good afternoon it’s an honor to be here
among so many impressive people at TEDx
Oxbridge and it’s very witty theme of
bridge of why’s I thought I’d reverse
that wording and start with the question
why bridges it’s a perfectly useful
metaphor but why what does it mean how
does it work what is it a metaphor of I
think that the best way to approach this
is by thinking about something that’s in
common to all of us
Oxford and Cambridge universities have
since their beginning been a place for
educating leaders and also a place for
bridging gaps we bridge the gap between
ignorance and knowledge or between those
capable of influencing others and those
less so so it’s a it’s a good metaphor
to think about the bridges in both of
our universities and how they’re that
bridging act itself is connected to the
idea of leadership Oxford and Cambridge
have perhaps from the beginning been
involved from their beginnings been
involved in this mission which is now
more relevant perhaps than ever before
as we see our societies become
increasingly polarized arguably our
leaders both big and small are less
interested in listening to people who
disagree with them who occupy the
extremes of those polarities in a normal
distribution of thought and ideas
whereas more responsible leaders think
about bridging that gap rather than just
shouting across from one polarity to the
other now of course it’s easy to
maintain polarities and I can do that
right here if you’ll work with me I can
ask you a question in a certain way I
can lead you to answer in a certain way
that maintains a certain polarity let’s
try it let’s see if this works
here’s my question for you yeah there
it’s it’s a spiritual question it’s a
spiritual question which you’re going to
eventually oops here we go
I’m bridging bridging technology and and
chant
as a results come in now obviously I set
that up in a way that conditioned an
answer an answer that is useful for my
purposes but it doesn’t always have to
be that way now we can think of Oxford
Cambridge in a state of constant rivalry
or friendly rivalry but clearly there’s
much more in common between these two
polarities then there is different
anyone who knows both institutions might
be hypersensitive to their distinctions
but from outside and not very far
outside it’s really difficult to tell
the difference even in very superficial
ways from within we can see similarities
that are not particularly meaningful but
help to actually achieve affinity
between the two places in my own case
for example I was a student at Cambridge
and now I teach at Oxford and
coincidentally my college at Cambridge
Claire and my college at Oxford
Brasenose have the same color scheme
it’s it’s a nice coincidence but it
reminds me more of the similarities
between the two institutions than their
differences and it affiliates me to both
it bridges any gap that might have
existed in my own sense of what each
institution represents there are all
kinds of other ways in which Oxford and
Cambridge work together not just in my
mind or in the minds of people who know
both places a splendid example from a
from an academic or an intellectual
perspective is that is an extraordinary
initiative called the Ganesa archive
project there was an extraordinary
discovery made in the early 20th century
of a walled up room in Cairo full of
about a thousand years worth of paper
bits of paper scraps of paper and some
documents but mainly fragments all had
been stored in this doorless windowless
room by people over about a thousand
years because those bits of paper
contained the name of God upon them and
could not be destroyed according to the
faith of the Judaism that obtained
across that long period of time when
this archive was discovered it was too
complex a challenge for anyone
universities faculty to study and so it
was brought to the UK and housed partly
at the Bodley and in Oxford and partly
at the University of LA
in Cambridge and to this day it’s a
joint effort bridging the scholarly gap
of the management challenge of
understanding that archive studying it
digitizing it conserving it but also the
intellectual challenge of bridging that
gap across time of a thousand years of
the history of Judaism in Cairo that
most cosmopolitan and bridging of cities
with the lives and loves and and
transactions of people that would
otherwise never be recoverable to us now
it’s interesting that it’s the context
of Judaism and particularly medieval
Judaism that is so well reconstructed
and again is that archive partly because
Judaism itself can be said to represent
a type of connection over time not just
a tribal one but diachronic Lee across
the ages where you can think about
cultures and the ways they interacted
with each other through the lens of this
particular mode of understanding there
are Jewish communities in the most
extraordinary places we don’t generally
think of Jews in places like Kerala in
the southwest of India but there they
are and there they’ve been for a
thousand years the Diaspora of Judaism
represents a type of bridging that’s far
less physical but far more powerful and
enduring than many of the more
architectural monuments that the
metaphor of a bridge often suggests the
survival of these modes of thought and
means of transaction that is ensured by
the ways in which Judaism has both
spread itself and sustained itself in
such a diasporic way across the world or
in many ways an exemplary version of
preservation of a culture and a type of
very subtle leadership that is arguably
far more successful than something more
explicit anyone know where this bridge
is I’ll give you a chance to guess so
where is this bridge that’s not right
let’s see if we can come up with some
other answers that might might be closer
to the mark if you’re from the states
you might have an unfair advantage yes
yes we’re getting some answers it’s
definitely in our minds but also in real
life it’s not New York it could have
