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Who doesn't love efficiency, I do.
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Efficiency means more for less.
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More miles per gallon,
more light per watt,
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more words per minute, more
for less is the next best thing
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to something for nothing.
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Algorithms, big data, the cloud
are giving us more for less.
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Are we heading toward
a friction-free utopia
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or toward a nightmare of surveillance?
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I don't know.
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My interest is in the present.
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And, I'd like to show you how the past
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can help us understand the present.
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There's nothing that summarizes
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both the promise and
the danger of efficiency
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like the humble potato.
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The potato originated in the Andes
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and it spread to Europe
from the Ancient Incas.
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The potato is a masterpiece
of balanced nutrition.
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And it had some very powerful friends.
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King Frederick the Great of Prussia
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was the first enthusiast.
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He believed that the potato could help
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increase the population
of healthy Prussians.
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And the more healthy Prussians,
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the more healthy Prussian soldiers.
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And some of those
healthy Prussian soldiers
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captured a French military
pharmacist named Parmentier.
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Parmentier, at first, was appalled
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by the morning, noon, and night diet,
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fed to POWs, of potatoes,
but he came to enjoy it.
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He thought they were making
him a healthier person.
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And so, when he was released,
he took it on himself
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to spread the potato to France.
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And he had some powerful friends.
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Benjamin Franklin advised
him to hold a banquet,
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at which every dish included potatoes.
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And Franklin was a guest of honor.
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Even the King and Queen of France
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were persuaded to wear potatoes,
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potato flowers, pardon me.
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The King wore a potato
flower in his lapel,
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and the Queen wore a
potato flower in her hair.
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That was a truly great
public relations idea.
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But, there was a catch.
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The potato was too
efficient for Europe's good.
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In Ireland, it seemed a miracle.
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Potatoes flourished, the population grew.
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But there was a hidden risk.
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Ireland's potatoes were
genetically identical.
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They were a very efficient
breed, called the Lumper.
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And, the problem with the
Lumper was that a blight,
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from South America,
that affected one potato
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would affect them all.
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Britain's exploitation and
callousness played a roll
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but, it was because of this monoculture
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that a million people died
and another two million
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were forced to emigrate.
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A plant that was supposed to end famine
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created one of the most tragic ones.
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The problems of efficiency today
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are less drastic but more chronic.
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They can also prolong the evils
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that they were intended to solve.
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Take the electronic medical record.
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It seemed to be the answer to the problem
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of doctors handwriting
and it had the benefit
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of providing much better
data for treatments.
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In practice, instead, it has meant
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much more electronic
paperwork and physicians
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are now complaining that they have less,
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rather than more time to
see patients individually.
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The obsession with efficiency
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can actually make us less efficient.
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Efficiency also bites
back with false positives.
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Hospitals have hundreds of
devices registering alarms.
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Too often, they're crying wolf.
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It takes time to rule those out.
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And that time results in
fatigue, stress and once more,
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the neglect of the
problems of real patients.
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There are also false positives
in pattern recognition.
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A school bus, viewed from the wrong angle,
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can resemble a punching bag.
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So, precious time is required
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to eliminate misidentification.
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False negatives are a problem too.
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Algorithms can learn a lot, fast.
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But they can tell us only about the past.
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So many future classics get
bad reviews, like Moby Dick.
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Or, are turned down by
multiple publishers,
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like the Harry Potter series.
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It can be wasteful to
try to avoid all waste.
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Efficiency is also a trap
when the opposition copies it.
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Take the late 19th Century,
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French 75 millimeter artillery piece.
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It was a masterpiece of lethal design.
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This piece could fire a
shell every four seconds.
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But that wasn't so unusual.
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But what was really brilliant was that,
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because of the recoil mechanism,
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it could return to the exact same position
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without having to be re-aimed.
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So, the effective rate of firing
was drastically increased.
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Now, this seemed to be a way for France
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to defeat Germany,
the next time they fought.
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But, predictably, the Germans were working
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on something very similar.
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So, when the First World War broke out
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the result was the trench warfare
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that lasted longer than
anybody had expected.
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A technology that was designed
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to shorten the war, prolonged it.
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The biggest cost of all may
be missed opportunities.
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The platform economy
connecting buyers and sellers
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can be a great investment
and we have seen that
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in the last few weeks.
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Companies that are still losing
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hundreds of millions of dollars,
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may be creating billionaires
with initial public offerings.
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But, the really difficult inventions
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are the physical and chemical ones.
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They mean bigger risks.
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They may be losing out
because hardware is hard.
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It's much harder to scale up a physical
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or chemical invention than it is
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a software based invention.
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Think of batteries.
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Lithium-ion batteries in portable devices
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and electric cars are based
on a 30-year-old principle.
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How many smart phone batteries, today,
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will last a full day on a single charge?
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Yes, hardware is hard.
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It took over 20 years for the patents
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on The Principle of Dry Photo Copying,
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by Chester Carlson in 1938,
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to result in the Xerox 914
copier introduced in 1959.
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The small, brave company,
Haloid in Rochester, NY
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had to go through what most corporations
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would never have tolerated.
