OEB 2015 - Opening Plenary - David Price

(OFF) Thanks very much...

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

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

now it's 22.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But when the colon got reconnected,
it sprung a leak

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

is fatal in 60% of the cases.

What essentially happens with sepsis is

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

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

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

And my wife Claire (check)
who is here somewhere

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

to get through the week-end.

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

since I was in intensive care.

I was in intensive care for a week.

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

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

(laughter)

I'm talking existentially
rather than conversationally.

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

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

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

So I interviewed some people
in the Netherlands

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

They are lay people, computer technicians

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

they said there is nothing more we can do,

so they're administering
endovenous cocktails of drugs.

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

some of which are off-label (check).

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

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

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

is that this is a phenomenon
which is happening

in all kinds of areas of public life.

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

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

So, why is it important?

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

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

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

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

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

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

educators and human resource people. 3:05

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

in which we accredit knowledge
and competencies.

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

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

a high-skilled low-income future,

because of globalization
and a whole range of other issues.

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

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

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

"what you can do with what you know

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

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

we risk being disintermediated.

By that, I mean, learners
can find other ways

to get the knowledge and skills
that they need.

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

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

is to involve users
in the process of innovation.

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

users lead users, accelerate innovation

by either advocating for new products or
services,

tinkering with existing products and
services,

or creating new products and services
from scratch.

That's my kind of working definition,

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

So here's some examples.

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

was invented in 1853 by a chef
called George Crum,

who worked at a restaurant in Saratoga.

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

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

that they were too thickly sliced.

And this kept going backwards and forwards

and eventually George Crum got really
pissed off about this

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

smothered them in salt
and then sent them out.

And the diner loved it.

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

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

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

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

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

But if you bring it
a little more up to date

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

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

it was the best kind of substitute.

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

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

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

and a similar story happened
with the mountain bike.

It was basically cannibalized from
other forms of bikes

and developed entirely by users.

To bring it even more up to date,

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

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

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

but it kind of recreates
in the digital age

the 18th century notion of patronage
for artists.

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

And it has been a hugely successful
venture for Jack.

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

people-powered innovation
at a very early stage

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

and that service now,
which brings in innovation

from outside of the organization,

that constitutes about half
of all their innovations.

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

That's their motto.

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

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

So, where do we see
people-powered innovation?

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

visit forums or interest groups,
even groups like Anonymous,

whatever you may think
of their philosophy,

you can't deny their ingenuity
and innovation.

And I've looked at a number of examples

and I've identified
four common characteristics.

I'm going to quickly go through them.

The first is need, the second is "Jugaad"

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

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

Right. Very quick examples.

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

that invention is indeed the mother
of necessity.

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

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

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

So 85% of mobile transactions
have actually originated

in developing countries.

And 50% of them were created by users.

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

Apple Pay and Samsung Wallet.

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

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

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

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

But they are not just turning air time
into money,

they're turning shit into money too.

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

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

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

"Shit Business is Serious Business".

There is a guy in Lagos in Nigeria
who is

-- and Lagos has a big
public health problem

because people are using
the streets as toilet --

but there is a graphic artist
called Isaac Agbetusin

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

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

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

and then he charges people 10 cents
to use them.

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

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