Greece in 2030: on top of innovation | John Danner | TEDxAcademy

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Trusted advisor, teacher, author, and speaker. Has spent decades helping leaders and their organizations navigate rapidly changing environments to their advantage.

Do you want to know what it is?

This is your last chance.

There is no turning back.

If you take...

(Applause)

If you take the blue pill,

you can wake up in your seats
and believe anything you would like.

But if you take the TEDx pill,

you can stay in TED land,

and I will give you a glimpse
of how Greece has escaped the matrix,

and become a world leader
in innovation by the year 2030.

What's your choice?

Blue or TED?

(Audience) TED.

John Danner: A very good choice

because the other folder is empty.

(Laughter)

Give me just a second.

I'm reading a letter from 2030.

But this is not really a story
about where we are in 2030.

It's a story about how Greece
got us from 2016 to 2030.

How it actually is a story
about three worlds:

the world of 3.0, 2030,

the world of 2.0, the world of 2016

- specifically, October 1, 2016 -

and the ancient world of 1.0.

Greece was instrumental
in ushering 1.0 into 2.0.;

it did it in an amazing way.

It did it through answering
questions that the world had.

The world had questions,

Greece and Greeks had answers.

The world asked, "How is it possible

that a small force can move something
much heavier, much bigger?"

Who answered?

The Greeks did.

Archimedes discovered
the principles of leverage,

and this was not
just a discovery of physics,

this was a metaphor for Greek leadership
in the Ancient World.

The multiplier effect
of the power of ideas,

the power of suggested answers

to the important questions
the world AT the time was asking.

The world asked,
"Who should govern our societies?"

(Audience) The Greeks did!

JD: Thank you. That's exactly right,
the Greeks answered yet again.

Why not the people?

And democracy was born.

The Greeks asked, the world asked,
"Where are we? Where are we going?"

Who answered that question?

The Greeks did.

With Homer. With Eratosthenes;

Creating maps,
the beginning of cartography

and not just cartography but geography.

The world asked,
"Why are we here as human beings?"

And philosophers answered.

But who really had the answer?
The Greeks did.

They taught us logic, they taught us
to focus on the important question.

The world asked, "When should I wake up?
When is that meeting?"

Plato answered with an alarm clock.

I'm not sure that's really that much
of a contribution to world progress,

it's certainly not a contribution
to leisurely wake-ups,

but it was really the beginning
of time-management,

which itself is a principle
and leverage point for productivity.

Greece didn't wait
until the world asked questions.

Who invented epics? Tragedies?
Comedies? Drama?

The Greeks did.

They created stories
that gave us lessons in life through art.

Greece did all of this
by recognizing the power of ideas,

the transformative, multiplier power
of ideas in the world.

Answering questions
that its world at the time was asking.

How does it go
from world 1.0 to world 2.0?

The difficulty is that on October 1, 2016,
Greece was hurting.

You don't need to tell me
about how bad it was then -

disillusionment, anxiety, disappointment,
frustration, anxiety about the future.

In some ways, Greece was caught
in a matrix of its own.

It was missing in the ranks
of world leaders.

You could look at innovative economies,

and Greece was nowhere to be found
in the top 25, the top 30, the top 35.

These are just countries
that are as big or smaller than Greece.

It was nowhere to be found
in something that really hurt,

and that is: the most creative
societies in the world.

Because let's face it:
Greeks invented creativity.

But not to be found in the list
of most creative countries is galling.

Unfortunately, also, at least
a half a dozen countries,

smaller than Greece,
ended up on all three of these lists.

Some Greeks looked at this list
and they said, "Who cares?

Those countries are too cold, they're
too boring, they're too controlling,

they have lousy food, there's no dancing."

(Laughter)

But other Greeks saw this
as a challenge and as a quest,

a quest to re-take the position of Greece

as synonymous
with innovation in the world.

They embarked upon this challenge.

How can 11 million Greeks outshine

at least the 55 and a half
million residents

of the other small countries in the world,

who were leading them in most creativity
and most innovative economies?

