1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,000 What I'm going to do, in the spirit of collaborative creativity, 2 00:00:03,000 --> 00:00:06,000 is simply repeat many of the points 3 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:09,000 that the three people before me have already made, 4 00:00:09,000 --> 00:00:11,000 but do them -- 5 00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:13,000 this is called "creative collaboration;" 6 00:00:13,000 --> 00:00:14,000 it's actually called "borrowing" -- 7 00:00:16,000 --> 00:00:18,000 but do it through a particular perspective, 8 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,000 and that is to ask about the role of users and consumers 9 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,000 in this emerging world of 10 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:25,000 collaborative creativity 11 00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,000 that Jimmy and others have talked about. 12 00:00:28,000 --> 00:00:30,000 Let me just ask you, to start with, 13 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,000 this simple question: 14 00:00:32,000 --> 00:00:34,000 who invented the mountain bike? 15 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:37,000 Because traditional economic theory would say, 16 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:40,000 well, the mountain bike was probably invented by some big bike corporation 17 00:00:40,000 --> 00:00:42,000 that had a big R&D lab 18 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:44,000 where they were thinking up new projects, 19 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:47,000 and it came out of there. It didn't come from there. 20 00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:50,000 Another answer might be, well, it came from a sort of lone genius 21 00:00:50,000 --> 00:00:52,000 working in his garage, who, 22 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:54,000 working away on different kinds of bikes, comes up 23 00:00:54,000 --> 00:00:56,000 with a bike out of thin air. 24 00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:58,000 It didn't come from there. The mountain bike 25 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,000 came from users, came from young users, 26 00:01:02,000 --> 00:01:04,000 particularly a group in Northern California, 27 00:01:04,000 --> 00:01:07,000 who were frustrated with traditional racing bikes, 28 00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:10,000 which were those sort of bikes that Eddy Merckx rode, 29 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,000 or your big brother, and they're very glamorous. 30 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,000 But also frustrated with the bikes that your dad rode, 31 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:18,000 which sort of had big handlebars like that, and they were too heavy. 32 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:20,000 So, they got the frames from these big bikes, 33 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,000 put them together with the gears from the racing bikes, 34 00:01:23,000 --> 00:01:27,000 got the brakes from motorcycles, 35 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:29,000 and sort of mixed and matched various ingredients. 36 00:01:29,000 --> 00:01:32,000 And for the first, I don't know, three to five years of their life, 37 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:34,000 mountain bikes were known as "clunkers." 38 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:37,000 And they were just made in a community of bikers, 39 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:39,000 mainly in Northern California. 40 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:42,000 And then one of these companies that was importing parts 41 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:44,000 for the clunkers decided to set up in business, 42 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:46,000 start selling them to other people, 43 00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:49,000 and gradually another company emerged out of that, Marin, 44 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:51,000 and it probably was, I don't know, 45 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:53,000 10, maybe even 15, years, 46 00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:55,000 before the big bike companies 47 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:57,000 realized there was a market. 48 00:01:57,000 --> 00:01:59,000 Thirty years later, 49 00:01:59,000 --> 00:02:01,000 mountain bike sales 50 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:03,000 and mountain bike equipment 51 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:05,000 account for 65 percent of bike sales in America. 52 00:02:05,000 --> 00:02:08,000 That's 58 billion dollars. 53 00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:11,000 This is a category entirely created by consumers 54 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:14,000 that would not have been created by the mainstream bike market 55 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:16,000 because they couldn't see the need, 56 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:18,000 the opportunity; 57 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:21,000 they didn't have the incentive to innovate. 58 00:02:21,000 --> 00:02:23,000 The one thing I think I disagree with 59 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:25,000 about Yochai's presentation 60 00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:27,000 is when he said the Internet causes 61 00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:30,000 this distributive capacity for innovation to come alive. 