The art of innovation | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxBerkeley

Transcriber: TED Translators Administrator Reviewer: Queenie Lee Thank you. Yes, it is true that I am a Stanford graduate. Don't take it against me, okay? My son goes to Cal, so I have some connection to Cal. It's truly an honor to speak at any TEDx, but opening one is really special. Last night I said to my wife, you know, of all places, in your wildest dreams, did you ever think I'd open TEDxBerkeley? And she said, honey, you're not in my wildest dreams. (Laughs) Welcome to my life. (Applause) You know, the topic of thinking, defining and creating has to do with

innovation

, that is why my talk is about the art of

innovation

.

I use the top ten format. This is because I've seen a lot of high-tech speakers, and I will tell you that most high-tech speakers suck, so I discovered very early in my career that if you use the top ten format, at least the audience can follow them. Progress your speech, so if they think you stink, they'll know how much longer you'll continue to stink. So I have ten key points for you. I worked at Apple, I was a venture capitalist, an entrepreneur, a Google advisor, I did many things and learned a lot about innovation, which I would like to pass on to you now. so you can go and change the world.

Well? This is my top ten of the art of innovation. It starts with the desire to give meaning rather than make money. Giving meaning means changing the world. And I think you'll notice that if you change the world, you'll probably make money too, but if you start with the sole desire to make money, you probably won't make money, there'll be no point. , you won't change the world and you will probably fail. So my first thought to you is: determine how you can create meaning. How can you change the world? Here are some examples. With Apple, Apple wanted to democratize computers.

They wanted to bring computing power to everyone. That's the meaning they gave it. With Google they wanted to democratize information, making it available to everyone. With eBay they wanted to democratize commerce so that anyone with the website could compete head to head with any other large retailer. Examples of companies that make sense. And YouTube finally wanted to let people create videos, upload them, and share them. This is an example of the company and the kind of meaning they had. And, as you know, they all gave this kind of meaning and have been very successful. So what I've noticed in my career is that if you really want to create meaning, it's the first step towards innovation.

The second step is to create a mantra: a two or three, maybe four-word explanation of why its meaning should exist. This is an anti-example. This is Wendy's mission statement. Wendy's mission is to provide superior products and services to our customers and communities through leadership, innovation and partnerships. I have passed Wendy's many times in my life: I have eaten at Wendy's; I've driven by Wendy's and every time it has never occurred to me that, "Guy, what you're engaging in is leadership, innovation, and partnerships." (Laughter) You know, excuse me, but I thought I was just going to get fries, Coke, and a hamburger.

This is the problem with mission statements. Don't make a mission statement. Make a mantra. Wendy's mantra should be "healthy fast food." Three words that determine what Wendy's is trying to do. Something contradictory, but "healthy fast food." Nike. Nike has a great slogan: Just do it. That's a slogan. A mantra explains why you should exist, and Nike's mantra is "Authentic Athletic Performance." And finally, there's FedEx. When you absolutely, positively want something somewhere, what does FedEx mean? It means "tranquility." So my second recommendation is that when you decide what kind of meaning you want to give, try to find two or three words that describe why that meaning should exist.

It is not a 50-word mission statement, nor a two- or three-word mantra. The third is a matter of perspective. The perspective is to jump curves. So as not to stay on the same stupid curve you are on. Don't try to do things 10% better. When we were creating the Macintosh, we weren't trying to make a slightly better Apple II or a slightly better MS-DOS machine. We were trying to jump onto the next curve in personal computing. The greatest example of this occurs in the ice business. Ice 1.0. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was an ice harvesting business in the United States.

This meant that Bubba and Jr., during the winter, would go to a frozen lake or pond and cut blocks of ice. In 1900, nine million pounds of ice were harvested. His idea of ​​innovation was: bigger horse, more horses, bigger sled, sharper saw. But the question was fundamental: wait for winter, live in a cold city, cut blocks of ice. 30 years later, we have Ice 2.0. Now we have the ice factory. Great technological advance. It didn't have to be winter; It didn't have to be a cold city. You froze the water centrally and delivered it via the ice man in the ice truck.

