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You know we all know that
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we are moving from a very, very industrial economy
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to a knowledge economy, to a creative economy.
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But what does this really mean?
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How do we learn to prepare for this new economy?
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The first thing we need to figure out is:
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we need to create a community of people,
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people that are sitting right here,
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to open up our imagination
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and then turn our imagination into impact.
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Now even that, what does 'that' mean?
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I have a confession to make.
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I work at Intel, for many years.
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And I am from India.
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So the only two ways I know how to learn
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is either through acronyms,
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or through stories.
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That's it.
I can't learn any other way.
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So I thought I will subject to you the way I learn.
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So A.P.P.S.
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Everybody has apps these days.
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There's an app for waking up,
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app for sleeping app, app for everything.
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But let me tell you my definition of apps.
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You know in Indian mythology,
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or in Indian philosophy,
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we said that there are four stages of life.
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There's childhood, youth,
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at age where you are responsible, you're head of the household.
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and then ultimately Nirvana.
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You know, you retire and then you make your final journey.
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So if you think of, what does each of this age entail?
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So the first thing is A.P.P.S.
In the A, is
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Ask.
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What does a child do all the time?
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They keep asking.
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Why is the sky blue?
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Why are we going there?
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Why are we not going there?
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Are we there yet?
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Why?
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They keep asking.
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Because that's the way they learn.
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And the next thing is Practice.
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You know a kid gets up, walks, falls down,
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gets up, walks, falls down, and that's how they learn.
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We need to practice our ideas over and over and over again.
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And then, we have to become the head of the household.
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We have to figure out how our ideas are gonna
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actually create an impact out there and make a profit,
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so that we have the whole world sustainable around us.
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And finally, the S is the most important part of this.
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is that every learning has a stage
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when you need to Surrender to the next generation.
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Because otherwise you'll never let someone else come.
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And when I say next generation,
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I don't mean somebody younger necessarily
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but maybe the next person who has been working with you.
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So you need to know when to complete that.
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So in this A.P.P.S,
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You know we ask, we practice, we create a profit,
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we surrender.
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Now, in the past, we used to do this only once in our lifetime.
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Then, maybe in my generation, we do it three or four times.
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But in the new generation that's coming out,
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including all of us who is here
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who's planing to live for another 20, 30 years,
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we rather learn how to do this
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over and over and over again.
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So there is a circle there with no particular arrows
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because it's an infinite "do loop".
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We have to ask, we have to practice,
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we have to profit from it,
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we have surrender ourselves.
Go on to the new idea.
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And this is a paradigm
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of the new generation of the new economy is that
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we have to learn to let go and keep on.
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And to remember this I'll tell you one quick story.
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There is a movie called "6 Degrees of Separation"
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which is one of my favorite movies.
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And in that, you know, Donald Sutherland is telling
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this story of this teacher of his child.
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Since I go to my child's school,
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and I asked the teacher:
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"What is it about you?
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Look at the paintings of the second grade.
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They are blotches of black and blue.
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Look at the paintings of the fourth grade.
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They are… you can't even understand.
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But the third grade, every painting is a Picasso.
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What is your secret?
Let me learn with you."
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And the teacher says,
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"I just know when to take the painting away from them."
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So knowing when to give up
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is the most best skill we need to learn.
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Now the second thing is,
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this is Taiwan, this is the country of manufacturing.
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When I say B.O.M,
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what do people think?
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They think of bill of materials, right?
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But I want to give you a different definition of
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it after I tell you a few quick stories.
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Bill of materials is what is the content of things,
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what is in something.
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I want to introduce you to a few people
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who truly are my heroes.
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I mean these are the heroes of the new generation.
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This boy Sushant Patnaik.
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When he was about 15 years old,
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he went to the hospital and saw someone
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who was paraplegic
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and felt really about the person
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not being able to move.
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So he figured out what is common
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between him and the person who can not move
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is breath.
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So he created a wheel chair
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that moves through breath
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when he was aged 17.
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And since then he is all of 20 right now.
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He has already invented, you can make
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cell phone calls using breath,
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you can turn light on and off using breath.
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So he's dedicate to this idea.
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And this is Nam Do,
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who runs a company called Emotiv.
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And what this is, is that by thinking something,
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you can move objects on the screen.
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So what is the power of our thinking
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in making things happen in the physical world?
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Arunachalam, he is a 6th-grade-failed,
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and he was sitting at his house one day
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and he saw his wife was using rags
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when she had her periods.
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And he decided to invent the sanitary napkin
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that is affordable for women.