been it’s not Istanbul it could have
been but it is the bridge between San
Francisco and Oakland it spans the bay
San Francisco Bay what’s interesting
about this to me is the way it has
connected not just to cities but in a
way that has brought both into much
bigger life than they might have had
otherwise
not just socially but economically
Oakland is a port city that equips San
Francisco with many of the goods that it
otherwise would have great difficulty
accessing because the nearest other port
would have to be very far away down the
peninsula but up until this bridge was
built getting all those goods from
Oakland over to San Francisco was
logistically exceedingly difficult it
occurred by ferries which is another way
of conveying from one place to another
but not as efficient as a bridge the
bridge of course has practical
advantages it’s built to communities up
but it has metaphorical examples of how
the vision to to see the value of a
bridge the the management skill to get
it built and the leadership to make sure
that it continues to function to the
benefit of the communities on both sides
that’s a form of leadership
effectiveness that again is is highly
highly revealing I can see people
giggling about things that I have no
idea so I’ll swiftly move on to the next
metaphorical dimension of bridges
sometimes we see bridges spanning
borders and this is where the metaphor
can be edgier trickier because at a
border you often have conflict you have
dispute and in fact you can have a
battle possibly one of the most
substantive things connected by a bridge
in military history is represented in
this painting of Raphael it’s a fresco
actually representing the Emperor
Constantine’s
victory over his rival claimants to the
Empire of Rome
Maxentius Constantine won a battle at a
place called the Milvian bridge which
you can just about see here doesn’t look
at all like that never did but anyway
that’s a bridge and the representation
in Constantine’s political program of
this victory was very much reposed on
the fact that it happened at a bridge he
himself wanted to represent the bridging
of an old Rome and a new room and then
most specifically a pagan Rome and a
Christian Rome because he claimed to
have seen a vision in the sky telling
him that in the sign of the Cross he
would win so in Greek and total Nika or
in Latin in hooks signaling kiss both
meaning in this sign you shall conquer
but that metaphor isn’t maintained
without reference to this conjunction of
political systems religious systems and
social systems that come to constitute
late antiquity and ultimately the Europe
that grew out of it here’s Europe what’s
left of it and interestingly what’s
notable about the euro note is what’s on
the reverse of every every note have you
noticed have you noticed their bridges
each of the denominations all whatever
there are eight of them has a bridge on
the back this is the ten euro note and
there’s a bridge on it
all of them have bridges they all
represent this idea that the European
community its economic and its political
form are meant to yoke together entities
polities ideologies that had in the
fairly recent past been polarized in an
extreme way but the European project
represents itself as leading out of that
chaos leading into some sort of
community and it’s not insignificant
that it’s a commercial or a financial
mechanism that first brings this sense
of community about it leads these
warring nations together what better
motivator or interest than the financial
interestingly interestingly though all
of these bridges every single one of
them is fictional none of them exists
they’re all just dreamed up by the
designers who designed the currency but
even more interestingly an artist in
Holland has recreated all of them in a
small village in Holland if you go I
forget the name and I wouldn’t know how
to pronounce it anyway but you can go
and see these fake bridges made real in
a way that’s meant to acknowledge the
fractures in the European project and
also the fact that it’s now more than
just a financial project more than just
an idea of credit or connection through
transactions and in fact more like a
social system that is for all its
complexities and difficulties
nonetheless becoming real becoming solid
just as the fictional bridges are
becoming real bridges here in a place
that is visible but visit able by all of
us here’s the one on the 10 euro note
looks even more real because of the
saltpeter coming out of the stone and in
time we’ll forget that it’s an art
project and only remember it as being a
symbol of connection I study this sort
of thing the metaphors that allow us to
connect the commercial world and the
cultural world and one way that I’d do
it is by looking at the heritage
industry we look at how there is
actually a lot of economic advantage
economic contribution from culture in
the UK particularly it’s a big engine of
economic activity almost to the extreme
of being 22 billion of the annual of the
gross value add into the economy that’s
two percent of the economy which is
about the eighth largest sector of the
whole economy it’s 20 billion of that is
tourism so the large majority of it is
tourism
but there’s other in things like
heritage property development if you
build or renovate a heritage house the
value of the whole neighborhood goes up
in measurable ways and in fact it there
are jobs and taxes that come from this
confluence of culture and commerce that
are truly not inconsiderable the people
in this industry who’ve seen it are
leading Britain’s ability to
generate economic advantage from culture
one small statistic that I just love is
the fact that just last year the number
of people visiting historic houses so
not even towers or castles but just
houses of Blenheim Palace for example 24
million its larger than the number of
tourists visiting Japan altogether
there’s something about the demand for