So, how did it do this?

It did it by applying
lessons from the past.

It applied the lesson of power of ideas,
it used the principle of leverage.

It knew that it attained positions
of world respect and leadership

not because of military might,
not because of land,

and not because of the size
of the population

but because of the power
and force of ideas.

It became really not about
celebrating or mourning the past,

or commiserating about the future

but about projecting
a new form of intellectual ideas.

What was interesting about this

is that it was Greek's inventions
of mathematics that led to science,

that led to the information revolution,
that created the basis of algorithms.

Those are the languages of world 2.0.

But Greeks decided in 2016

they wanted something a little more Greek
than just the word algorithms.

So they looked into history,
into their mythology,

and they found Jason.

And more importantly, they found
the name of his boat, the Argo.

Greeks created five "argorithms,"

principles to become
the language of world 3.0,

to answer the new questions
beseeching mankind.

These were principles of innovation
that the country got behind,

and why not?

It was Greek's ideas
that led to democracy,

that led to the information revolution;

why couldn't it also be Greek's ideas
that lead to the revolution of inclusion?

After all, you folks invented
the word "innovation."

You might as well own it and project it.

So let me tell you
these five "argorithms."

You can't remember your way to the future.
You have to invent and build it.

Argorithm 2:
Bureaucracy stifles innovation;

stop it first in classrooms,
in the office, and in government.

The killing of ideas is a crime
against possibility, and we're all guilty.

Argorithm 4: Failure
is today's lesson for tomorrow.

If you're serious
about innovation, entrepreneurship,

you have to be serious
about its dance partner,

which is more often than not, failure.

And finally, Argorithm 5:

The status quo is the static quo;

the biggest single obstacle to change,
leadership, and innovation in the world.

In effect, Greece went from a focus on
celebrating its past, as Ancient Greece,

to becoming something much more attuned
with the questions of the world 3.0.;

a prescient Greece,
a Greece that could anticipate

the most important questions
of the future,

and was prepared to leverage and project

the force of those ideas
and that creativity in the future

the way that it had done in the past.

How did it do it?

First, it positioned itself as
a completely new kind of market place.

If you will, an iGora.

A market place of ideas,
the way it was in the past.

It did that in schools,
it did that in government offices,

it did it in businesses.

It began to suggest answers to questions

like,"Who wins?" and "Who loses?"

Who answered those questions?
The Greeks did.

Creating a home for inclusion.

In 2017, Greece announced
the Lesbos Prize of Welcome

to identify, recognize, and celebrate

the accomplishments of communities
and nations around the world

who followed Greece's examples
in dealing with the refugee crisis.

The question, "What's next?" --
the world always asks that.

What's Greece's answer to, "What's next?"

It became a home of not disruptive
innovation but irruptive innovation,

inviting school classes all over
the country, businesses, laboratories,

to suggest new answers and new ideas.

How will we save our planet?
Greece had an answer.

The answer was, "How about
a new form of international competition?"

The Opa! lympics of eNnovation --

celebrating accomplishments
not about national medal count

but about solutions
that can benefit all mankind.

These things didn't cost much money,
but they did take leadership.

They did take imagination,
they took inspiration.

And when I thought about that,

and I thought about the tremendous
trajectory that Greece has made,

I thought about
one other Greece invention,

and that's the lighthouse.

The lighthouse shows sailors how to
navigate around hazards they don't see,

it looks beyond what most people can see,

and it finds solutions
and answers to problems

that people are perplexed by.

In 2030, that lighthouse showed

the results of the previous 14 years.

Greece had once again
reclaimed its position

as number 1 in the world
of most innovative countries.

And oh, by the way,
those other countries that we saw earlier,

let them all fight for number 2, 3, or 4.

So, you took the red pill,

you took the TED pill.

This is what you did in 14 years.

14 years!

Am I crazy?

Guess what?

Your ancient predecessors
built that monument

to creativity, to vision
in half that time.

(Greek) Thank you.

(Applause)