WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 What I'm going to do, in the spirit of collaborative creativity, 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:06.000 is simply repeat many of the points 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.000 that the three people before me have already made, 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:11.000 but do them -- 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:13.000 this is called "creative collaboration;" 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:14.000 it's actually called "borrowing" -- 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:18.000 but do it through a particular perspective, 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:21.000 and that is to ask about the role of users and consumers 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:23.000 in this emerging world of 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.000 collaborative creativity 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:28.000 that Jimmy and others have talked about. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:30.000 Let me just ask you, to start with, 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.000 this simple question: 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.000 who invented the mountain bike? 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:37.000 Because traditional economic theory would say, 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.000 well, the mountain bike was probably invented by some big bike corporation 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:42.000 that had a big R&D lab 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:44.000 where they were thinking up new projects, 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.000 and it came out of there. It didn't come from there. 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:50.000 Another answer might be, well, it came from a sort of lone genius 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 working in his garage, who, 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:54.000 working away on different kinds of bikes, comes up 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:56.000 with a bike out of thin air. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:58.000 It didn't come from there. The mountain bike 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:02.000 came from users, came from young users, 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.000 particularly a group in Northern California, 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:07.000 who were frustrated with traditional racing bikes, 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.000 which were those sort of bikes that Eddy Merckx rode, 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:12.000 or your big brother, and they're very glamorous. 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:15.000 But also frustrated with the bikes that your dad rode, 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 which sort of had big handlebars like that, and they were too heavy. 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.000 So, they got the frames from these big bikes, 00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:23.000 put them together with the gears from the racing bikes, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:27.000 got the brakes from motorcycles, 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:29.000 and sort of mixed and matched various ingredients. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 And for the first, I don't know, three to five years of their life, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.000 mountain bikes were known as "clunkers." 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:37.000 And they were just made in a community of bikers, 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:39.000 mainly in Northern California. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:42.000 And then one of these companies that was importing parts 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:44.000 for the clunkers decided to set up in business, 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.000 start selling them to other people, 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:49.000 and gradually another company emerged out of that, Marin, 00:01:49.000 --> 00:01:51.000 and it probably was, I don't know, 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 10, maybe even 15, years, 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.000 before the big bike companies 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:57.000 realized there was a market. 00:01:57.000 --> 00:01:59.000 Thirty years later, 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:01.000 mountain bike sales 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:03.000 and mountain bike equipment 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:05.000 account for 65 percent of bike sales in America. 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:08.000 That's 58 billion dollars. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:11.000 This is a category entirely created by consumers 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:14.000 that would not have been created by the mainstream bike market 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.000 because they couldn't see the need, 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:18.000 the opportunity; 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.000 they didn't have the incentive to innovate. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000 The one thing I think I disagree with 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:25.000 about Yochai's presentation 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:27.000 is when he said the Internet causes 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:30.000 this distributive capacity for innovation to come alive. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.000 It's when the Internet combines 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:36.000 with these kinds of passionate pro-am consumers -- 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.000 who are knowledgeable; they've got the incentive to innovate; 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:41.000 they've got the tools; they want to -- 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.000 that you get this kind of explosion 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:46.000 of creative collaboration. 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:49.000 And out of that, you get the need for the kind of things 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:52.000 that Jimmy was talking about, which is our new kinds of organization, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.000 or a better way to put it: 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.000 how do we organize ourselves without organizations? 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:01.000 That's now possible; you don't need an organization to be organized, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:03.000 to achieve large and complex tasks, 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:06.000 like innovating new software programs. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:09.000 So this is a huge challenge 00:03:09.000 --> 00:03:12.000 to the way we think creativity comes about. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:15.000 The traditional view, still enshrined 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:18.000 in much of the way that we think about creativity 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:20.000 -- in organizations, in government -- 00:03:20.000 --> 00:03:23.000 is that creativity is about special people: 00:03:23.000 --> 00:03:25.000 wear baseball caps the wrong way round, 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:28.000 come to conferences like this, in special places, 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:32.000 elite universities, R&D labs in the forests, water, 00:03:33.000 --> 00:03:36.000 maybe special rooms in companies painted funny colors, 00:03:36.000 --> 00:03:39.000 you know, bean bags, maybe the odd table-football table. