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(OFF) Thanks very much...

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(David Price) This is the 
........ - shrinking (check) presentation.

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It was originally 25 minutes,
last night it was 23,

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now it's 22.

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I've got a 45-minute presentation,
I'm just going to speak twice as quickly.

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No, I'm only kidding, it's only 
20 -- 22 minutes.

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And I've got to think of the time 
to make sure I don't go over.

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About four moths ago, I was diagnosed
with cancer of the colon.

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And what was it? Seven weeks ago,
I had the operation

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which kind of went OK, 
got rid of the tumor,

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But when the colon got reconnected,
it sprung a leak

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and I got a thing called sepsis, 
which I later discovered,

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is fatal in 60% of the cases.

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What essentially happens with sepsis is

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the organs start to pack in, 
one after the other, so

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my heart was fibrillating, I lost --
kidneys stopped working,

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lungs stopped working, so they
pumped me on a ventilator.

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And my wife Claire (check)
who is here somewhere

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was told to bring the family around, 
because they didn't expect me

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to get through the week-end.

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As you can see, I survived, and this is
actually the first talk I've given

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since I was in intensive care.

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I was in intensive care for a week.

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So, when a sick -- no, no honest
(Applause)

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But when I say I'm delighted to be here,
I'm not just being polite.

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(laughter)

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I'm talking existentially 
rather than conversationally.

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But I wanted to start with that story
because, in that process of the journey

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from diagnosis to operation,
I met with some remarkable people:

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on forums and ingress (check) groups,
but I also visited and interviewed people.

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So I interviewed some people 
in the Netherlands

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who are treating their loved ones,
who've got end-stage cancer.

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They are lay people, computer technicians

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who, frankly, conventional medicine
has given up, they're stage 4,

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they said there is nothing more we can do,

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so they're administering 
endovenous cocktails of drugs.

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some of which are approved, 
some of which are off-patent,

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some of which are off-label (check).

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I visited a clinic, here in Germany,
which I can't name, because

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they kind of operate in the shadows
in fear that they'll be closed down.

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And what it seemed to me,
once I looked beyond health

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is that this is a phenomenon 
which is happening

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in all kinds of areas of public life.

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That we're seeing what I call 
people-powered innovation.

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And I think it's a real challenge for
institutions and organizations.

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So, why is it important?

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I think it's important because it's
kind of a natural consequence

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of the issues I talk about 
in my book "Open".

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where, now that we're able to share
and exchange knowledge,

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we're now at a point where 
we want to do something about it,

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we want now to be more in control
of our own lives.

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But I think it's particularly important
for the people who are in this room today:

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educators and human resource people. 3:05

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Because one of the things I was seeing
is a major shift in the way

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in which we accredit knowledge
and competencies.

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I don't know if any of you have read
Phillip Brown's excellent book

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called "Tne Global Auction", but he talks 
about how our graduates are facing

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a high-skilled low-income future,

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because of globalization 
and a whole range of other issues.

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And recently, Laszlo Bock who is in charge
of People Operations at Google said this

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"Your degree is not a proxy for your 
ability to any job.

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"The world only case about 
-- and pays off on --

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"what you can do with what you know

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"(and it doesn't care how you learned it)"

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So my point, I guess, is that 
unless we change the product,

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we risk being disintermediated.

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By that, I mean, learners 
can find other ways

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to get the knowledge and skills 
that they need.

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And let's face it, the product hasn't 
really changed much in decades.

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So I'd -- obvious that the best way 
to stay relevant

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is to involve users 
in the process of innovation.

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So this is what I mean by 
people-powered innovation,

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users lead users, accelerate innovation

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by either advocating for new products or 
services,

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tinkering with existing products and 
services,

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or creating new products and services
from scratch.

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That's my kind of working definition,

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based partly on Eric von Hippel's 
definition of people-powered innovation.

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So here's some examples.

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The potato crisp, the home-baked (check) 
potato crisp

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was invented in 1853 by a chef 
called George Crum,

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who worked at a restaurant in Saratoga.

