I’m fascinated by the question of
building good Prada
but the question that keeps me up at
night is how to build an innovative
country it’s important to build
innovative products it’s important to
build innovative services but how to
build an innovative country and I
suspect that something very profound
goes on in classrooms around the world
I’m gonna focus more on India because
that’s where I went to school and I have
more hands-on experience doing field
research but I suspect that one of the
most profound roles that any facet
players in one’s life is what happens in
a classroom the education system today
is failing us profoundly we’re just
marching towards a collective failure
that we refuse to see the schools of
today are inspired by factories they are
mass producing mediocrity they have
standardized excellence and they are
marching toward the direction in which
the world isn’t going they’re focused on
what instead of the how and the why they
are focused on facts they emphasize
individual achievement as opposed to
collaboration as we move towards the
future we’ll see the importance of
collaboration with various stakeholders
but unfortunately schools and colleges
many of them today
reward only individual excellence that
needs to change
we have codified intelligence people
with a certain kind of intelligence
analytical brilliance are considered
intelligent but what about linguistic
intelligence what about spatial
intelligence what about cultural
intelligence contextual intelligence
there are many kinds of intelligence
today but our educational institutions
unfortunately prioritize a 1:1 kind of
it we’ve even managed to codify
aspiration and I suspect that in India
at least we are suffering from what I
like to call the profound Macaulay
hangover
Macaulay in 1835 infamously said we must
at present do a best to form a class who
may be interpreters between us and the
millions who we wish to govern a class
of persons Indian and blood
and color but English and tastes
opinions moral and intellect in in short
Macaulay was trying to make a all
Indians into polite and obedient
receptionists
what do you see here 2 point 9 9 7 9 2 4
5 8 into 10 to the power 8 meter per
second what is this I’m glad that all of
you know it but what disheartens me is
that it’s a question in an indian board
examination a standard tense question
what is the speed of light till 8
significant figures I’m not sure why
this question was asked but it sure as
hell wasn’t meant to inspire innovation
or creativity when I said that we’ve
codified aspiration that we focused on
the what this is what I meant we’ve even
managed to codify how people do art
recently I was in Moldova a post-soviet
country in Eastern Europe for the launch
of their startup week I went to a
classroom as I do wherever I travel and
I asked children to draw something you
know what they drew they drew son they
drew a mountain
they drew Birds they drew a river and
they drew a green grass wherever I go in
India and in many other parts of the
world that is what people end up drawing
you want to take a look this is what it
looks like we need people to not just
draw this but invert rainbows and take a
different peyote and take a different
outlook towards art aspiration
creativity something that’s two schools
were meant to inspire but are failing to
do so now let’s turn our hands to
textbooks do you know ROM part Shailaja
Rada
con apakah what are these these are
things written in Hindi textbooks today
let me translate it in English for the
benefit of an international audience it
sounds something like this
Jack go to school Jill cook food jack
have some jelly
Jill go stroke his belly Jack we’ll take
some rest
Jill go fix his bed Jack this is your
house Jill you must fade in
out we’re stereotyping gender so we are
seeing in schools is a codification of
creativity focus on the watt and it’s
contributing towards gene gender
stereotypes in ways in which we can’t
imagine and my hypothesis is that if we
keep doing that we are going to all
miserably fail in future something we
just can’t afford as we march into the
fourth Industrial Revolution you know
have somebody once remarked that India
has 1.3 billion cricket coaches everyone
in India is a cricket coach I believe
that India also has 1.3 billion career
coaches everyone in India has an opinion
on careers if I ask people which I do
often they say how how did you choose
your career how do you decide what you
wanted to do it’s often a mix of this
what the neighbor suggested what the
market means what the counselor wants
you to do and what the most successful
relative does today this is how we
choose careers and we hope to make a
difference how can we do that but I
believe that not all is bad there are
been some concrete steps taken by the
country the private sector the nonprofit
sector and we can make an effort to
march into the right direction to
embrace the fourth Industrial Revolution
equitably and sustainably the fourth
Industrial Revolution as all of you know
has been defined by the World Economic
Forum as the fusion of the biological
physical and the digital worlds this
revolution is grown apart will be
powered by cloud computing and mobility
as an experience and leave to copious
amounts of data but in terms of careers
and education the statistic is still
self explanatory
85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030
do not exist today 13 years from now
most of the jobs 85% of them would are
not the ones that are present today so
in order to embrace them in order to be
prepared for the future we need a very
different model of Education let me tell
you how I’m trying to do that and how it
can potentially be possible I run a
community called Network capital we have
about 18
thousand eight hundred members from 89