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:43.000 Special people, special places, think up special ideas, 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:45.000 then you have a pipeline that takes the ideas 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:48.000 down to the waiting consumers, who are passive. 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:51.000 They can say "yes" or "no" to the invention. 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:53.000 That's the idea of creativity. 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:55.000 What's the policy recommendation out of that 00:03:55.000 --> 00:03:58.000 if you're in government, or you're running a large company? 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:02.000 More special people, more special places. 00:04:02.000 --> 00:04:04.000 Build creative clusters in cities; 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:07.000 create more R&D parks, so on and so forth. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:10.000 Expand the pipeline down to the consumers. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:13.000 Well this view, I think, is increasingly wrong. 00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:15.000 I think it's always been wrong, 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:18.000 because I think always creativity has been highly collaborative, 00:04:18.000 --> 00:04:21.000 and it's probably been largely interactive. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:24.000 But it's increasingly wrong, and one of the reasons it's wrong 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:27.000 is that the ideas are flowing back up the pipeline. 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:29.000 The ideas are coming back from the consumers, 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:32.000 and they're often ahead of the producers. 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:34.000 Why is that? 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 Well, one issue 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.000 is that radical innovation, 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:41.000 when you've got ideas that 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:45.000 affect a large number of technologies or people, 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:47.000 have a great deal of uncertainty attached to them. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:49.000 The payoffs to innovation are greatest 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:52.000 where the uncertainty is highest. 00:04:52.000 --> 00:04:54.000 And when you get a radical innovation, 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 it's often very uncertain how it can be applied. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:57.000 --> 00:04:59.000 The whole history of telephony 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:03.000 is a story of dealing with that uncertainty. 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 The very first landline telephones, 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.000 the inventors thought 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:09.000 that they would be used for people to listen in 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:11.000 to live performances 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:13.000 from West End theaters. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.000 When the mobile telephone companies invented SMS, 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:18.000 they had no idea what it was for; 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:20.000 it was only when that technology got into the hands 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.000 of teenage users 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.000 that they invented the use. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.000 So the more radical the innovation, 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:29.000 the more the uncertainty, 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:31.000 the more you need innovation in use 00:05:31.000 --> 00:05:34.000 to work out what a technology is for. 00:05:34.000 --> 00:05:37.000 All of our patents, our entire approach 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:40.000 to patents and invention, is based on the idea 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:43.000 that the inventor knows what the invention is for; 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 we can say what it's for. 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:47.000 More and more, the inventors of things 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.000 will not be able to say that in advance. 00:05:49.000 --> 00:05:51.000 It will be worked out in use, 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.000 in collaboration with users. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:56.000 We like to think that invention is 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:59.000 a sort of moment of creation: 00:05:59.000 --> 00:06:02.000 there is a moment of birth when someone comes up with an idea. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:05.000 The truth is that most creativity 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:07.000 is cumulative and collaborative; 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:11.000 like Wikipedia, it develops over a long period of time. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:15.000 The second reason why users are more and more important 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:19.000 is that they are the source of big, disruptive innovations. 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:22.000 If you want to find the big new ideas, 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.000 it's often difficult to find them in mainstream markets, 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.000 in big organizations. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:30.000 And just look inside large organizations 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:32.000 and you'll see why that is so. 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:36.000 So, you're in a big corporation. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:39.000 You're obviously keen to go up the corporate ladder. 00:06:39.000 --> 00:06:41.000 Do you go into your board and say, 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:43.000 "Look, I've got a fantastic idea 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:45.000 for an embryonic product 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:47.000 in a marginal market, 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:50.000 with consumers we've never dealt with before, 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?" 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:56.000 No, what you do, is you go in and you say, 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:59.000 "I've got a fantastic idea for an incremental innovation 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:02.000 to an existing product we sell through existing channels 00:07:02.000 --> 00:07:04.000 to existing users, and I can guarantee 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:08.000 you get this much return out of it over the next three years." NOTE Paragraph 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:10.000 Big corporations have an in-built tendency 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:12.000 to reinforce past success. 