culture that constitutes a connection to
industrial economics that’s really worth
studying we’re not doing enough of it
and that’s that’s the way I spend most
of my time I could think about it in a
different way a polarized way for
example a business guru like Milton
Friedman who’s famous for having said
the business of business is business
it’s about profit it’s about
shareholders but on the other other side
another polarity a famous Oxford
aesthetician and philosopher Walter
Pater who famously remarked art for
art’s sake tantalizing and nomic remark
that’s meant to make you think but also
meant to make you think only that the
value of art is not to be quantified not
to be considered something instrumental
in the way that historic properties add
economic value to a neighborhood how do
you reconcile those two well it’s
possible intellectual leadership shows
that there’s a position in the middle
for example another Oxford figure
William Morris famous for his designs
and also for his business acumen in the
19th century remarked that objects in
homes ie really as close to us as we can
get should be both beautiful and useful
or we should consider them from either
side he’s trying to think his way
through this polarity to bridge the gap
between them and along the way he made
quite a lot of money and perhaps more
importantly quite an enormous and
outsized influence on British design you
will have seen his wallpapers you’ll
have seen buildings influenced by his
own home and sense of style even today
companies like Habitat are still
peddling his designs of Sanderson’s
interior decorators that was his company
he’s everywhere William Morris he’s
particularly vivid in Oxford though
because he
a lot have influenced a lot around here
but also because of another weird
coincidence the fact that there is
another William Morris in Oxford a
businessman possibly comparable to Henry
Ford in UK terms William Morris Lord
Nuffield who built the factory that’s
now run by the BMW Group on the edges of
Oxford where the Mini is still made and
where the designs around Industrial
Engineering were refined and made
efficient under William Morris’s
leadership these two men both of the
same name both living in Oxford it’s a
coincidence that someone who stops to
think about it can draw a connection
between them but it’s a connection that
has both aesthetic and economic
advantages when you stop to think about
it both of them have made Oxford a
wealthier place than it might have been
otherwise and have made Britain as a
whole more advanced and sensitive
environment for all of us to live in
which do you think is the bigger lie
either these polarities the business of
businesses business or art for art’s
sake after after hearing my thoughts I’d
be curious to see whether you find it
possible to polarize ourselves in this
way clearly there’s much more subtlety
to thinking about these extremes
subtlety that comes from bridging the
gap between them rather than thinking of
either of them as true to the exclusion
of the other I’m pleased to see that
this is a debate a debate in graphical
form to summarize what leaders do is
build bridges
there’s no good definition of leadership
but it does involve all of these verbs
and nouns connecting affiliating
collaborating commanding and so on
legitimating expressing and that’s what
I hope my examples and metaphors have
indicated that thinking about leadership
as an act of bridging or thinking about
bridges as acts of leadership allows us
insights into how this is not only a
metaphor but something that’s real that
makes art happen that makes wealth
happen
and it makes ideas come to life and very
vivid in useful way so let me leave you
one more chance to end with your input
and one more question what does the idea
of a bridge mean to all of you well the
words emerge let me take this
opportunity to thank our organizers and
heed all of you for taking 15 minutes to
think about how the idea of a bridge is
a wonderful example of leadership thank
you very much
[Applause]
among so many impressive people at TEDx
Oxbridge and it’s very witty theme of
bridge of why’s I thought I’d reverse
that wording and start with the question
why bridges it’s a perfectly useful
metaphor but why what does it mean how
does it work what is it a metaphor of I
think that the best way to approach this
is by thinking about something that’s in
common to all of us
Oxford and Cambridge universities have
since their beginning been a place for
educating leaders and also a place for
bridging gaps we bridge the gap between
ignorance and knowledge or between those
capable of influencing others and those
less so so it’s a it’s a good metaphor
to think about the bridges in both of
our universities and how they’re that
bridging act itself is connected to the
idea of leadership Oxford and Cambridge
have perhaps from the beginning been
involved from their beginnings been
involved in this mission which is now
more relevant perhaps than ever before
as we see our societies become
increasingly polarized arguably our
leaders both big and small are less
interested in listening to people who
disagree with them who occupy the
extremes of those polarities in a normal
distribution of thought and ideas
whereas more responsible leaders think
about bridging that gap rather than just
shouting across from one polarity to the
other now of course it’s easy to
maintain polarities and I can do that
right here if you’ll work with me I can
ask you a question in a certain way I
can lead you to answer in a certain way
that maintains a certain polarity let’s
try it let’s see if this works
here’s my question for you yeah there
it’s it’s a spiritual question it’s a
spiritual question which you’re going to
eventually oops here we go
I’m bridging bridging technology and and
chant
as a results come in now obviously I set
that up in a way that conditioned an
answer an answer that is useful for my