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There was one failure after another
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and one of the special problems was fire.
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In fact, when the 914
was finally released,
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it still had a device that it was called
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a scorch eliminator but actually
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it was a small fire extinguisher built in.
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My answer to all these questions
is inspired inefficiency.
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Data and measurement are
essential, but they're not enough.
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Let's leave room for human
intuition and human skills.
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There are seven facets
of inspired inefficiency.
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First, take the scenic route,
say yes to serendipity.
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Wrong turns can be productive.
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Once, when I was exploring the east bank
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of the Mississippi, I took the wrong turn.
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I was approaching a toll
bridge crossing the Great River
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and the toll collector
said I could not turn back.
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So, I paid my 50 cents,
that's all it was at the time,
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and I was in Muscatine, Iowa.
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I had barely heard of Muscatine,
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but it proved to be a fascinating place.
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Muscatine had some of the
worlds richest mussel beds.
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A century ago, a third
of the worlds buttons
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were produced in Muscatine,
1.5 billion a year.
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The last plants have closed now,
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but there is still a museum
of the pearl button industry
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that's one of the most
unusual in the world.
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But buttons were only the beginning.
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This is the house in Muscatine,
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where China's future
President stayed in 1986,
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as a member of an agricultural delegation.
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It is now the Sino-U.S. Friendship House
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and it's a pilgrimage site
for Chinese tourists.
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How could I have foreseen that?
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(Laughter)
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Second, get up from the couch.
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Sometimes it can be more efficient
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to do things the hard way.
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Consider the internet of things.
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It's wonderful to be
able to control lights,
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set the thermostat, even vacuum the room
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without leaving ones seat.
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But, medical research has shown
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that actually fidgeting,
getting up, and walking around
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is one of the best things
you can do for your heart.
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It's good for the heart and the waistline.
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Third, monetize your mistakes.
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Great forms can be created
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by imaginative development of accidents.
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Tad Leski, an architect of
the Metropolitan Opera
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at Lincoln Center, was working on a sketch
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and some white ink fell on the drawing.
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Other people might just
have thrown it away,
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but Leski was inspired to
produce a starburst chandelier
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that was probably the most notable
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of its kind of the 20th century.
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Fourth, sometimes try the hard way.
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It can be more efficient
to be less fluent.
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Psychologists call this
desirable difficulty.
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Taking detailed notes with a keyboard
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would seem to be the best way to grasp
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what lecturer is saying, to
be able to review it verbatim.
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However, studies have shown
that when we have to abbreviate,
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when we have to summarize
what a speaker is saying,
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when we're taking notes with
a pen or a pencil on paper,
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we're processing that information.
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We're making that our
own and we're learning
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much more actively than when
we were just transcribing
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what was being said.
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Fifth, get security through diversity.
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Monoculture can be deadly,
remember the potato?
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It was efficient until it wasn't.
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Diversity applies to organizations too.
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Software can tell what has made people
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in an organization succeed in the past.
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And it's useful, sometimes,
in screening employees.
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But, remember the environment
is constantly changing
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and software, screening
software, has no way to tell,
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and we have no way to tell
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who is going to be useful in the future.
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So, we need to supplement
whatever the algorithm tells us
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by an intuition and by looking for people
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with various backgrounds
and various outlooks.
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Sixth, achieve safety through
redundancy and human skills.
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Why did two 737 Max aircraft crash?
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We still don't know the full story
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but we know how to
prevent future tragedies.
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We need multiple independent systems.
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If one fails then the
others can override it.
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We also need skilled operators
to come to the rescue,
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and that means constant training.
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Seven, be rationally extravagant.
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Thomas Edison was a pioneer
of the film industry,
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as well as of camera technology.
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Nobody has done more for
efficiency than Thomas Edison.
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But his cross cutting broke down.
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His manager hired a so-called
efficiency engineer,
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who advised him to save money
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by using more of the film
stock that he'd shot,
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having fewer retakes.
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Well, Edison was a genius
but he didn't understand
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the new rules of feature films
and the fact that failure
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was becoming the price of success.
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On the other hand, some great directors,
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like Erich von Stroheim,
were the opposite.
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They were superb dramatists,
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and Stroheim was also a memorable actor.
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But they couldn't live
within their budgets.
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So that was not sustainable.
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It was Irving Thalberg, a former secretary
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with intuitive genius, who
achieved rational extravagance.
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First at Universal, then at MGM,
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becoming the ideal of
the Hollywood producer.
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Summing up, to be truly efficient,
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we need optimal inefficiency.
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The shortest path may be a curve
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rather than a straight line.
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Charles Darwin understood that.
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When he encountered a tough problem,
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he made a circuit of a trail,
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the sand-walk that he'd
built behind his house.
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A productive path can be
physical, like Darwin's,
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or a virtual one, or an unforeseen detour
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from a path we had laid out.
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Too much efficiency can weaken itself.
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But a bit of inspired
efficiency can strengthen it.
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Sometimes, the best way to move forward
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is to follow a circle.
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Thank you.
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(audience applauding)