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.000 They've got so much sunk in it 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 that it's very difficult for them to spot 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 emerging new markets. Emerging new markets, then, 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:23.000 are the breeding grounds for passionate users. 00:07:23.000 --> 00:07:25.000 Best example: 00:07:25.000 --> 00:07:27.000 who in the music industry, 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:30.000 30 years ago, would have said, 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.000 "Yes, let's invent a musical form 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 which is all about dispossessed black men 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.000 in ghettos expressing their frustration 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:40.000 with the world through a form of music 00:07:40.000 --> 00:07:43.000 that many people find initially quite difficult to listen to. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.000 That sounds like a winner; we'll go with it." 00:07:46.000 --> 00:07:47.000 (Laughter). 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:50.000 So what happens? Rap music is created by the users. 00:07:50.000 --> 00:07:53.000 They do it on their own tapes, with their own recording equipment; 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:54.000 they distribute it themselves. 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.000 30 years later, 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.000 rap music is the dominant musical form of popular culture -- 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:01.000 would never have come from the big companies. 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:04.000 Had to start -- this is the third point -- 00:08:04.000 --> 00:08:06.000 with these pro-ams. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:08.000 This is the phrase that I've used in 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.000 some stuff which I've done 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:12.000 with a think tank in London called Demos, 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.000 where we've been looking at these people who are amateurs -- 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:18.000 i.e., they do it for the love of it -- 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:20.000 but they want to do it to very high standards. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.000 And across a whole range of fields -- 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:26.000 from software, astronomy, 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:28.000 natural sciences, 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:30.000 vast areas of leisure and culture 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 like kite-surfing, so on and so forth -- 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:37.000 you find people who want to do things because they love it, 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:40.000 but they want to do these things to very high standards. 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.000 They work at their leisure, if you like. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:44.000 They take their leisure very seriously: 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.000 they acquire skills; they invest time; 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:50.000 they use technology that's getting cheaper -- it's not just the Internet: 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:53.000 cameras, design technology, 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:56.000 leisure technology, surfboards, so on and so forth. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:58.000 Largely through globalization, 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:01.000 a lot of this equipment has got a lot cheaper. 00:09:01.000 --> 00:09:04.000 More knowledgeable consumers, more educated, 00:09:04.000 --> 00:09:06.000 more able to connect with one another, 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:08.000 more able to do things together. 00:09:08.000 --> 00:09:10.000 Consumption, in that sense, is an expression 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.000 of their productive potential. 00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:16.000 Why, we found, people were interested in this, 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.000 is that at work they don't feel very expressed. 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:22.000 They don't feel as if they're doing something that really matters to them, 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:25.000 so they pick up these kinds of activities. 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:27.000 This has huge organizational implications 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:29.000 for very large areas of life. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:32.000 Take astronomy as an example, 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.000 which Yochai has already mentioned. 00:09:35.000 --> 00:09:37.000 Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, 00:09:37.000 --> 00:09:40.000 only big professional astronomers 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.000 with very big telescopes could see far into space. 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:47.000 And there's a big telescope in Northern England called Jodrell Bank, 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:49.000 and when I was a kid, it was amazing, 00:09:49.000 --> 00:09:52.000 because the moon shots would take off, and this thing would move on rails. 00:09:52.000 --> 00:09:55.000 And it was huge -- it was absolutely enormous. 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.000 Now, six 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000 amateur astronomers, working with the Internet, 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.000 with Dobsonian digital telescopes -- 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:05.000 which are pretty much open source -- 00:10:05.000 --> 00:10:07.000 with some light sensors 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:09.000 developed over the last 10 years, the Internet -- 00:10:09.000 --> 00:10:13.000 they can do what Jodrell Bank could only do 30 years ago. 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.000 So here in astronomy, you have this vast explosion 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:18.000 of new productive resources. 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:21.000 The users can be producers. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.000 What does this mean, then, for our 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:25.000 organizational landscape? 00:10:25.000 --> 00:10:27.000 Well, just imagine a world, 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:31.000 for the moment, divided into two camps. 00:10:31.000 --> 00:10:34.000 Over here, you've got the old, traditional corporate model: 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:36.000 special people, special places; 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.000 patent it, push it down the pipeline 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.000 to largely waiting, passive consumers. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:43.000 Over here, let's imagine we've got 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:47.000 Wikipedia, Linux, and beyond -- open source. 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:49.000 This is open; this is closed. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 This is new; this is traditional. 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:54.000 Well, the first thing you can say, I think with certainty, 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:56.000 is what Yochai has said already -- 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:58.000 is there is a great big struggle 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 between those two organizational forms. 