62 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:33,000 It's when the Internet combines 63 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:36,000 with these kinds of passionate pro-am consumers -- 64 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:39,000 who are knowledgeable; they've got the incentive to innovate; 65 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:41,000 they've got the tools; they want to -- 66 00:02:41,000 --> 00:02:43,000 that you get this kind of explosion 67 00:02:43,000 --> 00:02:46,000 of creative collaboration. 68 00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:49,000 And out of that, you get the need for the kind of things 69 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:52,000 that Jimmy was talking about, which is our new kinds of organization, 70 00:02:52,000 --> 00:02:54,000 or a better way to put it: 71 00:02:54,000 --> 00:02:57,000 how do we organize ourselves without organizations? 72 00:02:57,000 --> 00:03:01,000 That's now possible; you don't need an organization to be organized, 73 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:03,000 to achieve large and complex tasks, 74 00:03:03,000 --> 00:03:06,000 like innovating new software programs. 75 00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:09,000 So this is a huge challenge 76 00:03:09,000 --> 00:03:12,000 to the way we think creativity comes about. 77 00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:15,000 The traditional view, still enshrined 78 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:18,000 in much of the way that we think about creativity 79 00:03:18,000 --> 00:03:20,000 -- in organizations, in government -- 80 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:23,000 is that creativity is about special people: 81 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:25,000 wear baseball caps the wrong way round, 82 00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:28,000 come to conferences like this, in special places, 83 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:32,000 elite universities, R&D labs in the forests, water, 84 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,000 maybe special rooms in companies painted funny colors, 85 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:39,000 you know, bean bags, maybe the odd table-football table. 86 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:43,000 Special people, special places, think up special ideas, 87 00:03:43,000 --> 00:03:45,000 then you have a pipeline that takes the ideas 88 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:48,000 down to the waiting consumers, who are passive. 89 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:51,000 They can say "yes" or "no" to the invention. 90 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:53,000 That's the idea of creativity. 91 00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:55,000 What's the policy recommendation out of that 92 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:58,000 if you're in government, or you're running a large company? 93 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:02,000 More special people, more special places. 94 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:04,000 Build creative clusters in cities; 95 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:07,000 create more R&D parks, so on and so forth. 96 00:04:07,000 --> 00:04:10,000 Expand the pipeline down to the consumers. 97 00:04:10,000 --> 00:04:13,000 Well this view, I think, is increasingly wrong. 98 00:04:13,000 --> 00:04:15,000 I think it's always been wrong, 99 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:18,000 because I think always creativity has been highly collaborative, 100 00:04:18,000 --> 00:04:21,000 and it's probably been largely interactive. 101 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:24,000 But it's increasingly wrong, and one of the reasons it's wrong 102 00:04:24,000 --> 00:04:27,000 is that the ideas are flowing back up the pipeline. 103 00:04:27,000 --> 00:04:29,000 The ideas are coming back from the consumers, 104 00:04:29,000 --> 00:04:32,000 and they're often ahead of the producers. 105 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:34,000 Why is that? 106 00:04:34,000 --> 00:04:37,000 Well, one issue 107 00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:39,000 is that radical innovation, 108 00:04:39,000 --> 00:04:41,000 when you've got ideas that 109 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:45,000 affect a large number of technologies or people, 110 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:47,000 have a great deal of uncertainty attached to them. 111 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:49,000 The payoffs to innovation are greatest 112 00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:52,000 where the uncertainty is highest. 113 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:54,000 And when you get a radical innovation, 114 00:04:54,000 --> 00:04:57,000 it's often very uncertain how it can be applied. 115 00:04:57,000 --> 00:04:59,000 The whole history of telephony 116 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:03,000 is a story of dealing with that uncertainty. 117 00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:05,000 The very first landline telephones, 118 00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:07,000 the inventors thought 119 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:09,000 that they would be used for people to listen in 120 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:11,000 to live performances 121 00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:13,000 from West End theaters. 