in the past Community was local only and
the internet of course has allowed us to
become Global so whatever weird thing
you're into you can you know type in
weird website or type in weird Facebook
group and find a million other people
who are interested in the same thing in
this case this Facebook group has a
million people who are interested in
putting their face in the fan and
hearing their robot voice
I'm personally uh used to be a big meat
eater uh so I can appreciate a nice
meaty meal four years ago I became
vegetarian and a few months ago I became
a vegan uh simply because I care about
the impact in the environment on my own
body and on the
animals so sometimes being a vegan
is lonely and I travel the world and
when I go to restaurants and tell them
I'm vegan often times you know it's
going to be a surprise comes back on my
plate sometimes they give me chicken um
I don't exactly understand what that
means so this particular picture was in
New Zealand where I was there with my
dear friend Jan mcpike and she was nice
enough to call the restaurant Prior and
tell them that a vegan was on the way
and warn them and when we got there the
waitress of of course comes up and says
so who's the vegan and everybody points
to me and uh once we finish laughing
like any social media junkies would do
do we reenacted the moment took a
picture and posted on
Instagram so I knew I was coming to give
this talk and I wanted to do an
experiment with communities so I found a
community called vegan humor which is
90,000 vegans there to make fun of
ourselves about being vegan and the
things that happened to us and I posted
this picture and within 24 hours there
was almost 1,600 people that liked it 39
shares and over 100 comments from other
vegans um sharing their experiences is
uh I got a few marriage proposals as you
can see from the comment there at the
bottom um apparently it's hard to find a
vegan
boyfriend
and
um and uh one more time
um I got although I never met these
people I got really connected to them
and I started talking to them on message
and I got all these invite said you know
when you come to our city we have a
vegan meal for you and I really realized
that you know the day before I was kind
of this lonely vegan being made fun of
at the restaurant and now I had all
these new
friends so my friends I'd like you to
consider
that passion brings all these
communities together and uh in my
opinion passion is everything and other
speakers have talked about this this is
one of my dear friends and one of my
mentors yasu hiku Kimora he's a Buddhist
priest and he says that passion is not
something that you have it's what you
are as a cosmic destiny
in other words at a cellular level who
you are is passion and so when you're
living in your passion you're enlivened
you're free you're attracting other
people that are also living in that
passion and life's
awesome on the flip side of this when
you're not living in your passion it's
it's challenging you're driven You're
motivated and sometimes living in this
unfulfilled
existence and I see that is a big
obstacle for Innovation and I I think
it's you know hiring managers and at
work and in life not vetting for passion
I think that we should use the word
passion talk about it more in life I
think it will make a big difference but
sometimes I think we're scared of the
answer that we're going to get so if you
all think to yourselves being at work
and you're sitting there and you're
looking
at um you know 10 people in the room
going about their business a Gallop poll
about
um
about
the a state of the workplace that was
taken in 2012 in 142 countries said that
only one out of these 10 people are
actually engaged in work the other nine
aren't and they're you know they're
probably spending their time on Facebook
sharing about how they love to speak in
the fan to hear their robot
voice so have we lost track of what's
most
important if we're not being our true
selves and how do we build community so
I'd love for you to close your eyes for
a moment and think for yourself about
your passions and what's your passionate
about are you living your passion on a
consistent basis another way to say this
is are you in love with the moments that
you're
living you can open your eyes now so
there's actually some science behind uh
this elusive passion thing when you're
stimulated when you're living in your
passion the nucleus cumbus is throwing a
party in your brain there's an open bar
and everybody's there and it's great
it's actually one of the it's the it's
the leading part of your brain in the
reward system and it's pumping dopamine
into your
blood uh one place that I want to share
about where the nucleus cumbent is
firing on all cylinders is a sustainable
community in the Panamanian jungle
called Kal yalo that my friend Jimmy sty
founded now over years I had the honor
of being there for days leading my
hugging
workshop and uh on a way to get people
connected and what I observed there was
you know these these people that have
have come from all over the place
there's people that live there there
students and they are waking up at
sunrise jumping out of bed smiling very
kind to everyone and I'm thinking to
myself you know what's going on with
these people and so I asked him I said
you know what why do you live here what
is it that that has you live here and
has you be so excited what they shared
was they said I have a passion for
forests not Fields I have a passion for
building with my hands I have a passion
for
permaculture I have a passion for jungle
animals and i' and I love living in a
community where other people feel the
same and so what I understood with that
that this was a passion playground and I
was there for the same reason and the
beautiful thing about it was there was
200 people there physically including
myself but 50,000 people online and
growing so you know all these people are
on Facebook at the same
time and so what's really interesting
this this slide is by Marcus shingles
the CEO of exerprise the time is is now
and it's only getting better and this
kind of a beautiful Trifecta is
happening where there's an exponential
decrease
in the cost of Social Mobile uh
Computing and big data which is creating
this exponential increase in the number
of people that are connected and it's
bringing together people that have money
organizations that have money and not
enough time with people that have
passion and a time and that's where the
magic is happening it's creating these
communities that are
thriving and look at all the magic here
this is a representation of the million
people in the herox community which is
incentive prize platform that we built
it's a spin-off of the X prize uh coming
from 145
countries and it really makes the world
feel intimate and connected doesn't