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:03.000 These people over there will do everything they can 00:11:03.000 --> 00:11:06.000 to stop these kinds of organizations succeeding, 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:08.000 because they're threatened by them. 00:11:08.000 --> 00:11:11.000 And so the debates about 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:15.000 copyright, digital rights, so on and so forth -- 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.000 these are all about trying to stifle, in my view, 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:20.000 these kinds of organizations. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:23.000 What we're seeing is a complete corruption 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:25.000 of the idea of patents and copyright. 00:11:25.000 --> 00:11:29.000 Meant to be a way to incentivize invention, 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:32.000 meant to be a way to orchestrate the dissemination of knowledge, 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:35.000 they are increasingly being used by large companies 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:37.000 to create thickets of patents 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.000 to prevent innovation taking place. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:42.000 Let me just give you two examples. 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:45.000 The first is: imagine yourself going to a venture capitalist 00:11:45.000 --> 00:11:47.000 and saying, "I've got a fantastic idea. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:50.000 I've invented this brilliant new program 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:53.000 that is much, much better than Microsoft Outlook." 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 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:01.000 competing with Microsoft, with Microsoft Outlook? No one. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:04.000 That is why the competition with Microsoft is bound to come -- 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.000 will only come -- 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:08.000 from an open-source kind of project. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:08.000 --> 00:12:10.000 So, there is a huge competitive argument 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:12.000 about sustaining the capacity 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:15.000 for open-source and consumer-driven innovation, 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:17.000 because it's one of the greatest 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:20.000 competitive levers against monopoly. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:23.000 There'll be huge professional arguments as well. 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:25.000 Because the professionals, over here 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:27.000 in these closed organizations -- 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000 they might be academics; they might be programmers; 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:32.000 they might be doctors; they might be journalists -- 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:34.000 my former profession -- 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.000 say, "No, no -- you can't trust these people over here." NOTE Paragraph 00:12:38.000 --> 00:12:40.000 When I started in journalism -- 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:43.000 Financial Times, 20 years ago -- 00:12:44.000 --> 00:12:46.000 it was very, very exciting 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:48.000 to see someone reading the newspaper. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:50.000 And you'd kind of look over their shoulder on the Tube 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.000 to see if they were reading your article. 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:55.000 Usually they were reading the share prices, 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 and the bit of the paper with your article on 00:12:57.000 --> 00:12:59.000 was on the floor, or something like that, 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:01.000 and you know, "For heaven's sake, what are they doing! 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:04.000 They're not reading my brilliant article!" 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:07.000 And we allowed users, readers, 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:09.000 two places where they could contribute to the paper: 00:13:09.000 --> 00:13:12.000 the letters page, where they could write a letter in, 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:14.000 and we would condescend to them, cut it in half, 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:16.000 and print it three days later. 00:13:16.000 --> 00:13:18.000 Or the op-ed page, where if they knew the editor -- 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.000 had been to school with him, slept with his wife -- 00:13:20.000 --> 00:13:23.000 they could write an article for the op-ed page. 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:25.000 Those were the two places. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:29.000 Shock, horror: now, the readers want to be writers and publishers. 00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:32.000 That's not their role; they're supposed to read what we write. 00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:34.000 But they don't want to be journalists. The journalists think 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:36.000 that the bloggers want to be journalists; 00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:38.000 they don't want to be journalists; they just want to have a voice. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:41.000 They want to, as Jimmy said, they want to have a dialogue, a conversation. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:45.000 They want to be part of that flow of information. 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.000 What's happening there is that the whole domain 00:13:47.000 --> 00:13:49.000 of creativity is expanding. 00:13:49.000 --> 00:13:52.000 So, there's going to be a tremendous struggle. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:13:55.000 But, also, there's going to be tremendous movement 00:13:55.000 --> 00:13:58.000 from the open to the closed. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:01.000 What you'll see, I think, is two things that are critical, 00:14:01.000 --> 00:14:03.000 and these, I think, are two challenges 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:05.000 for the open movement. 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.000 The first is: 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:10.000 can we really survive on volunteers? 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:12.000 If this is so critical, 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:15.000 do we not need it funded, organized, supported 00:14:15.000 --> 00:14:17.000 in much more structured ways? 00:14:17.000 --> 00:14:19.000 I think the idea of creating the Red Cross 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:22.000 for information and knowledge is a fantastic idea, 00:14:22.000 --> 00:14:26.000 but can we really organize that, just on volunteers? 00:14:26.000 --> 00:14:28.000 What kind of changes do we need in public policy 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.000 and funding to make that possible? 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:32.000 What's the role of the BBC, 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:34.000 for instance, in that world? 