122 00:05:13,000 --> 00:05:16,000 When the mobile telephone companies invented SMS, 123 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:18,000 they had no idea what it was for; 124 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:20,000 it was only when that technology got into the hands 125 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:22,000 of teenage users 126 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:24,000 that they invented the use. 127 00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:27,000 So the more radical the innovation, 128 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:29,000 the more the uncertainty, 129 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:31,000 the more you need innovation in use 130 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:34,000 to work out what a technology is for. 131 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:37,000 All of our patents, our entire approach 132 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:40,000 to patents and invention, is based on the idea 133 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,000 that the inventor knows what the invention is for; 134 00:05:43,000 --> 00:05:45,000 we can say what it's for. 135 00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:47,000 More and more, the inventors of things 136 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:49,000 will not be able to say that in advance. 137 00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:51,000 It will be worked out in use, 138 00:05:51,000 --> 00:05:54,000 in collaboration with users. 139 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:56,000 We like to think that invention is 140 00:05:56,000 --> 00:05:59,000 a sort of moment of creation: 141 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:02,000 there is a moment of birth when someone comes up with an idea. 142 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,000 The truth is that most creativity 143 00:06:05,000 --> 00:06:07,000 is cumulative and collaborative; 144 00:06:07,000 --> 00:06:11,000 like Wikipedia, it develops over a long period of time. 145 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:15,000 The second reason why users are more and more important 146 00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:19,000 is that they are the source of big, disruptive innovations. 147 00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:22,000 If you want to find the big new ideas, 148 00:06:22,000 --> 00:06:25,000 it's often difficult to find them in mainstream markets, 149 00:06:25,000 --> 00:06:28,000 in big organizations. 150 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:30,000 And just look inside large organizations 151 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:32,000 and you'll see why that is so. 152 00:06:32,000 --> 00:06:36,000 So, you're in a big corporation. 153 00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,000 You're obviously keen to go up the corporate ladder. 154 00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:41,000 Do you go into your board and say, 155 00:06:41,000 --> 00:06:43,000 "Look, I've got a fantastic idea 156 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:45,000 for an embryonic product 157 00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:47,000 in a marginal market, 158 00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:50,000 with consumers we've never dealt with before, 159 00:06:50,000 --> 00:06:53,000 and I'm not sure it's going to have a big payoff, but it could be really, really big in the future?" 160 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:56,000 No, what you do, is you go in and you say, 161 00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,000 "I've got a fantastic idea for an incremental innovation 162 00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:02,000 to an existing product we sell through existing channels 163 00:07:02,000 --> 00:07:04,000 to existing users, and I can guarantee 164 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:08,000 you get this much return out of it over the next three years." 165 00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:10,000 Big corporations have an in-built tendency 166 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:12,000 to reinforce past success. 167 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:14,000 They've got so much sunk in it 168 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,000 that it's very difficult for them to spot 169 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:20,000 emerging new markets. Emerging new markets, then, 170 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:23,000 are the breeding grounds for passionate users. 171 00:07:23,000 --> 00:07:25,000 Best example: 172 00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:27,000 who in the music industry, 173 00:07:27,000 --> 00:07:30,000 30 years ago, would have said, 174 00:07:30,000 --> 00:07:33,000 "Yes, let's invent a musical form 175 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:36,000 which is all about dispossessed black men 176 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:38,000 in ghettos expressing their frustration 177 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:40,000 with the world through a form of music 178 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:43,000 that many people find initially quite difficult to listen to. 179 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:46,000 That sounds like a winner; we'll go with it." 180 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:47,000 (Laughter). 181 00:07:47,000 --> 00:07:50,000 So what happens? Rap music is created by the users. 