countries it’s a very simple concept
that every single person in the world
has something you need to learn and
something you need to share it doesn’t
matter
where the person comes from what gender
the person has what religious
affiliation of what political
affiliation the person has every single
person has something you need to learn
and if you’re able to trade in skills
you can learn from each other like you
know you’ve never had before
so imagine tinder is a young population
imagine tinder for skills when you get
in there for mentoring where you can
learn from another person who comes from
a vastly different cultural background
political background and learn from them
let me give you an example or network
capital we have a beggar and a
billionaire mentor each other why a
beggar
understands sales marketing and pitching
better than any of us can ever because
that is what he or she does on a daily
basis to survive the billionaire on the
other hand knows a thing or two about
financial stability imagine them
training their skills imagine learning
from each other so this is what we’ve
tried to do that if you build a large
enough community and build the right
culture you can learn from each other
because no one person in the world
that’s largely changing can be a master
of all skills but if you’re like a
sponge if you can listen to the other
person carefully and trade on skills you
can potentially be prepared for what’s
to come our community has partnered with
me TI o which i think has done a
brilliant job by building tinkering labs
across schools in India these tinkering
labs are precisely meant to chew change
the focus from what to why and how these
tinkering labs I believe would be the
bastions of creativity as we move
forward and what will these mentors do
who are currently exchanging skills with
each other they will go to these
tinkering labs and share their
experiences and once you have a dialogue
between say the boardroom the classroom
and the laboratory that’s where you’ll
see a new India emerge an India that
question
the status quo where children are
inspired to learn where children are
focused on the why and the how
because what is free online we live in a
world where information is free but
wisdom isn’t there we live in an
overwhelming amount of data but
intelligence sometimes is hard to find
and empathy is hard to find so I believe
that this construct of time banking and
leveraging this tinder for mentoring
model can potentially lead to some
amount of peace as well because on
network capital we often have
mentor-mentee pairs from Iran in Israel
from India and Pakistan who are
Republicans and Democrats in the u.s.
Adam Smith aficionados and free-market
opponents were and Karl Marx aficionados
as well so you are actually attempting
through the trade of skills to build a
world which at least listens to each
other and is trying to converge
according to the common minimum we live
in a world where there’s a lot of
political and political turmoil and
political noise I think it’s up to us
and I think stealing from each other and
learning from each other in this time
banking centric model can be a way
forward so this is the first step that
we must take to revamp our classrooms to
make our country a little more
innovative than it is it has done very
well in the past few years but sky is
the limit and we must aspire for more
you know what’s the second most
important component of innovation like
what’s the most defining feature of
innovation in a country
take a guess it’s storybooks
there is a study done that looks at the
kind of stories children have read and
how many patterns have been fired
essentially the stories that highlight
originality lead to a deeper sense of
innovation and possibility in the
population of the country the books that
you see here Lord of the Rings Alibaba
and 40 thieves a wrinkle in time they
are the favorite books of today’s top
leaders CEOs like Elon Musk
Peter Thiel Sheryl Sandberg Ali Jack Ma
to name a few and the core idea is that
if you if you
my children to invert the rainbow and
try and paint the world in a slightly
different direction they will do it but
they may weenie we as a as as a young
population need to do that need to be
able to inspire stories that nurture
creativity that encourage people to
think in a slightly different direction
the third thing we must do is to empower
women with rigour and passion there is a
direct correlation between the number of
women employed in a country and how
innovative it is and my hypothesis is
that the same holds for countries as
well a country where women feel secure
safe and you find them in boardrooms
classroom laboratories conferences is
going to be a more innovative country I
spoke to you about the gendered
stereotypes of Jack and Jill but I feel
that there’s another study done that
talks about the number of relatable role
models and mentors women have and how
innovative a country bill becomes so one
call to action for all of us is to
disrupt gender stereotypes like it’s no
one’s business disrupt gender
stereotypes and make women a part of the
entire growth story because that is one
of the most defining factors as we march
into the future make role models
possible for them parents often mean
well but research shows they aren’t
often the best mentors so sometimes you
need to nurture different kinds of
mentors role models that you can relate
to and are inspired by to democratize
inspiration and make a world of
possibility possible for a lot of people
you know I my Moldova hanger was still
exists and in Moldova I walked out of my
hotel and the first thing I see is Karl
Marx checking Facebook so I couldn’t
help but notice that he said err back in
the day workers of the world unite you