00:14:34.000 --> 00:14:36.000 What should be the role of public policy? 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:39.000 And finally, what I think you will see 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.000 is the intelligent, closed organizations 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.000 moving increasingly in the open direction. 00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:48.000 So it's not going to be a contest between two camps, 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:51.000 but, in between them, you'll find all sorts of interesting places 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:53.000 that people will occupy. 00:14:53.000 --> 00:14:56.000 New organizational models coming about, 00:14:56.000 --> 00:14:59.000 mixing closed and open in tricky ways. 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:03.000 It won't be so clear-cut; it won't be Microsoft versus Linux -- 00:15:03.000 --> 00:15:05.000 there'll be all sorts of things in between. 00:15:05.000 --> 00:15:07.000 And those organizational models, it turns out, 00:15:07.000 --> 00:15:09.000 are incredibly powerful, 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:11.000 and the people who can understand them 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:13.000 will be very, very successful. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:13.000 --> 00:15:16.000 Let me just give you one final example 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:18.000 of what that means. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:20.000 I was in Shanghai, 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:22.000 in an office block 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.000 built on what was a rice paddy five years ago -- 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:28.000 one of the 2,500 skyscrapers 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.000 they've built in Shanghai in the last 10 years. 00:15:31.000 --> 00:15:34.000 And I was having dinner with this guy called Timothy Chan. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:36.000 Timothy Chan set up an Internet business 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:38.000 in 2000. 00:15:38.000 --> 00:15:41.000 Didn't go into the Internet, kept his money, 00:15:41.000 --> 00:15:43.000 decided to go into computer games. 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:46.000 He runs a company called Shanda, 00:15:46.000 --> 00:15:50.000 which is the largest computer games company in China. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:53.000 Nine thousand servers all over China, 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:57.000 has 250 million subscribers. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:01.000 At any one time, there are four million people playing one of his games. 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:04.000 How many people does he employ 00:16:04.000 --> 00:16:07.000 to service that population? 00:16:07.000 --> 00:16:09.000 500 people. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:11.000 Well, how can he service 00:16:11.000 --> 00:16:14.000 250 million people from 500 employees? 00:16:14.000 --> 00:16:16.000 Because basically, he doesn't service them. 00:16:16.000 --> 00:16:18.000 He gives them a platform; 00:16:18.000 --> 00:16:21.000 he gives them some rules; he gives them the tools 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:24.000 and then he kind of orchestrates the conversation; 00:16:24.000 --> 00:16:26.000 he orchestrates the action. 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:28.000 But actually, a lot of the content 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:31.000 is created by the users themselves. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:33.000 And it creates a kind of stickiness 00:16:33.000 --> 00:16:35.000 between the community and the company 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:37.000 which is really, really powerful. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:37.000 --> 00:16:40.000 The best measure of that: so you go into one of his games, 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:42.000 you create a character 00:16:42.000 --> 00:16:44.000 that you develop in the course of the game. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:47.000 If, for some reason, your credit card bounces, 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:49.000 or there's some other problem, 00:16:49.000 --> 00:16:51.000 you lose your character. 00:16:51.000 --> 00:16:53.000 You've got two options. 00:16:53.000 --> 00:16:56.000 One option: you can create a new character, 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.000 right from scratch, but with none of the history of your player. 00:16:59.000 --> 00:17:01.000 That costs about 100 dollars. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:04.000 Or you can get on a plane, fly to Shanghai, 00:17:04.000 --> 00:17:07.000 queue up outside Shanda's offices -- 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:11.000 cost probably 600, 700 dollars -- 00:17:11.000 --> 00:17:14.000 and reclaim your character, get your history back. 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:16.000 Every morning, there are 600 people queuing 00:17:16.000 --> 00:17:18.000 outside their offices 00:17:18.000 --> 00:17:20.000 to reclaim these characters. (Laughter) 00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:23.000 So this is about companies built on communities, 00:17:23.000 --> 00:17:26.000 that provide communities with tools, 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:28.000 resources, platforms in which they can share. 00:17:28.000 --> 00:17:30.000 He's not open source, 00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:32.000 but it's very, very powerful. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.000 So here is one of the challenges, I think, 00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:37.000 for people like me, who 00:17:37.000 --> 00:17:40.000 do a lot of work with government. 00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:43.000 If you're a games company, 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:46.000 and you've got a million players in your game, 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:49.000 you only need one percent of them 00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:51.000 to be co-developers, contributing ideas, 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:53.000 and you've got a development workforce 00:17:53.000 --> 00:17:56.000 of 10,000 people. 00:17:56.000 --> 00:17:59.000 Imagine you could take all the children 00:17:59.000 --> 00:18:02.000 in education in Britain, and one percent of them 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:04.000 were co-developers of education. 00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:06.000 What would that do to the resources available 00:18:06.000 --> 00:18:08.000 to the education system? 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:11.000 Or if you got one percent of the patients in the NHS 00:18:11.000 --> 00:18:14.000 to, in some sense, be co-producers of health. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:16.000 The reason why -- 00:18:16.000 --> 00:18:19.000 despite all the efforts to cut it down, 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.000 to constrain it, to hold it back -- 00:18:21.000 --> 00:18:24.000 why these open models will still start emerging 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:26.000 with tremendous force, 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:28.000 is that they multiply our productive resources. 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:30.000 And one of the reasons they do that 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:32.000 is that they turn users into producers, 00:18:32.000 --> 00:18:34.000 consumers into designers. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:36.000 Thank you very much.