it so what we found that's really
interesting in our time doing prizes is
that it's not about the money the money
is this Catalyst that gets people out of
bed or gets people working at night or
gets people working on the weekends
let's say outside of their regular job
to to accomplish something or gets them
to to start a startup
the other thing is that it's not about
the competition it's about the community
so think of a prize as a magnet that's
pulling people
together and these people come on herox
they communicate they share with each
other they debate and they join forces
and teams to accomplish a vision that
they care
about so my passion is bringing people
together in community Through incentive
prizes and I wanted to share with you
some ways that incentive prize have
impacted your lives so an example we
have here is billiard balls billiard
balls used to be made out of Ivory and
and ivory was becoming scarce so a prize
was done and the uh the innovator
created balls out of cellulose which
later became plastic so anyone who's
used plastics it's because of this prize
if anyone's ever flown across the
Atlantic there was a $25,000 prize by
Raymond ortigue he wanted to go from New
York to Paris and Back In One trans
trans Atlantic Flight Legend has it that
he had a girlfriend in Paris he was
tired of having to take a boat to go see
her so he did a $25,000 prize and the
winner of that prize was a novice pilot
Charles Lindberg he'd only been a pilot
for two years and he really kind of
disrupted this aviation industry and
that's very common in
prizes canned goods and jars that came
from Napoleon's prize he needed a way to
preserve food because the conquered
people that uh wouldn't be produc
wouldn't you know sell or or or give
them food so a confectioner named
Nicholas AER uh figured out jars and
cans it was a candy maker one of my
favorite prizes is from my dear friend
and the co-founder of herox Peter
diamandis he wanted to go to space and
he couldn't become an astronaut so he
took matters into his own hands he
created a $2 million prize a $10 million
prize excuse me um for the first team
that could be privately funded go to
space with three people come back down
and do it again within 14 days Richard
Branson bought this
team it became Virgin Galactic and it
created a billion dollar space industry
for the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff
Bezos another amazing prize was the oil
cleanup X Challenge from Wendy Schmidt
$1.4 million prize so the BP oil Bill
happened 200 million gallons were
spilling into the oil over 87 days and
the rate of oil cleanup had been the
same for 20 years since the Exxon Valdes
was 1,00 gallons per minute was the rate
of oil cleanup now we created a prize
that put at 2500 gallons per minute the
team that could could raise it to that
rate all the experts said it couldn't be
done 10 teams beat that number and the
winning team increase the number to
4,400 gallons per minute in 12 months
it's a 400% increase so think about in
your industry what a 400% increase would
look like some of you might be able to
retire so what does it take to to create
a prize well firstly it's it's the
realization the mindset that most of the
brightest people don't work for you they
work for someone else no matter who you
are secondly it's seeing seeing a prize
as an opportunity not a threat bringing
people in from outside of your
organization and there's many companies
that are using this to innovate
including Google Qualcomm uh government
agencies like challenge.gov
NASA um and it's really it's really been
effective for them so one of the things
I found um when speaking to people about
prizes is is that there's kind of these
this this fear especially um you know
with with Executives within an
organization they have this fear of
never having done it before so being
used to having RS rfps where they hire
uh contractors or Consultants this is a
little bit Wild West because you're
putting a prize out and just seeing who
comes to you um being replaced by the
winner somebody smarter than me is going
to figure this out and they're going to
find out you know I didn't and I'm going
to get fired but it's really a tool to
bring these people together and also
losing control of the intellectual
property which we have uh stop gaps in
place for so what we've realized over
doing prizes for 20 years with hero x
and x prize and the other companies are
doing prizes as well is that these fears
are built on false
premise so who are you going to
trust on the left here we have have Tony
Hayward he's the BP the the CE of BP he
represents a 48,000 employees of BP that
were tasked with cleaning up the oil
spill and on the right we have Fred
giovan he's a tattoo artist from Las
Vegas in 2007 Ashley day came into uh
Fred's Tattoo Studio to cover up some
weird lizard tattoo that he had on his
chest
and he started talking about his uh
Focus on cleaning up particles in the
ocean cleaning up that the plastic
island and Fred you know is he got
really inspired and so in the next
session he came back and he built a
prototype design for cleaning up and uh
Ashley said this is a better design than
I've ever seen any of my Engineers
create and so they joined forces and
this became the first submission for the
Wendy Schmid old
prize and ended up more than doubling
the rate of of oil cleanup so you know
think about that next time you think
about who you're going to
trust Kai clofer he's one of my modern
day heroes I was able to interview him
in a webcast this week he is uh an
amazing person and when he was 15 he
started focusing on saving lives through
gun safety he's 18 now and the smarttech
challengers Foundation launched a
million-dollar prize with hero X to the
innovator that
could create a a firearm that reduced
gun death and so uh Kai had been doing
this and he created a barometric firearm
guard and this is you know a fingerprint
guard that works at
99.999% accuracy which we all know is
basically
100%
And um if this prize hadn't been done
Kai probably would have got his funding
and he wouldn't have been able to take
this to
Market so my friends the great Nelson
Mandela once said it always seems
impossible until it's
done what could be possible for you if
you shared your passion and your vision
who would you meet what could you
accomplish so I encourage you starting
today share your passion your vision
with your friends share it with your
social media Network share it with your
email list share share with people at
work share with the people next to
you share with the people that you meet
in the street share with people at a
cafe you never know who may share the
same passion as you and is just waiting
to meet
you I want to support you in this and I
believe in what you want to create much
[Applause]
love