Translator: Michael Liu Reviewer: Denise RQ
Keith Politte: So does your organization have a crow's nest?
What does that mean?
How do you see over the horizon?
How do you anticipate
those disruptive opportunities or challenges?
That's what I'd like to address today.
So, what's a crow's nest?
A crow's nest actually is the structure that sits on top of a ship's lookout.
For the purpose of this talk,
I want to have you think of a crow's nest as your organization,
it's the structure.
So crow's nests actually, by legend, were created by the Vikings.
That's where they got the name.
The first documented use of the term for a crow's nest
actually comes from 1807 in a whaling ship.
So the lookout would be able to see whales but also icebergs.
We all know of another instance of a crow's nest and icebergs: the Titanic.
So the Titanic provides an interesting metaphor
I'd like to share with you.
On the night of April 14th, 1912,
the incident happened:
Frederick Fleet was in the crow's nest at 10 pm at night and yelled the words,
"Iceberg dead ahead!" and we know what happened.
But there's something you may not know about this story
which I find really interesting.
Two days before the Titanic sailed,
the second officer that was assigned to the Titanic
was assigned to another ship.
In those two days,
the key to the locker in the crow's nest, which the second officer had,
was not transferred to the Titanic.
This is a big deal, because that night,
Frederick Fleet, up in the crow's nest, did not have the key to the locker
where the binoculars were.
So not issuing that key had tragic consequences
and 1,522 people died that night.
Let's modernize what the crow's nest could be.
Crow's nests used to be very dependent upon eye sight, binoculars;
very basic things.
Today, we know that we can layer digital information on top of reality,
augmented reality.
I think this has some implications
about thinking about our own creation of a crow's nest.
So we need to think about creating our own new crow's nest.
What does that look like?
We know that we can do all kinds of really interesting things
with digital information now.
Tony Stark, this actually isn't too far off.
I'm going to show you a little bit about this.
But we need to think about,
"How do you structure your organization's content,
and how do you see ahead?"
So what I'm going to show you is a cool piece of technology
that it's for my own crow's nest a little bit.
There are AR glasses, augmented reality glasses.
What I'm going to show you is--
This is from TED this year.
This is a minute of a longer talk,
But I want you to think about, as you see this video,
how the implications of this technology may impact collaboration, communication
and a whole bunch of other stuff we may not have thought about it yet.
This is Meron Gribetz.
He's the CEO of the company called Meta,
but he is actually a neuroscientist.
I want you to see this video
and think about how it might impact
on what you do as an organization, internally or externally.
(Video starts)
MG: So again, our favorite interface, the iOS of the mind.
I'm going to now take a step further
and go ahead and grab this pair of glasses and leave it right here by the desk.
I'm now with you, I'm in the moment, we're connecting.
My spatial memory kicks in,
I can go ahead and grab it and bring it right back here,
reminding me that I am the operating system.
And now my proprioception is working,
and I can go ahead and explode these glasses into a thousand parts
and touch the very sensor that is currently scanning my hand.
But it's not enough to see things alone, so in a second,
my co-founder Ray is going to make a 3D call --
Ray?
(Ringing)
Hey Ray, how's it going?
Guys, I could see this guy in front of me in full 3D.
And he is photo-realistic.
(Applause)
Thank you.
My mirror-neuron subsystem suggests
that this is going to replace phones in not too long.
Ray, how's it going?
Ray: Great. We're live today.
(Applause)
MG: Ray, give the crowd a gift of the holographic brain
we saw from the video earlier.
Guys, this is not only going to change phones,
it's also going to change the way we collaborate.
Thank you so much.
MG: Thanks, Ray. Ray: You're welcome.
(Applause)
(Video ends)
KP (On stage): So that's pretty cool.
You can start thinking about collaboration,
you can actually manipulate the same hologram with multiple people.
I keep thinking about maybe collaborating with someone in the same space,
manipulating an object and then sending it to a 3D-printer.
We're just at the beginning of this stuff, It's very, very cool stuff,
but we have to think about
what does that mean for how we work,
how we use information, what's the user experience,
what's the experience design
of these disruptive technologies like AR and VR.
I actually have an idea for that.
Obviously, collaboration is a very important thing.
The one thing I really want to emphasize
is collaboration between disciplines.
You want to bring people together that have not worked together usually,
because the most interesting stuff happens
between the intersections of disciplines.
You want to have the right-brain people
and the left-brain people working together.
The trick is to get them to use the same vocabulary.
But once you do, magic can happen.
But it's not just to throw people together,
there needs to be a boundary, there needs to be a structure
on how people can interact with each other with the process.
What I'm going to introduce to you - this is a whole other talk -
[is] design thinking.
Design thinking is a secret weapon
for a lot of different kinds of industries, verticals.
I want to share
because I think it's applicable to a lot of different companies.
Design thinking is an iterative process.
So the first square, first couple squares, is basically knowing your client,
knowing your customer;
who are they, what are their needs.
The middle square is basically about dreaming
no dumb ideas.
You want to really think big;
think outside of the box, in this collaborative space.
The last two boxes are
you do a prototype based on the prior three.
What could we do? What could we build?
What could address those needs of the customer?
And then, the fifth one is measuring, whether it's analytics, testing.
Then you start over.
It's a rapid way of iterating changes, innovation,
it's your own internal innovation engine, if you will.
I come back to the lookout.
What is your lookout?
How are you structuring your company, your organization,
or you as an individual to see over the horizon
for the things that are coming?
You want to make sure
that everyone in your organization has access to the right key.
And with that, I thank you very much.
(Applause)