have nothing to lose but your chains in
the air of the fourth Industrial
Revolution
I claim mentors of the world unite you
have nothing to fear but yourself your
your limitations
myopic view and I think that this room
is a room of hope and possibility it’s a
whole new hope of is it’s a room of
diversity and if each of us just planned
to listen and trade on skills in time
and if mentors of the world unite and we
go we do a better job of reaching out to
the people who are not like us but
fundamentally think differently we can
march into the future I spoke about you
know a construct where there are 1.3
billion career coaches in India so I
call it freaky guy but I want to end my
talk with a message that each of us can
use in our lives and this message about
choosing careers and building careers of
passion and meaning doesn’t come from a
management book but it comes from a
concept in Japan it’s called a key guy a
key guy or raison d’etre or reason for
being it’s the intersection between what
you love what you are good at what the
world needs and what you can be paid for
this sweet spot ladies and gentlemen is
going to enable us to become more
innovative
it’s the summation of all that I have
talked about today and it’s going to
make India a far more innovative country
because it all begins in the classroom
what do you love only you know what you
love you have to keep trying you need to
keep nobody else can come and tell you
papers next this is what you love no you
have to do it by tree and doing many
experiments with yourself with taking
small but calculated risks and see what
happens what what you’re good at
once you start doing things repeatedly
you discover that oh while I’m studying
computer science but my real passion is
poetry and you know what I’m actually
very good at it is there a way to
combine poetry and computer science and
do something that the world potentially
needs you know India ranks 116 out of
157
seven countries in the UN sustainable
development goals at the same time we’ve
shot up 30 places in the Ease of Doing
Business ranking we’ve done much better
on the innovation and competitiveness in
this index so we can marry the
entrepreneurial energy of India with the
challenges of India and that is what
India needs and I think the world needs
India to step up and stand up and start
marching in the right direction and each
of you can make that happen and what you
can be paid for I think we’re moving
towards what we call the the gig economy
or the platform economy and some of my
other speakers are actually leveraging
this platform to build careers that are
self crafted that they can be paid for
that the world needs what they love and
what they’re good at so ladies and
gentlemen I want to leave you with this
message of a key guy please don’t listen
to anyone who tells you otherwise the
world is full of possibilities
but you need to take ownership you need
to take charge and you need to inspire a
key guy for yourself
and for everyone around us especially
for those who disagree with you if you
other them you’ve lost the battle so
ladies and gentlemen happy a key guy
have a nice day
[Applause]
you
building good Prada
but the question that keeps me up at
night is how to build an innovative
country it’s important to build
innovative products it’s important to
build innovative services but how to
build an innovative country and I
suspect that something very profound
goes on in classrooms around the world
I’m gonna focus more on India because
that’s where I went to school and I have
more hands-on experience doing field
research but I suspect that one of the
most profound roles that any facet
players in one’s life is what happens in
a classroom the education system today
is failing us profoundly we’re just
marching towards a collective failure
that we refuse to see the schools of
today are inspired by factories they are
mass producing mediocrity they have
standardized excellence and they are
marching toward the direction in which
the world isn’t going they’re focused on
what instead of the how and the why they
are focused on facts they emphasize
individual achievement as opposed to
collaboration as we move towards the
future we’ll see the importance of
collaboration with various stakeholders
but unfortunately schools and colleges
many of them today
reward only individual excellence that
needs to change
we have codified intelligence people
with a certain kind of intelligence
analytical brilliance are considered
intelligent but what about linguistic
intelligence what about spatial
intelligence what about cultural
intelligence contextual intelligence
there are many kinds of intelligence
today but our educational institutions
unfortunately prioritize a 1:1 kind of
it we’ve even managed to codify
aspiration and I suspect that in India
at least we are suffering from what I
like to call the profound Macaulay
hangover
Macaulay in 1835 infamously said we must
at present do a best to form a class who
may be interpreters between us and the
millions who we wish to govern a class
of persons Indian and blood
and color but English and tastes
opinions moral and intellect in in short
Macaulay was trying to make a all
Indians into polite and obedient
receptionists
what do you see here 2 point 9 9 7 9 2 4
5 8 into 10 to the power 8 meter per
second what is this I’m glad that all of
you know it but what disheartens me is
that it’s a question in an indian board
examination a standard tense question
what is the speed of light till 8
significant figures I’m not sure why
this question was asked but it sure as
hell wasn’t meant to inspire innovation
or creativity when I said that we’ve
codified aspiration that we focused on
the what this is what I meant we’ve even
managed to codify how people do art
recently I was in Moldova a post-soviet
