[Music]
now there any weirdos here I’m quite
pleased by that apparently I’m weird I
did something recently that a lot of
people considered weird I fired myself
it was kind of funny I’ll tell you the
story so I was CEO of one of New
Zealand’s fastest growing technology
startups that I founded and I appointed
somebody else to be my boss and people
were surprised
then my company grew from just an idea
six years ago and now we’ve got 15,000
customers around the world we’ve got our
customers 130 countries we’ve got a team
of 200 spread across Auckland in
Melbourne in London and San Fransisco
and Toronto and we constantly regarded
as one of the top 10 startups to watch
we just partnered with Apple which is
pretty cool so why the hell was I
stepping out of the CEO role but as a
founder and CEO of a company you often
have to wear multiple hats and so
there’s the shareholder head is the
director head is the visionary head is
the cultural leader hat and it’s cool
having a title of CEO I mean who
wouldn’t want to be CEO right um but you
know I was doing things like running a
business designing a global sales
organization all these things they’re
all really really interesting and also
the very first time I do have done these
things but it wasn’t as much fun as
talking to customers and innovating and
doing all that really cool stuff my
vision for the company was to change the
world of retail and I wanted to get back
to that and I loved spreadsheets as much
as the next person but I reckon there’s
probably people out there who loves free
sheets a bit more and we were going
really fast so I thought we could go
faster and so the best way to do that I
thought was to get somebody else in the
CEO and how do you do that what you call
them CEO I mean how cool are you welcome
on board and then I could
sometimes you have to take yourself out
of the equation and to find the best
solution this is something that we try
and do a lot at v– and it’s just part
of our culture I would say it’s a no ego
thing but I have a huge one but I don’t
need to be the boss of the world in
order to change it but people still
didn’t get it you were fired nope you
got bored seriously you’d made millions
and you’re going sailing on a yacht I
wish that sounds pretty good so there
was a range of use here right and
everybody wanted to believe anything but
the truth because the decision I made
didn’t match up the decisions that
they’ve seen made it wasn’t the sort of
thing that the CEO did it didn’t match
the pattern of the collective wisdom it
was weird and I don’t have a problem
with being considered weird I do weird
things all the time I’ve kind of made a
thing out of it you know you know I kind
of want to live a life less ordinary but
thinking about all this got me thinking
about how weirdos like me make radical
calls that they think will make a huge
difference I mean it’s not that we were
trying to go out there and cause trouble
but what makes a weirdo are they born
are they made well they dropped on the
head as a child and as a species we’re
really good at conforming being
predictable this is probably why we have
survived for so long
thousands of years ago before the
internet but after the dinosaur was
somewhere in that period we were simple
tribes and we surrounded ourselves with
others just like us that we understood
we could predict and together things
were safe anybody doing anything
unpredictable
was considered a liability I mean
imagine if we all decided that we wanted
to go hunt lions and we all had our own
idea as to how it was best to hunt lions
I’m gonna throw rocks at lions I’m gonna
run at them for my hands waving we’d all
basically be dead but sometimes a weirdo
tries something that’s a bit different
despite being ignored despite being
shunned they persevere they fail they
try again and eventually it works they
convince somebody of the new idea into
in three then eventually the entire
group owned the idea and it becomes it
becomes part of the establishment so
that weirdo creates change and did you
know this that our brains are really
good at finding patterns there their
pattern matching machines and
recognizing patterns is way easier than
having to think about every single
detail all the time
so we find things that we can repeat and
usually get the same results what a
tribe member looks like what scary
animals look like what mom poisonous
food looks like but just following
patterns means we never actually learn
anything new so in order to evolve and
better ourselves as a species we
occasionally need to screw up the
pattern but we’re programmed not to like
it when other idiots try and screw up
the pattern it make they make us think
too hard and if they’re wrong we’re
probably going to get eaten by lions
and that’s a problem but we’re all
capable of being weird
have you checked out teenagers recently
but we grow up and it first were really
good at obeying of you know when you’re
a small child and you can’t walk or feed
yourself it’s kind of important that you
obey but then we start to develop
language or motor skills and then we
start to develop an imagination we
wonder we wonder about the worlds we
dream about where the Sun goes every day
why we throw stones at lions why do we
eat green things and then we start to
rebel we start to take these ideas and
we decide that we want to go out in the
world and discover new things and take
the ideas that we’ve learned and try new
things we go off on our own path we want
to throw stones at the Lions but then
for some reason we stop we stop being
weird and we conform and it probably has
something to do with the fact that
10,000 years ago there was a high
probability you’d be dead by 30 and so
to keep the pattern going you had to
have kids and they would start the new
cycle of going through weirdness and so
going through the cycle many times the
tribe would evolve the young robots will
try stuff out and hopefully not get
eaten by a lion but not so much these
days these days that progression from
you know obedience to wonder to question
to rebell
and then ultimately to conform which was
a perfectly good system ten thousand
years ago today looks more like this
we live a bit longer than thirty and
that’s a bloody long time to be a
conformist but some of us never stop
that tendency to be weird now and then
today it’s never been easier or safer to
be weird it’s a distinct lack of lions
hanging about for a start so what makes
those of us who keep being weird
keeping being weird how do we be more
weird do we need more weird what would
happen if we had a lot more weird if we
were all weird would that be normal so I
got to thinking about what made me weird
and I did a lot of thinking in hundreds
of hours of therapy and I figured out
that I became weird when I was around
about seven or eight or because I didn’t
fit a pattern
remember the patterns and it’s a pattern
that I would have loved to a fit but I
didn’t I had a group of friends at
