137 --> 00:02:36.322 Are you with me? And yet, statistically, what you discover 00:02:36.322 --> 00:02:39.307 is that about one in 100,000 ideas is found making money 00:02:39.307 --> 00:02:42.430 or delivering benefits two years after its inception. 00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:45.443 It makes no sense. Companies make their expensive executives 00:02:45.443 --> 00:02:48.003 spend ages carefully preparing forecasts and budgets 00:02:48.003 --> 00:02:52.063 which are obsolete or need changing before they can be published. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:52.063 --> 00:02:55.786 How is that possible? If you look at the visions we have, 00:02:55.786 --> 00:02:57.563 the visions of how we're going to change the world, 00:02:57.563 --> 00:03:00.188 the key thing is implementation. We have the vision. 00:03:00.188 --> 00:03:01.544 We've got to make it happen. 00:03:01.544 --> 00:03:04.536 We've spent decades professionalizing implementation. 00:03:04.536 --> 00:03:06.993 People are supposed to be good at making stuff happen. 00:03:06.993 --> 00:03:11.890 However, if I use as an example a family of five 00:03:11.890 --> 00:03:14.624 going on holiday, if you can imagine this, 00:03:14.624 --> 00:03:19.024 all the way from London all the way across to Hong Kong, 00:03:19.024 --> 00:03:22.933 what I want you to think about is their budget is only 3,000 pounds of expenses. 00:03:22.933 --> 00:03:26.064 What actually happens is, if I compare this to the average 00:03:26.064 --> 00:03:31.851 real project, average real successful project, 00:03:31.851 --> 00:03:36.077 the family actually end up in Makassar, South Sulawesi, 00:03:36.077 --> 00:03:39.094 at a cost of 4,000 pounds, 00:03:39.094 --> 00:03:41.799 whilst leaving two of the children behind. (Laughter) 00:03:41.799 --> 00:03:46.134 What I'm trying to explain to you is, there are things which don't make sense to us. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:46.134 --> 00:03:50.419 It gets even worse than that. Let me just walk you through this one. 00:03:50.419 --> 00:03:52.993 This is a quote, and I'll just pick words out of it. 00:03:52.993 --> 00:03:56.336 It says -- I'll put on the voice -- "In summary, your Majesty, 00:03:56.336 --> 00:03:59.842 the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity 00:03:59.842 --> 00:04:03.605 of the crisis was due to the lack of creativity 00:04:03.605 --> 00:04:07.003 and the number of bright minds," or something like that. 00:04:07.003 --> 00:04:10.811 This was a group of eminent economists apologizing to the Queen of England 00:04:10.811 --> 00:04:12.816 when she asked the question, 00:04:12.816 --> 00:04:15.755 "Why did no one tell us that the crisis was coming?" (Laughter) 00:04:15.755 --> 00:04:19.258 I'll never get my knighthood. I'll never get my knighthood. (Laughter) 00:04:19.258 --> 00:04:21.486 That's not the important point. The thing you have to remember is, 00:04:21.486 --> 00:04:24.948 these are eminent economists, some of the smartest people 00:04:24.948 --> 00:04:28.464 on the planet. Do you see the challenge? (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:28.464 --> 00:04:33.011 It's scary. My friend and mentor, Tim Brown of IDEO, 00:04:33.011 --> 00:04:36.913 he explains that design must get big, and he's right. 00:04:36.913 --> 00:04:39.532 He wisely explains this to us. He says design thinking 00:04:39.532 --> 00:04:41.834 must tackle big systems for the challenges we have. 00:04:41.834 --> 00:04:43.971 He's absolutely right. 00:04:43.971 --> 00:04:47.644 And then I ask myself, "Why was it ever small?" 00:04:47.644 --> 00:04:51.506 Isn't it weird? You know, if collaboration is so cool, 00:04:51.506 --> 00:04:53.639 is cross-functional working is so amazing, 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:58.865 why did we build these huge hierarchies? What's going on? 00:04:58.865 --> 00:05:03.146 You see, I think what's happened, perhaps, is that 00:05:03.146 --> 00:05:07.232 we've not noticed that change I described earlier. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:07.232 --> 00:05:10.010 What we do know is that the world has accelerated. 00:05:10.010 --> 00:05:12.332 Cyberspace moves everything at the speed of light. 00:05:12.332 --> 00:05:14.804 Technology accelerates things exponentially. 00:05:14.804 --> 00:05:16.966 So if this is now, and that's the past, 00:05:16.966 --> 00:05:18.336 and we start thinking about change, you know, 00:05:18.336 --> 00:05:20.907 all governments are seeking change, you're here seeking change, 00:05:20.907 --> 00:05:23.578 everybody's after change, it's really cool. (Laughter) 00:05:23.578 --> 00:05:28.021 So what happens is, we get this wonderful whooshing acceleration and change. 00:05:28.021 --> 00:05:32.117 The speed is accelerating. That's not the only thing. 00:05:32.117 --> 00:05:34.788 At the same time, as we've done that, we've done something really weird. 00:05:34.788 --> 00:05:37.437 We've doubled the population in 40 years, 00:05:37.437 --> 00:05:41.051 put half of them in cities, then connected them all up so they can interact. 00:05:41.051 --> 00:05:43.920 The density of the interaction of human beings is amazing. 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:48.772 There are charts which show all these movements of information. That density of information is amazing. 00:05:48.772 --> 00:05:50.406 And then we've done a third thing. 00:05:50.406 --> 00:05:52.401 you know, for those of you who have as an office 00:05:52.401 --> 00:05:57.870 a little desk underneath the stairs, and you say, well this is my little desk under the stairs, 00:05:57.870 --> 00:06:04.261 no! You are sitting at the headquarters of a global corporation if you're connected to the Internet. 00:06:04.261 --> 00:06:07.175 What's happened is, we've changed the scale. 00:06:07.175 --> 00:06:10.122 Size and scale are no longer the same. 00:06:10.122 --> 00:06:13.344 And then add to that, every time you tweet, 00:06:13.344 --> 00:06:16.134 over a third of your followers follow from a country 00:06:16.134 --> 00:06:19.042 which is not your own. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:19.042 --> 00:06:22.051 Global is the new scale. We know that. 00:06:22.051 --> 00:06:26.063 And so people say things like, "The world is now a turbulent place." Have you heard them saying things like that? 00:06:26.063 --> 00:06:28.824 And they use it as a metaphor. Have you come across this? NOTE Paragraph 00:06:28.824 --> 00:06:31.957 And they think it's a metaphor, but this is not a metaphor. 00:06:31.957 --> 00:06:35.174 It's reality. As a young engineering student, I remember 00:06:35.174 --> 00:06:39.165 going to a demonstration where they basically, 00:06:39.165 --> 00:06:41.576 the demonstrator did something quite intriguing. 00:06:41.576 --> 00:06:46.758 What he did was, he got a transparent pipe — have you seen this demonstration before? — 00:06:46.758 --> 00:06:50.174 he attached it to a tap. So effectively what you had was, 00:06:50.174 --> 00:06:53.349 you had a situation where — I'll try and draw the tap 00:06:53.349 --> 00:06:56.064 and the pipe, actually I'll skip the tap. The taps are hard. 00:06:56.064 --> 00:06:59.262 Okay? So I'll write the word "tap." Is that okay? It's a tap. (Laughter) 00:06:59.262 --> 00:07:03.064 Okay, so he attaches it to a transparent pipe, and he turns the water on. 00:07:03.064 --> 00:07:05.685 And he says, do you notice anything? And the water is whooshing down this pipe. 00:07:05.685 --> 00:07:08.806 I mean, this is not exciting stuff. Are you with me? 00:07:08.806 --> 00:07:12.924 So the water goes up. He turns it back down. Great. 00:07:12.924 --> 00:07:16.636 And he says, "Anything you notice?" No. Then he sticks a needle into the pipe, 00:07:16.636 --> 00:07:18.812 and he connects this to a container, and he fills 00:07:18.812 --> 00:07:22.133 the container up with green ink. You with me? 00:07:22.133 --> 00:07:25.923 So guess what happens? A thin green line comes out 00:07:25.923 --> 00:07:30.269 as it flows down the pipe. It's not that interesting. 