sting experiences so I’ve been in places
like Tokyo Sydney San Francisco working
in forward-thinking industries like
semiconductors energy communications
directly for Fortune 100 CEOs on some of
the most challenging issues that they’re
facing and this was an important
experience for me because I got to see
what some of the most innovative minds
were working on where the money was
going
what challenges they’re facing on a
global context and from that experience
I came to a conclusion we are actually
facing a paradigm shift when it comes to
human progress and I’m talking about in
less than 50 years if we crack
artificial intelligence the better
understanding we get of our human genome
and the ability to edit our genetics
right using data effectively to figure
out how we make better decisions that
will dramatically impact the way in
which we live and that’s happening and
it’s up to us in the audience or the
people watching this to figure out how
we can play a part in making this curve
as vertical as possible and if that’s
not where your priorities are then this
talk probably isn’t for you but if you
are and you do have the desire to change
the world we’ll have four steps for you
casual poop emoji keep you on your toes
but before I give you the four steps I’m
gonna give you a reality check okay you
probably will not change the world and
here’s what I mean by that and we see it
too often will be a fifteen year old or
a 16 year old student super bright-eyed
incredibly ambitious wanting to change
the world you’re in every
extracurricular you have the best marks
you’re in athletics and you’ll get to
grade 12 and you’ll have no idea what
you want to do I certainly did I flipped
a coin heads whose business tails was
genetics true story real
life and heads because my brother was
doing business and genetics because I
had a cool course in grade 11 the funny
thing is is most young people actually
don’t have better information to make
better decisions so they’ll choose a
university because you know they think
it has a good program or because one of
their friends are going there and
they’ll think they made it because they
think university is the goal and then
they’ll get to university and even if
they don’t switch programs which most of
them do they’ll get to their fourth year
and still have no idea what they want to
do and then companies will recruit and
that’s where complacency starts so where
you were once this 15 or 16 year old
young person who wanted to change the
world now you’re sitting in a cubicle as
an accountant and to me that’s failure
but it wasn’t your fault the system
failed you and you put your trust in
that right and so the four points that
I’m going to outline is going to
increase the probabilities of us
dramatically making that curve that we
talked about as vertical as possible so
the first point is be different one of
the things that we talked about at tks
is the only way to achieve
unconventional success is to follow an
unconventional path like you can expect
to do the same thing as everybody else
and achieve a different result but
what’s funny is when I speak at schools
high schools across North America I
always ask young people yeah where do
you see yourself in the next 10 to 20
years and I’ll always get super
ambitious answers and I love these
answers I want to change the world right
I want to be the CEO I want to be the
innovator and then I ask them well what
are you doing differently than the
person next to you and there’s often
silence and maybe they’re not doing
anything differently because they’re
still young they’re trying to find their
bearings fine how are you thinking
differently than the person next to you
and it usually is still silence right
and so there’s almost this air of
naivety or entitlement or I’m not sure
what it is but you have to be different
if you want to achieve that result if
you think about my story
in university most of my experience
actually didn’t come from university so
when I was 18 or 19 I was interning with
one of the world’s largest microfinance
institutions in Bangladesh working
everyday with Nobel Peace Prize laureate
winner Muhammad Yunus
on figuring out how to address ultra
poverty I started a company was given
fifty thousand dollars at a two hundred
thousand dollar valuation without even
having an idea I was building building
mobility aids for the physically
disabled in rural Honduras teaching at
universities in East Africa an
accredited business case course working
in Central Asia on early childhood
education like this is all in University
and I’m running out of stuff like I have
so many things that I can talk about and
most of those opportunities are me
creating my own opportunities and that
was an important experience for me again
because I got to see the world from a
completely different lens and a
completely different context than
everybody else that’s the first thing be
different the second point is you need
more information so I’ll use this
analogy say your information or the
information you have in your head is
like puzzle pieces well say you only
have ten puzzle pieces and everybody has
ten puzzle pieces no matter how hard you
think you can only there’s only a
certain amount of combinations for these
puzzle pieces right to create a certain
picture and what I find is oftentimes
young people spend a lot of time
thinking but not getting more
information imagine you had 20 pieces
now the amount of combinations are
exponential and the connections that you
can conceive of other people typically
can’t conceive of and so once you get
that more once you get more of that
information again you’ll be able to make
some of these connections that can have
dramatic impacts on the world that
typically young people don’t make okay
fine so what information should I get
right that’s the next question that
young people always ask well in my
opinion if you want to change the world
you got to focus on forward-thinking
content right I mentioned some of these
topics like think about things like
artificial intelligence virtual reality
genomics quantum cryptocurrency and
there are lots right but the things that
are going to explode and dramatically
change the way and
we live focus on those now normally when
I say that people tell me well those
things are hard like don’t you need a
university level education to work on
artificial intelligence and all of those
things well my answer to that is step 3
figure it out right the world is
different today than it was I would say
even ten years ago five years ago there
was more information data that’s been
created in the past two years actually
the information has doubled over a
two-year span that we have available to
