Translator: Galia Cukierman Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Seventy percent.
70% of businesses are closing down within 10 years.
More than half of them within the first year.
This is a crazy number.
Just think about all the people that you know
that started a business and failed.
Might be your parents, your spouse, your partners.
All the shattered dreams, the life savings,
the days and nights they put into it,
the love, the passion.
All gone, now.
And as crazy as this number is,
what really got my attention,
was the fact that this number hasn’t changed much for the past 20 years.
So much has changed around us, yet this number stayed the same.
One thing is for sure,
it is much easier and cheaper to run a business nowadays,
than ever before in history.
I remember when only 10 years ago,
when we moved to a new office,
we invested 15,000 dollars
in putting together a computer network,
just so we could share files.
Something that we all do now for free using Dropbox.
And the same goes for marketing using social media,
manufacturing and even global distribution.
Everything is so much easier.
So, how come in this abundance of resources,
we couldn’t change the statistics of failing businesses?
This question is what started my journey, 15 years ago.
If it's not about the cost or the lack of resources,
what is it all about?
So, let me take you back
to what is probably one of your earliest childhood memories regarding business.
I'm sure you all played the game of monopoly, right?
Well, how do you win monopoly?
The only way to win every game of monopoly
is by making sure you bankrupt all the other players.
(Laughter)
Wow, what a powerful life lesson, huh?
I am really glad my kids got to learn it.
And you might think it is only a game,
but we copy paste this mindset into business.
Because business is a game.
The question is: what kind of a game?
Actually, any system that you ever been a part of
is a game.
Money, education, corporates, marriage.
And by that I don’t mean that it should be taken lightly.
I mean that there is a specific game mechanism
designed into it.
And that mechanism is a fear-based one.
Fear of losing money, losing your business, losing your spouse,
you name it.
So, you might ask yourself, what's wrong with that?
Well, the more we fear,
the less creative and daring we are,
and we are compromising our self-expression.
Which is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing
in order to succeed.
From the board game of Monopoly to the Ivy League universities,
we have been thought that business is a competition.
It’s a war to be fought
over limited resources.
Dog eat dog.
And we have to fight each other all the way to the finish line.
But this is not the true story of economy.
Because you might think
that every time someone pays you money for your products or your services,
then now you have more money and they have less.
Your prosperity comes on their expense.
But that is not the true story.
Because whenever you sell something, you bring value into the market,
and the entire pie expands.
Everyone has more.
Over the past 55 years,
the global population doubled to over seven billion people.
So, what?
Do we all have to share the same resources,
but now with more people?
According to the World Bank
the global GDP grew
from around 11 trillion dollars in 1960
to almost 80 trillion dollars nowadays.
Eight times more money and products into the market.
Eight times more!
You've got to remember that.
There is always money coming into the game.
So, once I realized that we are playing the wrong game of business,
I knew that I have to do something about it.
It took me about six years to design, test, and redesign
until I crafted a new game of business.
And It’s called FreshBiz.
But before I go deeper into that,
I want to take you on a little visit back to the classroom.
Remember, when you were at school,
and the teacher used to write on the chalkboard
with a little piece of chalk.
And remember what happened
when she accidentally missed and scratched the board?
Did you just feel it?
Who just felt that? Those goosebumps?
(Laughter)
This is really interesting
because your brain just generated a physical reaction in your body
where there is actually no board, no chalk, no teacher, no nail.
It was only a mental picture.
And this is exactly the power of games
because our brain cannot distinguish between what’s real or not.
Simply a mental picture triggers the neurons in your brain
to fire off a specific sequence to do a specific task.
So for example when you play a game,
and your goal is to make as much money
by destroying all the other players,
this is exactly what your brain is now wiring as a skill.
And the more you play, the more you reinforce,
the harder is the rewiring of your brain.
But same goes if in the game you have to form a collaboration
or make a creative move,
your brain will start rewiring itself to those specific skills.
So, how do you design a game that will make us smarter
and will give us the right skills for what is needed in today’s economy?
So, when I was designing FreshBiz,
I decided to focus on three major elements:
collaboration, creativity and pro-activity.
The first thing that I wanted to do
is to get rid of the last-man-standing, zero-sum game of Monopoly.
So, the game of FreshBiz is what we call a collaborative quest.
You have to get to the island, and you have 90 minutes to do so.
Basically, you have to bring the best version of yourself
to overcome the challenges in the game
so you can win the game before the time is up.
By definition, more than one can win the game
because you have 90 minutes.
And the more collaborative you are,
the better chances you will have in winning the game.
Now, same goes for life.
Life is the ultimate time-based game.
You want to get to whatever you decide is your island, before the time is up.
And the more you will be collaborative with other people,
better chances you will have in winning that game.
This is exactly what we did in FreshBiz
and how we took our small boutique company
and turned it into a global company
serving tens of thousands of people in over 20 countries,
with no offices and no employees.
We simply saw other training companies
as our potential collaborators instead of competitors.
We gave them our game as a training tool,
and we created a collaborative quest
with the goal of uplifting the global mindset.
So, once we took care of collaboration,
now we can handle creativity.
What is creativity?
Creativity is the ability to put together different resources in a new way
that has never been done before
and create something new that has value.
So in the game of FreshBiz
you have over 10 different dimensions you can play.
From starting businesses to stock market, to taking loans,
using action cards and many more.
By putting them together in new ways,
by making the game multi-dimensional,
basically you can generate endless forms of combinations
to generate creative ideas.
And the more creative you are,
more resources will be introduced into the game.
And just as economy,
the pie is always expanding.
Actually, you cannot win the game without expanding the pie,
same as economy.
And on top of all of that, you are always in the game.
So in the game of FreshBiz, you do not have to wait your turn
to make a move.
You see an opportunity, you act on it.
You use your action cards, you form a collaboration.
You don’t have to be the one holding the dice
to move in the game.
Because for so many years, we have been told to wait our turn.
First go to school, then go to college,
then find a job,
then bring your value to the market.
But that doesn’t work anymore.
So, what does it mean that you do not have to wait your turn?
It means that you don’t have to graduate before you start Facebook.
You simply start Facebook.
And maybe graduate and maybe not.
As my partner Simcha says, “Look for opportunities, not approval.”
In the next 30 years,
urban population is going to grow from 3.9 billion to 6.4 billion people.
Those are 2.5 billion new customers for local businesses.
This is an exceptional opportunity
to come up with new businesses
because those cities and those citizens
will need new and smart solutions
of transportation, education, culture,
food, fun, fashion, and so much more.
Those are really exceptional days
for millions of people to be able to start
smart, sustainable and very profitable businesses.
But ...
we will have to change the game!
We will have to upgrade the mindset
to one which is more collaborative, more creative, more proactive.
Just imagine kids at school and MBA students
learning those skills while having fun.
And think about business executives
playing together a game of collaborative quest
with their so called "competitors,"
to bring those smart ideas into the market.
For me, that was my journey for the past 15 years.
From the realization,
to designing the game,
to selling our house to invest in the company,
which I have my lovely wife to thank for, Anat, she is here in the audience.
To traveling the globe for the past seven years
with my awesome partner Simcha, who is also somewhere in the audience.
Training thousands and thousands of people
from big companies to students, to entrepreneurs.
And I can tell you one thing.
The old game of business is broken.
It is not going to work for you anymore.
We've got to change it.
Now, you might think that changing the global mindset is hard work.
Well, it is sometimes.
But I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen,
for you personally,
simply start by changing the game you play.
And this in return
will change the way you play life.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)