Imagine what a breakthrough this was. No more limitations due to weather. No more limitations per season. You could have an ice maker. 30 years pass, we have Ice 3.0. Refrigerator curve. Now, the question is not whether you can freeze water, essentially. Can you put it on a truck? Can you deliver the ice to people? Now everyone could have their own ice factory. A PC, if you will. A personal cooler. (Laughter) The very interesting story of all these curves is that none of the organizations that were ice collectors became ice factories, and the ice factories did not become refrigerator companies, because most companies define themselves themselves in terms of what they do, not the profits.

They provide. If you define yourself as we cut blocks of ice from lakes, you are still an ice harvester. If you define yourself as centrally freezing water, you are still an ice factory. If you define yourself as how we make a mechanical device called a refrigerator, then you stay on the refrigerator curve. Great innovation happens when you get around the next bend, when you go from the phone to the Internet, when you go from a Daisy Wheel printer to a laser printer, to 3D printing. Great innovation occurs around the next bend. The fourth thing is to roll the DICE.

These are the five qualities of great innovation. Great innovation runs deep. Many functions. Lots of functionality. This is a photo of a fan sandal made by Reef. Possibly the deepest sandal ever made. Each sandal has one main purpose: to protect your feet. If you look at that circular area, it's a metal clip. That metal clip is for the sandal to open beer bottles. This sandal has double the functionality. Twice the depth of any other sandal in the world. Great products are smart too. When you look at it, you say, "Aha, someone understood my pain; someone understood my problem." This is a Shelby Mustang GT500. 650 horsepower.

For those of you in Berkeley who don't rate muscle car power, this is 6.8 Prius. (Laughs) I would love to buy one of these cars. 59 years old, mid-life crisis, feeling of helplessness: I would love to... (Laughs) I would love to buy this car to compensate for my feelings of inadequacy. However, I have two teenage children; one is 18 and another is 20. And I know that no matter how carefully I plan, there may be cases where they can drive my car. And thinking about them in a 650 horsepower car is immoral. (laughs) However, I learned that Ford makes a very clever product called MyKey.

And what MyKey allows you to do is program the car's top speed into the key. Very smart product. Great products are also complete. It is the entire product. In the software business, it's not just about the software; It's not just the DVD. It's the webinar; It is the documentation; They are the Android developers if you have an Android phone; They are the iOS developers if you have an iOS phone; It is the totality. Good products are empowering too. They make you more creative, more productive. They enhance you. They change the meaning of your life. This is an image of a MacBook Air.

If you use a Macintosh, it becomes one with you. It makes you more creative and more powerful. More productive. Windows you have to fight. You have to take down Windows. You need to defeat Windows. (Laughs) And finally, great products are stylish. Someone cared about the user interface. So, as you go through life and try to jump curves, ask yourself: "Am I creating something that is deep, intelligent, complete, empowering and elegant? Am I throwing out the DICEE?" The fifth thing is that I stole something from Bobby McFerrin. He had a great song. Don't worry. Be happy. But what innovators do is not care, they are bad, I mean, when you get the first refrigerator, it might have shitty elements in it.

When you get your first laser printer, it may have poor quality elements. When you had the first Macintosh, thanks to my efforts, software did not exist; There was no hard drive, not enough RAM, and a chip that was too slow. It has a lot of crap elements. But, if you waited for the perfect world and waited until the chips were cheap enough and fast enough and everything was in place, you would never ship. And I learned a very valuable lesson. Don't worry. Be bad. When you've jumped onto the next curve, it's okay for your revolution to have poor quality elements.

I'm not saying you should send junk. What I'm saying is that in the next curve you have to send things that are revolutionary, innovative and have elements of crap. Biotech people, ignore this slide. (Laughter) Number six is ​​letting 100 flowers bloom. I stole this from Chairman Mao, although it is not clear to me if he ever implemented it. Letting 100 flowers bloom means that at the beginning of a great innovation, you may think that you have in mind exactly who your user is, exactly who your customer is, and what they should do with your product. And you may be surprised to learn that people will use your product in ways you didn't anticipate.

They will be people you didn't anticipate using it at all. And when this happens: hallelujah! Thank God it's happening. Ultimately, positioning and branding comes down to what the consumer decides, not what you decide. So with the Macintosh, we thought we had a spreadsheet, a database, and a word processing machine. There we were zero for three. What made Macintosh successful was Aldus PageMaker. PageMaker created a field of flowers called desktop publishing. Desktop publishing was what saved the Macintosh. Not spreadsheets, databases or word processors. If we focused on spreadsheets, databases, and word processors and ignored desktop publishing, Apple would be dead today.