us so there’s a lot of resources
available at your fingertips
right whereas traditionally when I was
growing up we didn’t have Khan Academy
we weren’t using YouTube or Google to
figure out some of these challenges but
you can today right and you can learn
from the best in the world to figure it
out we have a tks participant who’s
working on next-generation brain imaging
technology right how to increase the
granularity of an MRI scan by like 20 X
to 100x and he had to learn university
level physics or calculus to figure that
out and it was hard right hard problems
take time to solve and are hard to solve
but he had to do it because if someone
went onto his machine he had to make
sure they didn’t blow up right and he
had that passion for what he was doing
and part of actually the getting more
information piece is finding your
passion I’m actually gonna go back for a
second a lot of people think we’re like
oh I’m not passionate about this topic
I’m not passionate about AI right now
I’m not passionate about VR and a lot of
people think that passion is kind of
like love at first sight like you’re
just going to see a topic and it’s going
to hit you with passion but that’s
actually not what happens you need to
spend time really understanding a topic
understanding the opportunities making
those connections and that’s where the
passion will come from right and once
you have that passion figuring it out
will actually be a heck of a lot heck of
a lot easier and if you can actually
develop the skill of figuring it out
overcoming adversity with anything in
life you will
be far more comfortable whenever you
reach a point of uncertainty to overcome
that rather than just stop at that wall
in and stop and so training that skill
early is important lastly to tie
everything together so the fourth step
is having this notion of a boss
mentality now it’s very difficult to
articulate of course there is a notion
of self confidence in there but it’s a
little bit more than that certainly is
not arrogance right arrogance is walking
into a room and thinking that everybody
else or you were better than everybody
else there
that’s not boss mentality but what boss
mentality is is walking into a room and
understanding that everybody else in the
room is not better than you and once you
understand that once you really
understand that you’ll be able to ask
for things that other people typically
won’t be able to ask for you’ll be able
to stand out in ways again that other
people won’t be able to stand out in so
Steve Jobs says one of my favorite
quotes and I might be paraphrasing a
little bit but he says the world in
which you know it today was made up by
people no smarter than you and that
Steve Jobs saying that like he’s had
access to a bunch of the most
influential innovators globally for the
past like fifty to seven years who have
impacted the way we live and he’s still
saying they’re no different than us and
again if you really internalize that and
if you get it and you trust yourself
enough right you’ll be able to take all
of those three steps combine it with
Boston mentality and make it happen make
change happen and so that’s the formula
right be different get more information
figure it out and use that boss
mentality to actually implement change
once you do that you’ll poop I mean
you’ll change the world Thanks
you
like Tokyo Sydney San Francisco working
in forward-thinking industries like
semiconductors energy communications
directly for Fortune 100 CEOs on some of
the most challenging issues that they’re
facing and this was an important
experience for me because I got to see
what some of the most innovative minds
were working on where the money was
going
what challenges they’re facing on a
global context and from that experience
I came to a conclusion we are actually
facing a paradigm shift when it comes to
human progress and I’m talking about in
less than 50 years if we crack
artificial intelligence the better
understanding we get of our human genome
and the ability to edit our genetics
right using data effectively to figure
out how we make better decisions that
will dramatically impact the way in
which we live and that’s happening and
it’s up to us in the audience or the
people watching this to figure out how
we can play a part in making this curve
as vertical as possible and if that’s
not where your priorities are then this
talk probably isn’t for you but if you
are and you do have the desire to change
the world we’ll have four steps for you
casual poop emoji keep you on your toes
but before I give you the four steps I’m
gonna give you a reality check okay you
probably will not change the world and
here’s what I mean by that and we see it
too often will be a fifteen year old or
a 16 year old student super bright-eyed
incredibly ambitious wanting to change
the world you’re in every
extracurricular you have the best marks
you’re in athletics and you’ll get to
grade 12 and you’ll have no idea what
you want to do I certainly did I flipped
a coin heads whose business tails was
genetics true story real
life and heads because my brother was
doing business and genetics because I
had a cool course in grade 11 the funny
thing is is most young people actually
don’t have better information to make
better decisions so they’ll choose a
university because you know they think
it has a good program or because one of
their friends are going there and
they’ll think they made it because they
think university is the goal and then
they’ll get to university and even if
they don’t switch programs which most of
them do they’ll get to their fourth year
and still have no idea what they want to
do and then companies will recruit and
that’s where complacency starts so where
you were once this 15 or 16 year old
young person who wanted to change the
world now you’re sitting in a cubicle as
an accountant and to me that’s failure
but it wasn’t your fault the system
failed you and you put your trust in
that right and so the four points that
I’m going to outline is going to
increase the probabilities of us
dramatically making that curve that we
talked about as vertical as possible so
the first point is be different one of
the things that we talked about at tks
is the only way to achieve
unconventional success is to follow an
unconventional path like you can expect
to do the same thing as everybody else
and achieve a different result but
what’s funny is when I speak at schools
high schools across North America I
always ask young people yeah where do
you see yourself in the next 10 to 20
years and I’ll always get super
ambitious answers and I love these
answers I want to change the world right
I want to be the CEO I want to be the