182 00:07:50,000 --> 00:07:53,000 They do it on their own tapes, with their own recording equipment; 183 00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:54,000 they distribute it themselves. 184 00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:56,000 30 years later, 185 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:59,000 rap music is the dominant musical form of popular culture -- 186 00:07:59,000 --> 00:08:01,000 would never have come from the big companies. 187 00:08:01,000 --> 00:08:04,000 Had to start -- this is the third point -- 188 00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:06,000 with these pro-ams. 189 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:08,000 This is the phrase that I've used in 190 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:10,000 some stuff which I've done 191 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:12,000 with a think tank in London called Demos, 192 00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:15,000 where we've been looking at these people who are amateurs -- 193 00:08:15,000 --> 00:08:18,000 i.e., they do it for the love of it -- 194 00:08:18,000 --> 00:08:20,000 but they want to do it to very high standards. 195 00:08:20,000 --> 00:08:22,000 And across a whole range of fields -- 196 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:26,000 from software, astronomy, 197 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:28,000 natural sciences, 198 00:08:28,000 --> 00:08:30,000 vast areas of leisure and culture 199 00:08:30,000 --> 00:08:33,000 like kite-surfing, so on and so forth -- 200 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:37,000 you find people who want to do things because they love it, 201 00:08:37,000 --> 00:08:40,000 but they want to do these things to very high standards. 202 00:08:40,000 --> 00:08:42,000 They work at their leisure, if you like. 203 00:08:42,000 --> 00:08:44,000 They take their leisure very seriously: 204 00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:47,000 they acquire skills; they invest time; 205 00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:50,000 they use technology that's getting cheaper -- it's not just the Internet: 206 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,000 cameras, design technology, 207 00:08:53,000 --> 00:08:56,000 leisure technology, surfboards, so on and so forth. 208 00:08:56,000 --> 00:08:58,000 Largely through globalization, 209 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:01,000 a lot of this equipment has got a lot cheaper. 210 00:09:01,000 --> 00:09:04,000 More knowledgeable consumers, more educated, 211 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:06,000 more able to connect with one another, 212 00:09:06,000 --> 00:09:08,000 more able to do things together. 213 00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:10,000 Consumption, in that sense, is an expression 214 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:12,000 of their productive potential. 215 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:16,000 Why, we found, people were interested in this, 216 00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:19,000 is that at work they don't feel very expressed. 217 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:22,000 They don't feel as if they're doing something that really matters to them, 218 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:25,000 so they pick up these kinds of activities. 219 00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:27,000 This has huge organizational implications 220 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:29,000 for very large areas of life. 221 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:32,000 Take astronomy as an example, 222 00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:34,000 which Yochai has already mentioned. 223 00:09:35,000 --> 00:09:37,000 Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, 224 00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:40,000 only big professional astronomers 225 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:44,000 with very big telescopes could see far into space. 226 00:09:44,000 --> 00:09:47,000 And there's a big telescope in Northern England called Jodrell Bank, 227 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:49,000 and when I was a kid, it was amazing, 228 00:09:49,000 --> 00:09:52,000 because the moon shots would take off, and this thing would move on rails. 229 00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:55,000 And it was huge -- it was absolutely enormous. 230 00:09:55,000 --> 00:09:58,000 Now, six 231 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:00,000 amateur astronomers, working with the Internet, 232 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:02,000 with Dobsonian digital telescopes -- 233 00:10:02,000 --> 00:10:05,000 which are pretty much open source -- 234 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:07,000 with some light sensors 235 00:10:07,000 --> 00:10:09,000 developed over the last 10 years, the Internet -- 236 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:13,000 they can do what Jodrell Bank could only do 30 years ago. 237 00:10:13,000 --> 00:10:16,000 So here in astronomy, you have this vast explosion 238 00:10:16,000 --> 00:10:18,000 of new productive resources. 239 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:21,000 The users can be producers. 240 00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:23,000 What does this mean, then, for our 241 00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:25,000 organizational landscape? 242 00:10:25,000 --> 00:10:27,000 Well, just imagine a world, 243 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:31,000 for the moment, divided into two camps. 