From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
People should adopt a fearlessness where they are trying new things, but then accept that by doing this- a certain percentage of things will fail. Failure is not a necessary evil, but rather- it is a positive part of on-going progress.
We have to leave behind the myth that our economies are actually fit for the present that we understand, and the vision of the future we want to create. We need to redesign economics for our times.
Being an entrepreneur, an inventor, is about having ideas and having the doggedness to see them through. As an inventor your ideas should be based on creating a solution to a problem – a solution which focuses on function over form.
The potential for blockchain is to accelerate the digitization of financial markets. Blockchain gets everyone excited as it has the potential to convene these different parties together to reach the necessary agreements, in that sense it is a unique enabler, a coordination mechanism. That has massive implications on the structure of our financial markets.
Last week I was asked to help the NHS get video-consultations up and running in every GP practice in the country, in one week.
There's an entirely different category of knowledge, the utility of which isn't immediately apparent. This category is equally, if not more, crucial, especially for those aspiring to make creative or innovative strides. Hence, it's beneficial to enrich our lives with diverse experiences and knowledge outside of our professional sphere.
In rich countries, 'innovation' often means finding a better way of doing things. But in developing countries, it can mean finding a way to do things at all.
If you want to have a great startup idea, don't try to think of a startup. If you focus on creating a startup, you'll be grounding yourself in the present, studying customers living in the present, their problems in the present, and their unmet needs in the present.
150 years ago, Aluminium was the rarest metal we knew of on the surface of planet Earth. Through technology we learned how to extract it from the bauxite in the Earth's crust, and discovered it was the most abundant metal. We went from Napoleon serving Kings and Queens on the finest Aluminium plate-ware to much more money made on Aluminium within 20 years.
I think that we must move to a model where we value nature differently and work by integrating with nature. We just have to start innovating at a faster scale, and doing it in a way where we can then communicate those innovation wins to the next generation in a way that gets them excited and gives them hope.
I believe many of our new generation of entrepreneurs put too much significance on money, and not enough on ideas. If you have a great idea, and the skills to execute that idea, the money will come.
The greatest innovators spend a disproportionate amount of their time figuring out how to engage with the decision makers who need to green-light their work early so they can build confidence. Innovation can feel scary to a business- old and stable is less worrisome.