innovator and then I ask them well what
are you doing differently than the
person next to you and there’s often
silence and maybe they’re not doing
anything differently because they’re
still young they’re trying to find their
bearings fine how are you thinking
differently than the person next to you
and it usually is still silence right
and so there’s almost this air of
naivety or entitlement or I’m not sure
what it is but you have to be different
if you want to achieve that result if
you think about my story
in university most of my experience
actually didn’t come from university so
when I was 18 or 19 I was interning with
one of the world’s largest microfinance
institutions in Bangladesh working
everyday with Nobel Peace Prize laureate
winner Muhammad Yunus
on figuring out how to address ultra
poverty I started a company was given
fifty thousand dollars at a two hundred
thousand dollar valuation without even
having an idea I was building building
mobility aids for the physically
disabled in rural Honduras teaching at
universities in East Africa an
accredited business case course working
in Central Asia on early childhood
education like this is all in University
and I’m running out of stuff like I have
so many things that I can talk about and
most of those opportunities are me
creating my own opportunities and that
was an important experience for me again
because I got to see the world from a
completely different lens and a
completely different context than
everybody else that’s the first thing be
different the second point is you need
more information so I’ll use this
analogy say your information or the
information you have in your head is
like puzzle pieces well say you only
have ten puzzle pieces and everybody has
ten puzzle pieces no matter how hard you
think you can only there’s only a
certain amount of combinations for these
puzzle pieces right to create a certain
picture and what I find is oftentimes
young people spend a lot of time
thinking but not getting more
information imagine you had 20 pieces
now the amount of combinations are
exponential and the connections that you
can conceive of other people typically
can’t conceive of and so once you get
that more once you get more of that
information again you’ll be able to make
some of these connections that can have
dramatic impacts on the world that
typically young people don’t make okay
fine so what information should I get
right that’s the next question that
young people always ask well in my
opinion if you want to change the world
you got to focus on forward-thinking
content right I mentioned some of these
topics like think about things like
artificial intelligence virtual reality
genomics quantum cryptocurrency and
there are lots right but the things that
are going to explode and dramatically
change the way and
we live focus on those now normally when
I say that people tell me well those
things are hard like don’t you need a
university level education to work on
artificial intelligence and all of those
things well my answer to that is step 3
figure it out right the world is
different today than it was I would say
even ten years ago five years ago there
was more information data that’s been
created in the past two years actually
the information has doubled over a
two-year span that we have available to
us so there’s a lot of resources
available at your fingertips
right whereas traditionally when I was
growing up we didn’t have Khan Academy
we weren’t using YouTube or Google to
figure out some of these challenges but
you can today right and you can learn
from the best in the world to figure it
out we have a tks participant who’s
working on next-generation brain imaging
technology right how to increase the
granularity of an MRI scan by like 20 X
to 100x and he had to learn university
level physics or calculus to figure that
out and it was hard right hard problems
take time to solve and are hard to solve
but he had to do it because if someone
went onto his machine he had to make
sure they didn’t blow up right and he
had that passion for what he was doing
and part of actually the getting more
information piece is finding your
passion I’m actually gonna go back for a
second a lot of people think we’re like
oh I’m not passionate about this topic
I’m not passionate about AI right now
I’m not passionate about VR and a lot of
people think that passion is kind of
like love at first sight like you’re
just going to see a topic and it’s going
to hit you with passion but that’s
actually not what happens you need to
spend time really understanding a topic
understanding the opportunities making
those connections and that’s where the
passion will come from right and once
you have that passion figuring it out
will actually be a heck of a lot heck of
a lot easier and if you can actually
develop the skill of figuring it out
overcoming adversity with anything in
life you will
be far more comfortable whenever you
reach a point of uncertainty to overcome
that rather than just stop at that wall
in and stop and so training that skill
early is important lastly to tie
everything together so the fourth step
is having this notion of a boss
mentality now it’s very difficult to
articulate of course there is a notion
of self confidence in there but it’s a
little bit more than that certainly is
not arrogance right arrogance is walking
into a room and thinking that everybody
else or you were better than everybody
else there
that’s not boss mentality but what boss
mentality is is walking into a room and
understanding that everybody else in the
room is not better than you and once you
understand that once you really
understand that you’ll be able to ask
for things that other people typically
won’t be able to ask for you’ll be able
to stand out in ways again that other
people won’t be able to stand out in so
Steve Jobs says one of my favorite
quotes and I might be paraphrasing a
little bit but he says the world in
which you know it today was made up by
people no smarter than you and that
Steve Jobs saying that like he’s had
access to a bunch of the most
influential innovators globally for the
past like fifty to seven years who have
impacted the way we live and he’s still
saying they’re no different than us and
again if you really internalize that and
if you get it and you trust yourself
enough right you’ll be able to take all
of those three steps combine it with
Boston mentality and make it happen make
change happen and so that’s the formula
right be different get more information
figure it out and use that boss
mentality to actually implement change
once you do that you’ll poop I mean
you’ll change the world Thanks
you
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