244 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,000 Over here, you've got the old, traditional corporate model: 245 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:36,000 special people, special places; 246 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:38,000 patent it, push it down the pipeline 247 00:10:38,000 --> 00:10:41,000 to largely waiting, passive consumers. 248 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:43,000 Over here, let's imagine we've got 249 00:10:43,000 --> 00:10:47,000 Wikipedia, Linux, and beyond -- open source. 250 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:49,000 This is open; this is closed. 251 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:51,000 This is new; this is traditional. 252 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:54,000 Well, the first thing you can say, I think with certainty, 253 00:10:54,000 --> 00:10:56,000 is what Yochai has said already -- 254 00:10:56,000 --> 00:10:58,000 is there is a great big struggle 255 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:00,000 between those two organizational forms. 256 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:03,000 These people over there will do everything they can 257 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,000 to stop these kinds of organizations succeeding, 258 00:11:06,000 --> 00:11:08,000 because they're threatened by them. 259 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:11,000 And so the debates about 260 00:11:11,000 --> 00:11:15,000 copyright, digital rights, so on and so forth -- 261 00:11:15,000 --> 00:11:18,000 these are all about trying to stifle, in my view, 262 00:11:18,000 --> 00:11:20,000 these kinds of organizations. 263 00:11:20,000 --> 00:11:23,000 What we're seeing is a complete corruption 264 00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:25,000 of the idea of patents and copyright. 265 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:29,000 Meant to be a way to incentivize invention, 266 00:11:29,000 --> 00:11:32,000 meant to be a way to orchestrate the dissemination of knowledge, 267 00:11:32,000 --> 00:11:35,000 they are increasingly being used by large companies 268 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:37,000 to create thickets of patents 269 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:39,000 to prevent innovation taking place. 270 00:11:39,000 --> 00:11:42,000 Let me just give you two examples. 271 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:45,000 The first is: imagine yourself going to a venture capitalist 272 00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:47,000 and saying, "I've got a fantastic idea. 273 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,000 I've invented this brilliant new program 274 00:11:50,000 --> 00:11:53,000 that is much, much better than Microsoft Outlook." 275 00:11:54,000 --> 00:11:58,000 Which venture capitalist in their right mind is going to give you any money to set up a venture 276 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:01,000 competing with Microsoft, with Microsoft Outlook? No one. 277 00:12:01,000 --> 00:12:04,000 That is why the competition with Microsoft is bound to come -- 278 00:12:04,000 --> 00:12:06,000 will only come -- 279 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:08,000 from an open-source kind of project. 280 00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:10,000 So, there is a huge competitive argument 281 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:12,000 about sustaining the capacity 282 00:12:12,000 --> 00:12:15,000 for open-source and consumer-driven innovation, 283 00:12:15,000 --> 00:12:17,000 because it's one of the greatest 284 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:20,000 competitive levers against monopoly. 285 00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:23,000 There'll be huge professional arguments as well. 286 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:25,000 Because the professionals, over here 287 00:12:25,000 --> 00:12:27,000 in these closed organizations -- 288 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:29,000 they might be academics; they might be programmers; 289 00:12:29,000 --> 00:12:32,000 they might be doctors; they might be journalists -- 290 00:12:32,000 --> 00:12:34,000 my former profession -- 291 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:36,000 say, "No, no -- you can't trust these people over here." 292 00:12:38,000 --> 00:12:40,000 When I started in journalism -- 293 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:43,000 Financial Times, 20 years ago -- 294 00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:46,000 it was very, very exciting 295 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:48,000 to see someone reading the newspaper. 296 00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:50,000 And you'd kind of look over their shoulder on the Tube 297 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:53,000 to see if they were reading your article. 298 00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:55,000 Usually they were reading the share prices, 299 00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,000 and the bit of the paper with your article on 300 00:12:57,000 --> 00:12:59,000 was on the floor, or something like that, 301 00:12:59,000 --> 00:13:01,000 and you know, "For heaven's sake, what are they doing! 302 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:04,000 They're not reading my brilliant article!" 