00:07:30.269 --> 00:07:34.561 And then he turns the water up a bit, so it starts coming back in. And nothing changes. 00:07:34.561 --> 00:07:37.747 So he's changing the flow of the water, but it's just a boring green line. 00:07:37.747 --> 00:07:40.614 He adds some more. He adds some more. And then something weird happens. 00:07:40.614 --> 00:07:45.770 There's this little flicker, and then as he turns it ever so slightly more, 00:07:45.770 --> 00:07:48.745 the whole of that green line disappears, and instead 00:07:48.745 --> 00:07:52.105 there are these little sort of inky dust devils close to the needle. 00:07:52.105 --> 00:07:55.269 They're called eddies. Not me. And they're violently dispersing the ink 00:07:55.269 --> 00:07:58.953 so that it actually gets diluted out, and the color's gone. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:58.953 --> 00:08:02.966 What's happened in this world of pipe 00:08:02.966 --> 00:08:06.893 is somebody has flipped it. They've changed the rules from laminar to turbulent. 00:08:06.893 --> 00:08:10.574 All the rules are gone. In that environment, instantly, 00:08:10.574 --> 00:08:14.693 all the possibilities which turbulence brings are available, 00:08:14.693 --> 00:08:17.535 and it's not the same as laminar. 00:08:17.535 --> 00:08:22.493 And if we didn't have that green ink, you'd never notice. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:22.493 --> 00:08:25.790 And I think this is our challenge, because somebody 00:08:25.790 --> 00:08:29.894 has actually increased — and it's probably you guys with all your tech and stuff — 00:08:29.894 --> 00:08:33.875 the speed, the scale and the density of interaction. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:33.875 --> 00:08:35.574 Now how do we cope and deal with that? 00:08:35.574 --> 00:08:39.007 Well, we could just call it turbulence, or we could try and learn. 00:08:39.007 --> 00:08:44.105 Yes, learn, but I know you guys grew up in the days when 00:08:44.105 --> 00:08:46.909 there were actually these things called correct answers, 00:08:46.909 --> 00:08:50.070 because of the answer you gave me to the horizontal line puzzle, 00:08:50.070 --> 00:08:51.883 and you believe it will last forever. 00:08:51.883 --> 00:08:55.310 So I'll put a little line up here which represents learning, 00:08:55.310 --> 00:08:57.485 and that's how we used to do it. We could see things, 00:08:57.485 --> 00:08:59.998 understand them, take the time to put them into practice. 00:08:59.998 --> 00:09:03.847 Out here is the world. Now, what's happened to our pace 00:09:03.847 --> 00:09:07.092 of learning as the world has accelerated? Well, if you work 00:09:07.092 --> 00:09:09.638 for a corporation, you'll discover it's quite difficult to work 00:09:09.638 --> 00:09:12.584 on stuff which your boss doesn't approve of, isn't in the strategy, 00:09:12.584 --> 00:09:15.189 and anyway, you've got to go through your monthly meetings. 00:09:15.189 --> 00:09:20.557 If you work in an institution, one day you will get them to make that decision. 00:09:20.557 --> 00:09:23.292 And if you work in a market where people believe in cycles, 00:09:23.292 --> 00:09:25.679 it's even funnier, because you have to wait all the way 00:09:25.679 --> 00:09:29.302 for the cycle to fail before you go, "There's something wrong." You with me? 00:09:29.302 --> 00:09:34.854 So it's likely that the line, in terms of learning, is pretty flat. 00:09:34.854 --> 00:09:39.051 You with me? This point over here, the point at which 00:09:39.051 --> 00:09:42.954 the lines cross over, the pace of change 00:09:42.954 --> 00:09:46.098 overtakes the pace of learning, 00:09:46.098 --> 00:09:48.983 and for me, that is what I was describing 00:09:48.983 --> 00:09:52.240 when I was telling you about midnight. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:52.240 --> 00:09:55.401 So what does it do to us? Well, it completely transforms what we have to do, 00:09:55.401 --> 00:09:59.040 many mistakes we make. We solve last year's problems 00:09:59.040 --> 00:10:01.776 without thinking about the future. If you try and think about it, 00:10:01.776 --> 00:10:04.712 the things you're solving now, what problems are they going to bring in the future? 00:10:04.712 --> 00:10:07.232 If you haven't understood the world you're living in, 00:10:07.232 --> 00:10:10.848 it's almost impossible to be absolutely certain that what you're going to deliver fits. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:10.848 --> 00:10:14.256 I'll give you an example, a quick one. Creativity and ideas, 00:10:14.256 --> 00:10:17.297 I mentioned that earlier. All the CEOs around me, my clients, they want innovation, 00:10:17.297 --> 00:10:20.601 so they seek innovation. They say to people, "Take risks and be creative!" 00:10:20.601 --> 00:10:23.528 But unfortunately the words get transformed as they travel through the air. 00:10:23.528 --> 00:10:27.649 Entering their ears, what they hear is, "Do crazy things and then I'll fire you." Why? (Laughter) Because — 00:10:27.649 --> 00:10:31.304 Why? Because in the old world, okay, in the old world, 00:10:31.304 --> 00:10:33.769 over here, getting stuff wrong was unacceptable. 00:10:33.769 --> 00:10:36.401 If you got something wrong, you'd failed. How should you be treated? 00:10:36.401 --> 00:10:39.537 Well, harshly, because you could have asked somebody who had experience. 00:10:39.537 --> 00:10:44.601 So we learned the answer and we carried this in our heads for 20, 30 years, are you with me? 00:10:44.601 --> 00:10:47.304 The answer is, don't do things which are different. 00:10:47.304 --> 00:10:49.527 And then suddenly we tell them to and it doesn't work. 00:10:49.527 --> 00:10:52.139 You see, in reality, there are two ways you can fail in our new world. 00:10:52.139 --> 00:10:55.990 One, you're doing something that you should follow a procedure to, and it's a very difficult thing, 00:10:55.990 --> 00:10:59.472 you're sloppy, you get it wrong. How should you be treated? You should probably be fired. 00:10:59.472 --> 00:11:02.704 On the other hand, you're doing something new, no one's ever done before, 00:11:02.704 --> 00:11:04.684 you get it completely wrong. How should you be treated? 00:11:04.684 --> 00:11:08.296 Well, free pizzas! You should be treated better than the people who succeed. 00:11:08.296 --> 00:11:11.784 It's called smart failure. Why? Because you can't put it on your C.V. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:11.784 --> 00:11:14.513 So what I want to leave you, then, is with the explanation 00:11:14.513 --> 00:11:18.337 of why I actually traveled 60,000 miles from my desk. 00:11:18.337 --> 00:11:20.377 When I realized the power of this new world, 00:11:20.377 --> 00:11:24.749 I quit my safe teaching job, and set up a virtual business school, 00:11:24.749 --> 00:11:28.544 the first in the world, in order to teach people how to make this happen, 00:11:28.544 --> 00:11:33.877 and I used some of my learnings about some of the rules which I'd learned on myself. 00:11:33.877 --> 00:11:36.926 If you're interested, worldaftermidnight.com, you'll find out more, 00:11:36.926 --> 00:11:39.846 but I've applied them to myself for over a decade, 00:11:39.846 --> 00:11:43.595 and I'm still here, and I still have my house, and the most important thing is, 00:11:43.595 --> 00:11:48.975 I hope I've done enough to inject a little green ink into your lives, 00:11:48.975 --> 00:11:51.718 so that when you go away and you're making your next 00:11:51.718 --> 00:11:56.317 absolutely sensible and rational decision, you'll take some time to think, 00:11:56.317 --> 00:11:59.397 "Hmm, I wonder whether this also makes sense 00:11:59.397 --> 00:12:02.180 in our new world after midnight." Thank you very much. 00:12:02.180 --> 00:12:09.230 (Applause) 00:12:09.230 --> 00:12:15.659 Thank you, thank you. (Applause)