Translator: Tracy Reed Reviewer: Sue Kronenfeld
My father is a builder.
He builds houses.
But his passions also include music and reading.
A Jack of all trades who plays the guitar, composes,
is engaged in the economy and politics, but also in modern technology.
He is even a creative person
who always has lots of ideas on all sorts of subjects,
ideas that he loves to share.
But that's it.
Because, between you and me, nobody cares about his ideas.
Not surprising; who listens to a builder's ideas?
Particularly if they don't concern building.
No, a builder is there to build.
Having ideas is for a small group, an elite,
of highly qualified creative people,
what we call the "intelligentsia", the "ruling class".
Our society is really built on such a pyramidal model
where the small number of those entitled to have ideas
are at the top, and the masses at the bottom,
which is very wide, are those that listen.
And if we think about it, it has always been like this.
The history of humanity is above all
a history of the ideas of a small number of people.
But maybe the crises we are experiencing,
be they environmental, economic, or social,
should lead us to question such an operating system.
Perhaps this model has had its day.
Maybe we should stop expecting that ideas come from the top,
and finally start listening to everybody's ideas.
And therefore, why not and not least, those of a builder?
It could be possible.
But it would mean that everybody would have to have ideas.
That is the problem.
Not everybody thinks they are capable of having ideas.
In fact, this is so widespread that today some people
think we are in an era lacking in ideas.
Even if I am convinced that this is just an impression,
our age is perfectly illustrated in the following quote by Joubert:
"Ideas are not lacking words, but words are lacking ideas."
In other words, today we're not lacking
in means of expressing our ideas, but in ideas themselves.
So, what is wrong with our approach to creativity?
Well, first, we think, as I said before, that creativity, ideas,
are restricted to a small group of people.
Well, that is not true!
Anybody can have ideas.
Useful ideas, great ideas.
We are all creative.
In this room, here, we're all creative, without exception.
And above all, for the simple reason that we all descend from creative people.
Creative people who had good ideas for their survival:
controlling fire, inventing tools, hunting, inventing farming,
inventing writing, exploring, building, constructing, innovating...
Such creative ability led humanity to where we are today,
and it has been passed down by our ancestors.
We are all creative.
For this reason, for example, in the business world,
any employee can be the source of ideas that are useful to the company.
Innovative companies such as Google and Apple understand this.
Idea-management systems are set up,
enabling them to hear ideas from all of their employees,
from the cleaner to the top manager.
They realised, in passing, that often
the best ideas came from those in the field.
And if that's true in the business world, well, it's true everywhere.
We are all creative.
We can all have great ideas.
So then, the question is:
Why do only some people seem capable of having ideas,
when others consider themselves totally incapable?
Well the answer to this idea, to this question,
can be summed up in two words:
creative practice.
What differentiates one person from another,
in terms of creativity, is above all their creative practice.
When we think of the lives
of those we consider to be creative geniuses:
Picasso, Mozart, Leonardo de Vinci,
we become aware that in fact, they were people
who developped a habit throughout their entire lives.
The habit of welcoming their ideas on a daily basis,
those ideas that come to us in the form of instinct or thoughts,
and acquiring them all without judgement, in order to give them time.
Because an idea, to become a great idea, it takes time.
A great idea is rarely a sudden instinct, as with Newton and the apple,
but more often the result of steady maturation, steady intuition,
an idea grows gradually richer as it meets other ideas
and in the end
it can become a great idea.
Creative people understand this, and adopt the habit
of welcoming all of their numerous ideas daily,
and give them all time.
Thus, some of these ideas
will become great ideas.
It is exactly this process
that explains how and why Leonardo de Vinci
did not settle for having a great idea in one field
but many great ideas in several fields.
Creativity is, above all, a question of habit.
Of habit, but also of sharing.
Well, in France, that's almost like swearing.
Above all, this is because we are told
that the history of creating ideas,
is like the history of brilliant individuals,
who alone, in a manner independent of the world,
see their brilliant ideas emerging, in an almost divine manner,
ideas that will change the world.
The result is that the few people among us who listen to their ideas,
imagine they are the owners,
and spend more time protecting their ideas than sharing them.