303 00:13:04,000 --> 00:13:07,000 And we allowed users, readers, 304 00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:09,000 two places where they could contribute to the paper: 305 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:12,000 the letters page, where they could write a letter in, 306 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:14,000 and we would condescend to them, cut it in half, 307 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:16,000 and print it three days later. 308 00:13:16,000 --> 00:13:18,000 Or the op-ed page, where if they knew the editor -- 309 00:13:18,000 --> 00:13:20,000 had been to school with him, slept with his wife -- 310 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,000 they could write an article for the op-ed page. 311 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:25,000 Those were the two places. 312 00:13:25,000 --> 00:13:29,000 Shock, horror: now, the readers want to be writers and publishers. 313 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:32,000 That's not their role; they're supposed to read what we write. 314 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:34,000 But they don't want to be journalists. The journalists think 315 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:36,000 that the bloggers want to be journalists; 316 00:13:36,000 --> 00:13:38,000 they don't want to be journalists; they just want to have a voice. 317 00:13:38,000 --> 00:13:41,000 They want to, as Jimmy said, they want to have a dialogue, a conversation. 318 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:45,000 They want to be part of that flow of information. 319 00:13:45,000 --> 00:13:47,000 What's happening there is that the whole domain 320 00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:49,000 of creativity is expanding. 321 00:13:49,000 --> 00:13:52,000 So, there's going to be a tremendous struggle. 322 00:13:52,000 --> 00:13:55,000 But, also, there's going to be tremendous movement 323 00:13:55,000 --> 00:13:58,000 from the open to the closed. 324 00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:01,000 What you'll see, I think, is two things that are critical, 325 00:14:01,000 --> 00:14:03,000 and these, I think, are two challenges 326 00:14:03,000 --> 00:14:05,000 for the open movement. 327 00:14:05,000 --> 00:14:07,000 The first is: 328 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,000 can we really survive on volunteers? 329 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:12,000 If this is so critical, 330 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:15,000 do we not need it funded, organized, supported 331 00:14:15,000 --> 00:14:17,000 in much more structured ways? 332 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:19,000 I think the idea of creating the Red Cross 333 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:22,000 for information and knowledge is a fantastic idea, 334 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:26,000 but can we really organize that, just on volunteers? 335 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:28,000 What kind of changes do we need in public policy 336 00:14:28,000 --> 00:14:30,000 and funding to make that possible? 337 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:32,000 What's the role of the BBC, 338 00:14:32,000 --> 00:14:34,000 for instance, in that world? 339 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:36,000 What should be the role of public policy? 340 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:39,000 And finally, what I think you will see 341 00:14:39,000 --> 00:14:42,000 is the intelligent, closed organizations 342 00:14:42,000 --> 00:14:45,000 moving increasingly in the open direction. 343 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:48,000 So it's not going to be a contest between two camps, 344 00:14:48,000 --> 00:14:51,000 but, in between them, you'll find all sorts of interesting places 345 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:53,000 that people will occupy. 346 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:56,000 New organizational models coming about, 347 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:59,000 mixing closed and open in tricky ways. 348 00:14:59,000 --> 00:15:03,000 It won't be so clear-cut; it won't be Microsoft versus Linux -- 349 00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:05,000 there'll be all sorts of things in between. 350 00:15:05,000 --> 00:15:07,000 And those organizational models, it turns out, 351 00:15:07,000 --> 00:15:09,000 are incredibly powerful, 352 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:11,000 and the people who can understand them 353 00:15:11,000 --> 00:15:13,000 will be very, very successful. 354 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:16,000 Let me just give you one final example 355 00:15:16,000 --> 00:15:18,000 of what that means. 356 00:15:18,000 --> 00:15:20,000 I was in Shanghai, 357 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:22,000 in an office block 358 00:15:22,000 --> 00:15:25,000 built on what was a rice paddy five years ago -- 359 00:15:25,000 --> 00:15:28,000 one of the 2,500 skyscrapers 360 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:31,000 they've built in Shanghai in the last 10 years. 361 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:34,000 And I was having dinner with this guy called Timothy Chan. 362 00:15:34,000 --> 00:15:36,000 Timothy Chan set up an Internet business 363 00:15:36,000 --> 00:15:38,000 in 2000. 364 00:15:38,000 --> 00:15:41,000 Didn't go into the Internet, kept his money, 365 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:43,000 decided to go into computer games. 366 00:15:43,000 --> 00:15:46,000 He runs a company called Shanda, 367 00:15:46,000 --> 00:15:50,000 which is the largest computer games company in China. 368 00:15:50,000 --> 00:15:53,000 Nine thousand servers all over China, 369 00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:57,000 has 250 million subscribers. 