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So that over 90% of the women in India
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and around the world who can not afford
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to wear a sanitary napkin would be able to use this invention.
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And to do that, he had to sacrifice a lot of things,
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because people thought he was weird.
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First of all, a guy trying to do this was weird enough.
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So when he couldn't find anybody to experiment
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to find out if the sanitary napkin is working or not,
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he actually wore it.
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And he took pig's blood,
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and connect it to the sanitary napkin.
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He'd be riding bikes, he'd could be walking everywhere,
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pumping this, to test how this works.
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I mean it takes guts to do this
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for a man from a small town.
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Elora Hardy is building homes out of bamboos.
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Not just any home, luxury homes out of bamboo.
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Mansukhbai, he has created a refrigerator
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that runs through water that does not require electricity
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that keeps food cold for at least 2-3 days.
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And Maira Kalman,
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who is the illustrator with 'The New Yorker',
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who's a children's book artist.
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And Tod Machover who is the music composer,
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who's creating symphony of cities.
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He collects sounds of the cities and creates symphonies out of them.
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And the reason I'm talking about
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all of these people is that in my mind the B.O.M
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actually stands for
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Billionaires of Moments.
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And one of my favorite quotes is that:
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"Life ought not to be measured by the number of breaths we take,
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but by the number of moments that take our breath away."
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So each of these person that I've talked to you about
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is creating a world where there are many, many
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precious moments that are collected for the people around them.
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That's the billionaires that we all should aim to become.
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We should be greedy about collecting these moments.
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And finally,
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when we do this, when we do these crazy things,
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when we do these out-of-the-box things,
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when we do this nobody believes in,
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there are times you wonder
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"Why am I doing this?"
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You know there was a time
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when I used to love climbing mountains.
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So in the middle of the night
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you know you are up in some snow mountain,
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and it's cold as hell.
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And you are thinking of
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"What the heck am I doing here?"
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You know?
And then you go down
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and then like an idiot next weekend
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again you're back up again.
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So what is this craziness that makes us all move?
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It is this word I want you to remember: one.
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Yi.
Ek.
Any language.
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one
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we should always think of one person
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or one incident
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something in our life
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that makes us go forward.
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And, to me, is this girl.
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I called her my flower girl.
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And I met her about 5 years ago.
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And she is in a home
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which rescues sex workers.
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And she was one of the girls that was rescued.
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she was about 6-years-old
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when was rescued.
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And she was brought home
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and she was taking care of.
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And then,
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um...you know she's mentally challenged.
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So they put her at the home.
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And they found out, two years later,
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that in that home she's been abuse again.
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So they brought her back to the home,
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and Sunitha Krishnan who runs this organization
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spoke in the conference just like this in India at TED.
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And she shared her story about
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how difficult it is to create a home
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for women like this who get rescued.
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Because no one wants them living in their neighborhood.
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And just like you
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there were people sitting in the audience.
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They got up.
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And we actually work with her for 6 months.
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And we got her enough money
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to build the home
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for all the women.
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So that 18 months from the time
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she stood and shared her story,
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there's a home where all these women were living.
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And to me, I felt that
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this girl, this face,
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is what haunted me.
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I felt I wanted to give her a home
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at least for one day
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where she was happy.
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And they built the home
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and pretty soon after that,
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she died.
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Because at age 9 or 10,
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by the time she was rescued for the second time,
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her body was ravaged with so much disease
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that she could not survive anymore.
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But to me,
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every time I think of the crazy things that we do,
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every time I think of all these
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billionaires of moments we are trying to create,
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every time we are sitting here biting our nails
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wondering if we are ever gonna make it through the year,
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and every time when I wonder,
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should I just go back and get a job,
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I just think of this face.
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And I think of the story with which I'm gonna end.
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And the story is of a little boy and starfish.
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And this boy goes to the beach,
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and there's millions of starfish out there.
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And this boy is taking each starfish
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and putting it back into the ocean.
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And then the waves come and wash a few more starfish
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and he keeps doing it.
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Finally an adult who is watching all this,
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you know, somebody smart like one of like us,
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goes to the child and says,
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"Why are you doing this?
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Why are you putting each because they are just
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gonna come right back again
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only few of them really make it.
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So why do you wanna spend all your day doing this?"
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He says,
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"Yes a lot of them may wash out,
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but for the one starfish that makes it,
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I made a difference."
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So, the world may or may not be available to you.
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But to one person,
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you may be the world.
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And let that person be your guiding light as
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you get to be billionaires of moments.
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Thank you.
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(Subtitled by Samantha Hu)