But this way of telling the history of ideas is wrong.
This approach to creativity is wrong.
An idea is above all the result of the human community.
An idea is not the result of an individual as such,
but more of their interaction with their environment,
with the people around them,
with the ideas of their era and past ideas.
This is what we should be taught at school.
Moreover, imagine if we were taught at school
the history of creativity as it is.
Well, we would be taught that an idea
often emerges in several ways, among several individuals separately.
Or more specifically, we would be taught
that while the theory of evolution is attributed to Darwin,
it was also announced separately, by Wallace, at the same time.
Or how Gray and Bell were both independent inventors of the telephone.
Or, in the same vein, how there are
two different inventors for photography,
two different inventors for colour photography,
six for the thermometer, nine for the telescope,
many more for the typewriter.
And there are hundreds of cases in all fields of knowledge.
What does this prove?
Well, it proves that if an idea doesn't come from one individual,
it will come from another, and thus,
instead of protecting our ideas, we should share them,
as by sharing them, we allow them to link up.
We enable ideas to clash, to bounce off each other,
or even to merge, to create new ideas.
So, by sharing our ideas, our environment becomes more creative,
mutually, we become more creative.
I developed such thoughts on creativity and ideas very early,
inspired by my father, whom I thank in passing,
however, I never took it any further until Paul contacted me.
Paul, who was not someone I knew, had a web project in mind,
but as he didn't know anything about the world of the internet,
he wanted the opinion of a web entrepreneur.
He sent me an e-mail.
As it's always a pleasure to share my experience, I accepted.
We met for lunch in a restaurant, not far from here as it happens,
We had a lengthy discussion, he asked me loads of questions,
and as the meal came to an end, I asked the following question,
"But what is your idea?"
And I saw that he was hesitant.
I imagined that he didn't know whether he could talk to me about it.
Maybe he was scared I'd make fun of his idea,
perhaps that I might steal it.
I let it drop.
We headed towards the Metro, we boarded the same line
and there our discussion naturally geared up
on ideas and creativity.
And when I arrived at my station, I felt that in fact he did want
to talk to me about his idea.
And he said to me:
"Listen, we all have ideas, but no place to really share them.
It's a shame, because creativity, ideas,
are, above all, a question of confronting different ideas.
So why not create a web platform dedicated to sharing ideas, all ideas?"
It took me less than a second to tell him that his idea was mad, but brilliant.
The two criteria necessary for me to be enthusiastic about an idea.
I was so enthusiastic that he got off with me.
We sat on the platform, and we began to imagine
what the web platform would be like,
what it would enable, what it would offer.
A few days later, a young computer scientist joined our team,
and a few days ago we launched the platform as a test version,
after two years of work.
A platform that enables everyone to spread their ideas
be they related to DIY, to cooking,
to the way we can change education, to the way we can change psychology,
to inventing words perhaps.
A platform that finally encourages the merging of ideas to create new ideas.
A platform that encourages joint and individual creativity.
Deep down, a platform whose DNA, like that of TEDx
contains the conviction that by spreading our ideas,
by sharing them, we can change things.
A conviction all the stronger in our era that saw the birth of the internet.
And that is what I've learnt over the last two years.
The internet represented a unique chance
for the history of creativity to take a turn,
and in turn the history of humanity.
Indeed, the internet allows us to understand that we can all be creative,
by showing examples from others,
by assisting us in developing our creative practices,
All of us, nearly all of us, have a smartphone in our pocket,
and as soon as they occur our ideas can be recorded in writing, video or pictures.
And by facilitating the sharing of our ideas,
the internet could be the start of the democratisation of creativity.
"Could be", for it would still be necessary for everyone to understand
the creative force that we bear,
to understand that we have a role to play in the new history of creativity,
to understand that we can be active in this field
where machines will never replace humans:
creativity.
And hat would be a good thing because,
if we all agree that many things must change
on a small, medium, large or very large scale,
we no longer need to wait for ideas to come from above.
The power to invent the world of today and tomorrow
belongs to us, because from now on,
it is our ideas that will change the world.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)