With Apple dead, it would be a different world. We would all have phones with real keyboards; the batteries would last more than a day; GPS would really work. It would be a different world, right? Aldus PageMaker was a gift from God to Apple because he saved Apple. I believe in God, and one of the reasons I believe in God is that there is no other explanation for Apple's continued survival than the existence of God. (Laughter) Let 100 flowers bloom. Don't be proud. Do your best with positioning and branding, but then when customers use your product, if they say it's a desktop publishing machine: Hallelujah!

Declare victory. Now it's a desktop publishing machine. Number seven, polarize people. Great products, great services, and great innovation polarize people. This is a TiVo. People like me, who travel a lot, love TiVo. We have four TiVos in our house. I need to change the timing of a lot of television; I love watch TV. There are people who hate TiVo too. People who hate TiVo usually work for big brands and advertising agencies, because people like me watch advertising one day a year. About a week ago, right? We watch Super Bowl ads. The rest of the year, we moved quickly with TiVo through ads.

Great products polarize people. If you're an agency, you hate TiVo. If you're me, you love TiVo. You can love or hate a Harley-Davidson. You can love or hate a Macintosh. You can love or hate an iPhone. I'm not saying you should intentionally make people angry, but I am telling you that great products polarize people. Don't be afraid to polarize people. The number eight is abandonment, darling, abandonment. This is stolen from the Black Panthers, who said "burn, baby burn." But what innovators do in business is abandon, abandon babies. They take version 1 and turn it into 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.0; the most difficult thing in the world.

Because to be an innovator it is necessary to deny it. You have to deny it because the detractors will tell you that it can't be done, that it shouldn't be done, that it isn't necessary. You have to ignore those people. But as soon as you ship, you need to change that point and start listening to people and churning out your product. Change it, change it, change it, and keep evolving it. Number nine is all the marketing you need to know. It's carving out a space. It is a very simple graph. On the vertical axis we measure theuniqueness.

On the horizontal axis we measure the value. This is a 2 × 2 matrix. When you graduate, if you go to work for McKinsey, you will be paid five million dollars to make people realize that they want to be in the upper right corner of this graph. (Laughs) Let's go through all the corners, the bottom right is where you have something of great value but it's not unique. There you have to compete on price. This is what I call Dell's corner. Put the same operating system on the same hardware. You have to compete on price. In the opposite corner you have something truly unique.

Only you do it, but it has no value. In that corner you are just stupid. (laughs) Bottom left corner, we call it USC corner. The bottom left corner... (Laughter) (Applause) (Applause) The bottom left corner is what I call the .com corner. In the .com corner, you have something that is not valuable and not unique. How to buy dog ​​food online. We buy dog ​​food online. You pay the same amount for the dog food, because of shipping and handling, and then you have to be home when UPS delivers the dead cow in the can. So it's not very convenient and it's just as expensive, so it's worthless.

And then stupid people like me, because pets.com existed, decided we had to have our own wallet at pets.com, so there were multiple ways to spend the same amount of money on dog food, less conveniently. That's the worst corner. Not valuable. It is not unique. If you want to be there, it's in the upper right corner. In that corner you are unique. Where I go to the movies I can only buy tickets with Fandango. When you take kids to the movies, you really want to know you have a ticket before you go. By the way, can I recommend the Lego Movie?

It's a fantastic movie. Believe me when I tell you. Go see the Lego movie. Fandango. The only way to buy a ticket. Breitling emergency watch. The only watch that can save your life. Pull out the big knob and it emits an emergency signal. That watch can save your life. Smart car. Everyone has cars that they can park parallel to the sidewalk when there is plenty of parking. How many of us have a car that can park perpendicular to the sidewalk, right? If you are an engineer, make a product unique and valuable. If you are a marketing person, you communicate to the world that your product is unique and valuable.

Number ten, perfect your speech. If you are an innovator, you have to learn how to launch. Two key points about the launch. First, personalize your introduction. Start with something personalized to the audience. This is a picture of an LG washer and dryer. I used these images to present my speech in Latin America when I spoke to LG management. However, to tell you the story behind this, I was already in Brazil when I thought, well, I should use the image of our LG washer and dryer. So I had no photographs, nothing that I took with me, you know?