country in Eastern Europe for the launch
of their startup week I went to a
classroom as I do wherever I travel and
I asked children to draw something you
know what they drew they drew son they
drew a mountain
they drew Birds they drew a river and
they drew a green grass wherever I go in
India and in many other parts of the
world that is what people end up drawing
you want to take a look this is what it
looks like we need people to not just
draw this but invert rainbows and take a
different peyote and take a different
outlook towards art aspiration
creativity something that’s two schools
were meant to inspire but are failing to
do so now let’s turn our hands to
textbooks do you know ROM part Shailaja
Rada
con apakah what are these these are
things written in Hindi textbooks today
let me translate it in English for the
benefit of an international audience it
sounds something like this
Jack go to school Jill cook food jack
have some jelly
Jill go stroke his belly Jack we’ll take
some rest
Jill go fix his bed Jack this is your
house Jill you must fade in
out we’re stereotyping gender so we are
seeing in schools is a codification of
creativity focus on the watt and it’s
contributing towards gene gender
stereotypes in ways in which we can’t
imagine and my hypothesis is that if we
keep doing that we are going to all
miserably fail in future something we
just can’t afford as we march into the
fourth Industrial Revolution you know
have somebody once remarked that India
has 1.3 billion cricket coaches everyone
in India is a cricket coach I believe
that India also has 1.3 billion career
coaches everyone in India has an opinion
on careers if I ask people which I do
often they say how how did you choose
your career how do you decide what you
wanted to do it’s often a mix of this
what the neighbor suggested what the
market means what the counselor wants
you to do and what the most successful
relative does today this is how we
choose careers and we hope to make a
difference how can we do that but I
believe that not all is bad there are
been some concrete steps taken by the
country the private sector the nonprofit
sector and we can make an effort to
march into the right direction to
embrace the fourth Industrial Revolution
equitably and sustainably the fourth
Industrial Revolution as all of you know
has been defined by the World Economic
Forum as the fusion of the biological
physical and the digital worlds this
revolution is grown apart will be
powered by cloud computing and mobility
as an experience and leave to copious
amounts of data but in terms of careers
and education the statistic is still
self explanatory
85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030
do not exist today 13 years from now
most of the jobs 85% of them would are
not the ones that are present today so
in order to embrace them in order to be
prepared for the future we need a very
different model of Education let me tell
you how I’m trying to do that and how it
can potentially be possible I run a
community called Network capital we have
about 18
thousand eight hundred members from 89
countries it’s a very simple concept
that every single person in the world
has something you need to learn and
something you need to share it doesn’t
matter
where the person comes from what gender
the person has what religious
affiliation of what political
affiliation the person has every single
person has something you need to learn
and if you’re able to trade in skills
you can learn from each other like you
know you’ve never had before
so imagine tinder is a young population
imagine tinder for skills when you get
in there for mentoring where you can
learn from another person who comes from
a vastly different cultural background
political background and learn from them
let me give you an example or network
capital we have a beggar and a
billionaire mentor each other why a
beggar
understands sales marketing and pitching
better than any of us can ever because
that is what he or she does on a daily
basis to survive the billionaire on the
other hand knows a thing or two about
financial stability imagine them
training their skills imagine learning
from each other so this is what we’ve
tried to do that if you build a large
enough community and build the right
culture you can learn from each other
because no one person in the world
that’s largely changing can be a master
of all skills but if you’re like a
sponge if you can listen to the other
person carefully and trade on skills you
can potentially be prepared for what’s
to come our community has partnered with
me TI o which i think has done a
brilliant job by building tinkering labs
across schools in India these tinkering
labs are precisely meant to chew change
the focus from what to why and how these
tinkering labs I believe would be the
bastions of creativity as we move
forward and what will these mentors do
who are currently exchanging skills with
each other they will go to these
tinkering labs and share their
experiences and once you have a dialogue
between say the boardroom the classroom
and the laboratory that’s where you’ll
see a new India emerge an India that
question
the status quo where children are
inspired to learn where children are
focused on the why and the how
because what is free online we live in a
world where information is free but
wisdom isn’t there we live in an
overwhelming amount of data but
intelligence sometimes is hard to find
and empathy is hard to find so I believe
that this construct of time banking and
leveraging this tinder for mentoring
model can potentially lead to some
amount of peace as well because on
network capital we often have
mentor-mentee pairs from Iran in Israel
from India and Pakistan who are
Republicans and Democrats in the u.s.