370 00:15:57,000 --> 00:16:01,000 At any one time, there are four million people playing one of his games. 371 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:04,000 How many people does he employ 372 00:16:04,000 --> 00:16:07,000 to service that population? 373 00:16:07,000 --> 00:16:09,000 500 people. 374 00:16:09,000 --> 00:16:11,000 Well, how can he service 375 00:16:11,000 --> 00:16:14,000 250 million people from 500 employees? 376 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:16,000 Because basically, he doesn't service them. 377 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:18,000 He gives them a platform; 378 00:16:18,000 --> 00:16:21,000 he gives them some rules; he gives them the tools 379 00:16:21,000 --> 00:16:24,000 and then he kind of orchestrates the conversation; 380 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:26,000 he orchestrates the action. 381 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:28,000 But actually, a lot of the content 382 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:31,000 is created by the users themselves. 383 00:16:31,000 --> 00:16:33,000 And it creates a kind of stickiness 384 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:35,000 between the community and the company 385 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:37,000 which is really, really powerful. 386 00:16:37,000 --> 00:16:40,000 The best measure of that: so you go into one of his games, 387 00:16:40,000 --> 00:16:42,000 you create a character 388 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:44,000 that you develop in the course of the game. 389 00:16:44,000 --> 00:16:47,000 If, for some reason, your credit card bounces, 390 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:49,000 or there's some other problem, 391 00:16:49,000 --> 00:16:51,000 you lose your character. 392 00:16:51,000 --> 00:16:53,000 You've got two options. 393 00:16:53,000 --> 00:16:56,000 One option: you can create a new character, 394 00:16:56,000 --> 00:16:59,000 right from scratch, but with none of the history of your player. 395 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:01,000 That costs about 100 dollars. 396 00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:04,000 Or you can get on a plane, fly to Shanghai, 397 00:17:04,000 --> 00:17:07,000 queue up outside Shanda's offices -- 398 00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:11,000 cost probably 600, 700 dollars -- 399 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,000 and reclaim your character, get your history back. 400 00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:16,000 Every morning, there are 600 people queuing 401 00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:18,000 outside their offices 402 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:20,000 to reclaim these characters. (Laughter) 403 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:23,000 So this is about companies built on communities, 404 00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:26,000 that provide communities with tools, 405 00:17:26,000 --> 00:17:28,000 resources, platforms in which they can share. 406 00:17:28,000 --> 00:17:30,000 He's not open source, 407 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:32,000 but it's very, very powerful. 408 00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:35,000 So here is one of the challenges, I think, 409 00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,000 for people like me, who 410 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:40,000 do a lot of work with government. 411 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:43,000 If you're a games company, 412 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:46,000 and you've got a million players in your game, 413 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:49,000 you only need one percent of them 414 00:17:49,000 --> 00:17:51,000 to be co-developers, contributing ideas, 415 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:53,000 and you've got a development workforce 416 00:17:53,000 --> 00:17:56,000 of 10,000 people. 417 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,000 Imagine you could take all the children 418 00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:02,000 in education in Britain, and one percent of them 419 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:04,000 were co-developers of education. 420 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:06,000 What would that do to the resources available 421 00:18:06,000 --> 00:18:08,000 to the education system? 422 00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:11,000 Or if you got one percent of the patients in the NHS 423 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:14,000 to, in some sense, be co-producers of health. 424 00:18:14,000 --> 00:18:16,000 The reason why -- 425 00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:19,000 despite all the efforts to cut it down, 426 00:18:19,000 --> 00:18:21,000 to constrain it, to hold it back -- 427 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:24,000 why these open models will still start emerging 428 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:26,000 with tremendous force, 429 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:28,000 is that they multiply our productive resources. 430 00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,000 And one of the reasons they do that 431 00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:32,000 is that they turn users into producers, 432 00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:34,000 consumers into designers. 433 00:18:34,000 --> 00:18:36,000 Thank you very much.