Transcriber: Suravi Kuanr Reviewer: Sebastian Betti
Let’s talk about purpose.
Because I believe there’s nothing more important in life
than finding, living and fulfilling your purpose.
But how do you find your purpose?
How do you find your North Star
that guiding light that will lead you for the rest of your life?
For me, it all began on Christmas Eve Day 1997.
That's the day that I learned that my wife was pregnant with our first child.
And I spent that holiday season asking myself,
What had I really accomplished in life?
What did I want to accomplish in life and what I want my legacy to be?
And through that process I developed the following purpose statement
which is to help raise children that live a life fulfilled
and help create businesses that improve people’s lives.
And that's been my North Star for every major decision that I've made since 1997.
And about that same time,
I read Bob Buford book Half Time and Peter Block’s book Stewardship,
and I came to believe that there’s these three S-curves in life.
The first S-curve is struggle to success.
Because it doesn’t matter what you begin in life, a new job, a new sport,
a new assignment, it's difficult at first and you struggle.
But with persistence, you eventually hit this inflection point
and with a little bit of effort, you’re able to make great progress
and you become successful.
But sometimes no matter how successful you are in life, the satisfaction,
fulfilment and happiness from that success can actually begin to wane
and then decline.
Luckily, there’s a second S-curve.
The second S-curve is service to significance.
The first S-curve is all about adding value to yourself.
The second S-curve is all about adding value to others
to gain greate significance in life through service over self-interest.
And this is where I believe the best purpose statements are born.
And there’s a third S-curve that’s just beginning to emerge for me
that I call surrender to salvation.
This is where you surrender yourself.
You surrender your ego.
Not only for your own salvation,
but for the salvation of others and for the salvation of future generations.
And when I speak of future generations, let me put that into context.
It is estimated that over the last 50,000 years,
100 billion people have been born, lived and died on this planet.
Today, you and I are one of 7.7 billion people living on planet Earth,
and the United Nations estimates that over the next 50,000 years,
6.75 trillion people are yet to be born and live on this planet.
And as Roman Chris Norris asks,
Will those people consider us good ancestors?
Will we have left them the resources and the environmental ecosystem
they need to not only survive, but to thrive?
Or put it in another way, When those people write their history books about us,
will they talk about us creating the next renaissance
or the next dark ages?
The choice is up to us.
I hear people say all the time, we need to save the planet,
and I always think to myself, Save the planet?
The planet's going to be just fine.
10,000 years, 100,000 years, a million years from now,
this will be a lush green planet teeming with life.
So it's not really a question about saving the planet,
it's about saving our species by saving the planet.
And this really is the opportunity
and obligation that we have not only to ourselves, but to future generations.
And I’m here to tell you, you have the power to change the world.
Right now in the palm of your hands,
your smartphone has more computing power than all of NASA had in 1969,
when they landed astronauts on the Moon and return them safely to Earth.
Now, this not only speaks the incredible ingenuity
the scientists and engineers at NASA at the time,
but the incredible capability you have right at your fingertips.
You have all the capabilities of a major corporation through A.I.
and cloud enabled tools for innovation, marketing and sales.
You really do have the power to change the world and to save our species.
But to change the world, we first need to change our minds.
And sometimes that's the most difficult change of all.
One change I’d like to make is to the definition of billionaire,
because I believe we can all become billionaires if we just stop defining
a billionaire as somebody who accumulates a billion dollars
and start defining it as somebody who helps a billion people.
And I believe we can become billionaires to humanity-centric innovation,
which is about solving the biggest problems facing humanity
in an economically viable way.
So what is humanity-centric innovation?
You might be familiar with consumer centric innovation,
which happens at the creative collision of what’s needed by the consumer,
what’s required by the business and what’s possible through science
and technology.
Humanity-centric innovation happens
at the creative collision of what’s needed by humanity,
what's achievable through the business models of the 21st century,
and what's transformative through exponential technologies.