Photos of your washer and dryer. So I texted my two oldest sons, one of whom is in the audience right now. His name is Nic, older boy. The youngest boy, Noah. So I sent them a message saying, you know, leave the Call of Duty that I bought you on the Xbox that I bought you in the house that I bought you. Take your iPhone that I bought you; Go downstairs, both of you, take pictures of the LG washer and dryer. I need it immediately. 15 minutes pass and nothing happens, right? So again, Nic is the older guy.

He is the cowboy. The other is still in high school. So this is what happens. This is the text message. I send Nic a text. Did you get my text because I don't see the photos? Nick replies that Noah, his younger brother, said he would take the pictures. By the way, can you get us some free TVs? (Laughs) Welcome to my life. And then you see my bottom answer. I don't think so, Nico. Welcome to my life. The key here is to personalize your introduction. When I spoke in Moscow, I started with this slide and said, "Wow, you Russians have big balls." (laughs) In Istanbul, I opened up with this photo of me in the Grand Bazaar.

That guy behind me is the shopkeeper. He is really happy. Do you know why he is so happy? Because he's thinking: this stupid American tourist is going to buy this fez. (Laughs) This fez has been in my family for three generations. I finally found someone stupid enough to buy this fez. Believe me when I tell you that if you open a speech in Istanbul with something like that, an image like that, the audience owns you. Customize your introduction. More about slides. Presentation rule 10, 20, 30. The optimal number of slides in a presentation is ten. Ten. Now, you're all Cal people.

You're not stupid. You know I'm already over ten. You may be thinking that I'm a hypocrite. How should I explain this? I'll explain this to you: you're not me, okay? (Laughs) Ten slides. You should be able to present these ten slides in 20 minutes. Yes, you may have a one-hour gap, but to this day, unfortunately, 95% of the world uses Windows laptops. Those people need 40 minutes to get the projector working. (Laughs) And the last thing is that the optimal font size is 30 points. A good rule of thumb is to choose the oldest person in the audience; Divide your age by two: 60 years divided by two, 30. 50 years divided by two, 25 points.

Someday, you might be pitching to a 16-year-old VC. On that day, God bless you. Use 8 point font. (laughs) Eleven, as a bonus for my friends here at Cal: don't let the Bozos crush you; They will try to crush you. The more innovative you are, the more they will try to crush you. There are two types of Bozos in the world. I'm a Bozos expert, okay? Two types of Bozos. Scruffy, disgusting, pocket protector, body odor, just a loser. Rusty car. Japanese clock. You look at him and say, "Wow, what a loser!" That person is not dangerous because he is obviously a loser, only a loser would listen to that loser.

Since you are not losers, you will not listen to that person; Therefore, that person is not dangerous. The dangerous Bozo dresses all in black. The dangerous Bozo owns many things that end in "I". Like Armani, Maserati, Lamborghini, Ferrari, okay? (laughs) Audi is fine, a rare exception. (Laughter) That's the dangerous Bozo because you think the rich and famous analytics are too smart. But the rich and famous analytics are too lucky, not smart, at least half the time. So I think Bozosity is like the flu: you need to be exposed to Bozosity so that by the time you encounter a big Bozosity, you've already developed the antigens.

I'm going to expose you to some bozo. "I think there's a global market for maybe five computers." Thomas Watson of IBM. Five computers. I have five Macintoshes in my house. In other words, today I have in my house all the computers that he anticipated in the world. "This phone has too many deficiencies to seriously consider it as a means of communication. The device has no value to us." Western Union, internal memo, 1876. Western Union canceled telephony in 1876. Western Union should be PayPal today. Oops! (laughs) There's no reason why anyone would want to have a computer in his-Ken Olsen's house.

Great innovator, great entrepreneur, he said this about computers. There is no reason to have a computer at home. How many have a computer at home today? Because according to Ken Olsen there is no reason. He was a great innovator, an extremely good businessman, but he was so successful at, say, the ice maker curve, that he failed to appreciate the next curve, the refrigerator curve. And that is the art of innovation. Thank you so much. (Applause) (Applause)