school and we did everything together we
played together you know we had the same
sense of humor we like the same things
we had fun we were peers but the way
that they learned matched a particular
pattern
they were cook with math they could
spell really well and they were
identified as having special abilities
that other kids didn’t have and so they
were picked to be in what was called a
special class a special accelerated
learning class and I didn’t this is
innocent paedon matching to find kids
that were different made me feel like I
didn’t fit in and I couldn’t understand
what made me different from my friends
and that’s when I think I started
beginning to think like that bit like a
weirdo and not a nodder in-your-face
weirdo I wasn’t angry I just refused to
accept that my friends are any different
and it’s funny what you remember from
your childhood right shortly after that
I moved to Australia not my choice and I
remember it was the start of a new
school year and it was a class exercise
to draw a picture of Australia and I was
9 I wasn’t really familiar with the
geography of Australia so I drew this
blob and then I thought about mmm what
if Australia looked like and I imagined
flying over Australia and a plane
I thought it must be fields and things
and rivers and all that sort of stuff
they probably grow lots of really
exciting food in Australia and so I
started to draw this really highly
detailed lattice of squares and stripes
all across Australia colouring it in
green and yellow and I thought there’s
probably fruit trees so butter red it’s
probably some rivers it’s a bit of blue
and I thought I’d drawn this highly
detailed high-resolution map of
Australia whereas all the other kids in
the class
drew yellow Australia shaped Australia
and but then my teacher did something
I’ll never forget
and probably accounts for several hours
of therapy she she ridiculed me in front
of the class you know look at the silly
kid who drew who uses imagination and
drew something different it was probably
because I was in New Zealand er but you
know that didn’t stop me from doing
things differently and then a couple
years later back in New Zealand now
thankfully I had to write a book report
and I can’t remember what the book was
about but it was boring and I also knew
that book reports were boring so I
decided that I’d do it a little bit
differently and I’d write it as a
humorous poem and and to my surprise my
teacher stood up in front of the class
and asked me if I was special and I
thought yes finally the recognition I
was looking for to be considered special
but it was the 80s and she was actually
referring to the other kind of special
she didn’t appreciate my poetic approach
and this was a semi-regular experience
in my life but you know being ignored or
ridiculed I somehow kept trying to do
things that they were slightly different
if I didn’t match the pattern it was
like the time when I was at university
we had this problem and I came up with a
really interesting way to solve the
problem it was a image compression
algorithm I won’t bore you with the
details but it really fascinated me and
so I really applied myself now for the
most part I was a slacker I just cruised
along I did only to be a minimum to get
through but this problem really caught
my interest and so I spent weeks and
weeks and weeks coming up with this
amazing solution and it was so different
and so amazing that my electric accuse
me of cheating so I dropped out of
university never finished my degree
we’re not started businesses some worked
some failed but my need to do things
differently ultimately led me to start a
company that I recently fired myself
from the company I started in the middle
of the GSC
because I thought that would be weird
and in building this business at then we
developed a culture a culture of
individuality creativity openness and
transparency and we did things very very
differently again unlike any other
companies and it was considered weird
but by doing these things differently
and weirdly we became New Zealand’s
fastest-growing tech company and we
became the leader in our emerging field
ironically this all happened because
they didn’t match a pattern a pattern to
find kids who were different when my
friends were picked to be in that
special class the pattern made me weird
and the patterns not always right we’ve
already heard this today the patterns
and science the patterns and healthcare
dependence in education and so I think
more weird is good I love weirdness all
over the place I want more weird in the
world and it’s never ever been in the
history of this planet been safer to be
weird there’s no lines anywhere and you
know what you’re thinking the world has
probably got a lot more weird people in
it than at use 15,000 years ago and in
fact in this room
we’re probably overflowing with
weirdness
but how do we get the more weirdos does
it start with the eight-year-olds do we
encourage creativity and thinking
outside the square do we encourage
thinking differently enough you know
screw the special class we’re all in it
well last year I tried to recreate some
of the steps that made me a weirdo so I
launched a charity with fellow TEDx sir
Michele Dickinson and future Ted X’s
Zoey timbrel and Reb Heath and this
charity is based around giving kids from
every background an opportunity to be
weird with technology so we get a whole
bunch of passionate kids into a room a
whole bunch of crazy technology and we
let them go we let them discover it we
let them imagine Willet and discover and
we let them invent and it’s kids of
every background so it’s 50% boys 50%
girls but also we work with the low
decile schools as well so we make sure
that half of the kids coming along are
coming from backgrounds where access to
this sort of technology just would
normally be out of their reach and we do
that by sponsoring them through it this
is really important because being weird
is not a privileged white male thing and
the results are amazing these are some
photos from one of the recent events you
can just see how many kids that we get
along to these things and we just let
them explore new ways of thinking so you
know playing with robot gloves is not a
crazy idea you only had a code learning
how to 3d print learning about drones
learning about science and
nanotechnology because this is our
future and we want to encourage the 10
year olds today to become the innovators
in ten years time but what about the
rest of us whatever about us here who
are in that dreaded conformist age I’m
not calling you guys conformist by the
way is it too late or is there a part of
us that never forgets how to be weird
except for the stupidest thing that
tries to protect us from these lions
that makes us all conformists do we
never forget how to be a weirdo but we
just become too scared so what are you
gonna do be weird encourage the weirdos
will continue to ignore them the Lions
aren’t real anymore thank you
[Music] you