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Now he gets the credit for inventing it,
but I think it should go to

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the disgruntled diner in that restaurant
who kept sending the potatoes back, said

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that they were too thickly sliced.

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And this kept going backwards and forwards

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and eventually George Crum got really
pissed off about this

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and cooked them as thin as he could,
burning them to a crisp,

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smothered them in salt 
and then sent them out.

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And the diner loved it.

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So he thought, oh, we're on to 
something here

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but he didn't take out a patent: in fact,
none of these examples have been patented.

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So, 1853, we've always had 
people-powered innovation.

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In fact, you could argue that up until
the Industrial Revolution,

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that's all we had, we had 
people-powered innovation.

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But if you bring it 
a little more up to date

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I don't know if you know 
the story of the skateboard

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but it was something that surfers, facing 
a wind the way they couldn't surf,

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it was the best kind of substitute.

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So they took a pair of roller-skates, 
chopped them in two,

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put wheels on either end of a plank of wood,
and you had a skateboard.

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So the skateboard industry is now worth
$4.8 billion a year,

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and a similar story happened 
with the mountain bike.

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It was basically cannibalized from 
other forms of bikes

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and developed entirely by users.

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To bring it even more up to date,

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I don't know if you're aware 
of this thing called Patreon?

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It's been set up by Jack Conte
who is a musician.

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Certainly, he wouldn't have thought 
of himself as a kind of entrepreneur

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but it kind of recreates 
in the digital age

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the 18th century notion of patronage
for artists.

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So you pay up artists, 
because you like their work.

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And it has been a hugely successful 
venture for Jack.

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And then one of the few companies
that have really latched onto

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people-powered innovation 
at a very early stage

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is Proctor & Gamble, who have developed 
a thing called Connect and Develop

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and that service now, 
which brings in innovation

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from outside of the organization,

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that constitutes about half 
of all their innovations.

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So much so that Proctor & Gamble say:
"Proudly found elsewhere."

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That's their motto.

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And I wonder how many of us who work
in universities could say the same thing,

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or how many of us who are 
learning officers in companies.

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So, where do we see 
people-powered innovation?

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Well, you can go to any maker space (check)
and you'll see it,

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visit forums or interest groups,
even groups like Anonymous,

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whatever you may think 
of their philosophy,

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you can't deny their ingenuity
and innovation.

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And I've looked at a number of examples

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and I've identified 
four common characteristics.

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I'm going to quickly go through them.

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The first is need, the second is "Jugaad"

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..... (check) if it's not a familiar term to you.

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The third is the hacker ethic 
and the fourth is the sense of agency.

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Right. Very quick examples.

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It's a cliché, but it's a cliché 
for a reason,

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that invention is indeed the mother
of necessity.

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And you get people-powered innovation
where the need is greatest.

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So it's no accident that some of the
most innovative things that we now see

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now are happening in the developed world
in slums and favelas.

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So 85% of mobile transactions 
have actually originated

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in developing countries.

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And 50% of them were created by users.

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And if you think about it, that kind of
paved the way for things like

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Apple Pay and Samsung Wallet.

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The first use of mobile banking
was actually in the Philippines,

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and what people did there was to take
pay-as-you-go top-up vouchers,

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take the code from them, text them
to their friends and families

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in other parts of the Philippines, and
they used it as a kind of currency.

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But they are not just turning air time 
into money,

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they're turning shit into money too.

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[To you it may be SHIT, To us it is MONEY
"Shit Business is Serious Business"]

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This is a genuine sign, 
I didn't make this up

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but it says, if you can't read the bottom
it says

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"Shit Business is Serious Business".

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There is a guy in Lagos in Nigeria 
who is

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-- and Lagos has a big 
public health problem

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because people are using 
the streets as toilet --

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but there is a graphic artist 
called Isaac Agbetusin

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who invented a thing that he called
the Dignified Mobile Toilet.

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They look like the kind of Portaloos 
that you see on building sites

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but he's designed it, built it, 
delivers it to communities

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and then he charges people 10 cents
to use them.

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But that's only part of the story, because
then the waste is collected

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and turned into biogas which is sold
to energy companies. 9:18