So when I speak about the needs of humanity,
these are captured really well in the United Nations
17 Sustainable Development Goals, goals like ending poverty,
taking climate action, achieving gender equality.
And when I speak about the business models of the 21st century,
what I’m talking about is really captured well in the book
‘The future is faster than you think’
by Peter Diamandis and Steven Cotler,
where they talk about seven new business models.
Business models like
the free data economy of Google and Facebook,
the crowd economy of Airbnb and Uber,
and the smartness economy of Alexa and Siri.
And when I talk about exponential technologies,
what I'm talking about are nanotech biotech, artificial intelligence,
quantum computers, blockchain, additive manufacturing, like 3D printing.
And now we’re even seeing atomically precise manufacturing
the ability to print matter atom by atom.
And what makes these technologies “exponential”?
Well, just take Bitcoin, for example, bitcoin didn’t even exist in 2007.
Today, the market cap for all bitcoins on Earth is about a trillion dollars.
So from zero to a trillion and 14 years, that's an exponential technology.
But to apply humanity-centric innovation,
we first need to have a breakthrough mindset.
And one of the best ways to get into a breakthrough mindset is to ask yourself
the following question.
What’s impossible today?
But if it could be done, it would fundamentally change your business.
What’s impossible today, but if it could be done,
it would fundamentally change our society.
What’s impossible today, but if it could be done,
it would fundamentally change your life.
And how do we take humanity centric innovation?
And this breakthrough thinking and apply it to your business,
to your organization or just to everyday products in our lives?
Let's say, for example, a roll of toilet paper, a baby diaper and a panty liner.
And now just imagine if a used product was worth more than
a new product by accessing the bio data and biomaterials in those products with
a high degree of data security and bioethics to improve human health,
alleviate poverty and reverse global warming.
How? Imagine a roll of toilet paper that could sense biomarkers such that
every time you used it, it could tell you if you had the onset of colon cancer,
or imagine a baby diaper
or an adult incontinence product with sensors embedded
in the product that could analyse the bodily fluids in those products
and tell you about your health and nutrition, or, more importantly,
how to change your nutrition to improve your health
and bolster your immune system.
Or imagine a panty liner that could send
a signal to your smartphone that could tell you if you're ovulating or pregnant
or have a sexually transmitted disease,
and if you use product is worth more than a new product,
we could give these products away for free to every single person on Earth.
Every parent could have a diaper for their baby.
We could end period poverty by ensuring every person that needs
a menstruation pad could have one.
And if we use product is worth more than a new product,
not only can you give these products away for free,
but they could generate income for their users by selling or donating
the bio data and biomaterials to others.
For instance, a parent could harvest
the human microbiome from their baby’s diaper.
sell that to a pharmaceutical company to cure irritable bowel syndrome.
We could harvest the stem cells from menses in a period pad
and then use those stem cells to cure cancer and Alzheimer’s.
And if a used product is worth more than a new product,
there's incredible incentive to go pick those products up, recycle them,
fuel the circular economy and reverse global warming.
So what’s holding this back?
What’s holding you back from applying humanity-centric innovation
and breakthrough thinking to your business,
to your organization or just to everyday products.
Well, before the internet, Sir Francis Bacon was right. Knowledge is power.
But today, with the internet
or almost all knowledge is accessible to almost every person on Earth,
we find that Einstein is right.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
There's only two things holding us back.
One is imagination, the ability to imagine a better world.
And two is the courage to act, the courage to take action.
Now charities are important, but they’re not necessarily scalable.
Businesses are.
It’s time we create businesses with purpose,
businesses that drive humanity centric innovation.
It's time that we stop working for business and business starts to work
for us. In the 20th century, institutions hired individuals.
I believe the 21st century individuals will hire institutions to fulfil their
purpose, drive humanity centric innovation
and to become billionaires by helping a billion people.
So what’s your purpose?
What's your North Star, what's your moonshot?
Because if you dream it and you believe it you can achieve it.
And there's nobody better to change the world than
the people in this room right here, right now.
So go ahead. Become a billionaire.