Adam Smith aficionados and free-market
opponents were and Karl Marx aficionados
as well so you are actually attempting
through the trade of skills to build a
world which at least listens to each
other and is trying to converge
according to the common minimum we live
in a world where there’s a lot of
political and political turmoil and
political noise I think it’s up to us
and I think stealing from each other and
learning from each other in this time
banking centric model can be a way
forward so this is the first step that
we must take to revamp our classrooms to
make our country a little more
innovative than it is it has done very
well in the past few years but sky is
the limit and we must aspire for more
you know what’s the second most
important component of innovation like
what’s the most defining feature of
innovation in a country
take a guess it’s storybooks
there is a study done that looks at the
kind of stories children have read and
how many patterns have been fired
essentially the stories that highlight
originality lead to a deeper sense of
innovation and possibility in the
population of the country the books that
you see here Lord of the Rings Alibaba
and 40 thieves a wrinkle in time they
are the favorite books of today’s top
leaders CEOs like Elon Musk
Peter Thiel Sheryl Sandberg Ali Jack Ma
to name a few and the core idea is that
if you if you
my children to invert the rainbow and
try and paint the world in a slightly
different direction they will do it but
they may weenie we as a as as a young
population need to do that need to be
able to inspire stories that nurture
creativity that encourage people to
think in a slightly different direction
the third thing we must do is to empower
women with rigour and passion there is a
direct correlation between the number of
women employed in a country and how
innovative it is and my hypothesis is
that the same holds for countries as
well a country where women feel secure
safe and you find them in boardrooms
classroom laboratories conferences is
going to be a more innovative country I
spoke to you about the gendered
stereotypes of Jack and Jill but I feel
that there’s another study done that
talks about the number of relatable role
models and mentors women have and how
innovative a country bill becomes so one
call to action for all of us is to
disrupt gender stereotypes like it’s no
one’s business disrupt gender
stereotypes and make women a part of the
entire growth story because that is one
of the most defining factors as we march
into the future make role models
possible for them parents often mean
well but research shows they aren’t
often the best mentors so sometimes you
need to nurture different kinds of
mentors role models that you can relate
to and are inspired by to democratize
inspiration and make a world of
possibility possible for a lot of people
you know I my Moldova hanger was still
exists and in Moldova I walked out of my
hotel and the first thing I see is Karl
Marx checking Facebook so I couldn’t
help but notice that he said err back in
the day workers of the world unite you
have nothing to lose but your chains in
the air of the fourth Industrial
Revolution
I claim mentors of the world unite you
have nothing to fear but yourself your
your limitations
myopic view and I think that this room
is a room of hope and possibility it’s a
whole new hope of is it’s a room of
diversity and if each of us just planned
to listen and trade on skills in time
and if mentors of the world unite and we
go we do a better job of reaching out to
the people who are not like us but
fundamentally think differently we can
march into the future I spoke about you
know a construct where there are 1.3
billion career coaches in India so I
call it freaky guy but I want to end my
talk with a message that each of us can
use in our lives and this message about
choosing careers and building careers of
passion and meaning doesn’t come from a
management book but it comes from a
concept in Japan it’s called a key guy a
key guy or raison d’etre or reason for
being it’s the intersection between what
you love what you are good at what the
world needs and what you can be paid for
this sweet spot ladies and gentlemen is
going to enable us to become more
innovative
it’s the summation of all that I have
talked about today and it’s going to
make India a far more innovative country
because it all begins in the classroom
what do you love only you know what you
love you have to keep trying you need to
keep nobody else can come and tell you
papers next this is what you love no you
have to do it by tree and doing many
experiments with yourself with taking
small but calculated risks and see what
happens what what you’re good at
once you start doing things repeatedly
you discover that oh while I’m studying
computer science but my real passion is
poetry and you know what I’m actually
very good at it is there a way to
combine poetry and computer science and
do something that the world potentially
needs you know India ranks 116 out of
157
seven countries in the UN sustainable
development goals at the same time we’ve
shot up 30 places in the Ease of Doing
Business ranking we’ve done much better
on the innovation and competitiveness in
this index so we can marry the
entrepreneurial energy of India with the
challenges of India and that is what
India needs and I think the world needs
India to step up and stand up and start
marching in the right direction and each
of you can make that happen and what you
can be paid for I think we’re moving
towards what we call the the gig economy
or the platform economy and some of my
other speakers are actually leveraging
this platform to build careers that are
self crafted that they can be paid for
that the world needs what they love and
what they’re good at so ladies and
gentlemen I want to leave you with this
message of a key guy please don’t listen
to anyone who tells you otherwise the
world is full of possibilities
but you need to take ownership you need
to take charge and you need to inspire a
key guy for yourself
and for everyone around us especially
for those who disagree with you if you
other them you’ve lost the battle so
ladies and gentlemen happy a key guy
have a nice day
[Applause]
you
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