purposes but it doesn’t always have to
be that way now we can think of Oxford
Cambridge in a state of constant rivalry
or friendly rivalry but clearly there’s
much more in common between these two
polarities then there is different
anyone who knows both institutions might
be hypersensitive to their distinctions
but from outside and not very far
outside it’s really difficult to tell
the difference even in very superficial
ways from within we can see similarities
that are not particularly meaningful but
help to actually achieve affinity
between the two places in my own case
for example I was a student at Cambridge
and now I teach at Oxford and
coincidentally my college at Cambridge
Claire and my college at Oxford
Brasenose have the same color scheme
it’s it’s a nice coincidence but it
reminds me more of the similarities
between the two institutions than their
differences and it affiliates me to both
it bridges any gap that might have
existed in my own sense of what each
institution represents there are all
kinds of other ways in which Oxford and
Cambridge work together not just in my
mind or in the minds of people who know
both places a splendid example from a
from an academic or an intellectual
perspective is that is an extraordinary
initiative called the Ganesa archive
project there was an extraordinary
discovery made in the early 20th century
of a walled up room in Cairo full of
about a thousand years worth of paper
bits of paper scraps of paper and some
documents but mainly fragments all had
been stored in this doorless windowless
room by people over about a thousand
years because those bits of paper
contained the name of God upon them and
could not be destroyed according to the
faith of the Judaism that obtained
across that long period of time when
this archive was discovered it was too
complex a challenge for anyone
universities faculty to study and so it
was brought to the UK and housed partly
at the Bodley and in Oxford and partly
at the University of LA
in Cambridge and to this day it’s a
joint effort bridging the scholarly gap
of the management challenge of
understanding that archive studying it
digitizing it conserving it but also the
intellectual challenge of bridging that
gap across time of a thousand years of
the history of Judaism in Cairo that
most cosmopolitan and bridging of cities
with the lives and loves and and
transactions of people that would
otherwise never be recoverable to us now
it’s interesting that it’s the context
of Judaism and particularly medieval
Judaism that is so well reconstructed
and again is that archive partly because
Judaism itself can be said to represent
a type of connection over time not just
a tribal one but diachronic Lee across
the ages where you can think about
cultures and the ways they interacted
with each other through the lens of this
particular mode of understanding there
are Jewish communities in the most
extraordinary places we don’t generally
think of Jews in places like Kerala in
the southwest of India but there they
are and there they’ve been for a
thousand years the Diaspora of Judaism
represents a type of bridging that’s far
less physical but far more powerful and
enduring than many of the more
architectural monuments that the
metaphor of a bridge often suggests the
survival of these modes of thought and
means of transaction that is ensured by
the ways in which Judaism has both
spread itself and sustained itself in
such a diasporic way across the world or
in many ways an exemplary version of
preservation of a culture and a type of
very subtle leadership that is arguably
far more successful than something more
explicit anyone know where this bridge
is I’ll give you a chance to guess so
where is this bridge that’s not right
let’s see if we can come up with some
other answers that might might be closer
to the mark if you’re from the states
you might have an unfair advantage yes
yes we’re getting some answers it’s
definitely in our minds but also in real
life it’s not New York it could have
been it’s not Istanbul it could have
been but it is the bridge between San
Francisco and Oakland it spans the bay
San Francisco Bay what’s interesting
about this to me is the way it has
connected not just to cities but in a
way that has brought both into much
bigger life than they might have had
otherwise
not just socially but economically
Oakland is a port city that equips San
Francisco with many of the goods that it
otherwise would have great difficulty
accessing because the nearest other port
would have to be very far away down the
peninsula but up until this bridge was
built getting all those goods from
Oakland over to San Francisco was
logistically exceedingly difficult it
occurred by ferries which is another way
of conveying from one place to another
but not as efficient as a bridge the
bridge of course has practical
advantages it’s built to communities up
but it has metaphorical examples of how
the vision to to see the value of a
bridge the the management skill to get
it built and the leadership to make sure
that it continues to function to the
benefit of the communities on both sides
that’s a form of leadership
effectiveness that again is is highly
highly revealing I can see people
giggling about things that I have no
idea so I’ll swiftly move on to the next
metaphorical dimension of bridges
sometimes we see bridges spanning
borders and this is where the metaphor
can be edgier trickier because at a
border you often have conflict you have
dispute and in fact you can have a
battle possibly one of the most
substantive things connected by a bridge
in military history is represented in
this painting of Raphael it’s a fresco
actually representing the Emperor
Constantine’s
victory over his rival claimants to the
Empire of Rome
Maxentius Constantine won a battle at a
place called the Milvian bridge which
you can just about see here doesn’t look
at all like that never did but anyway
that’s a bridge and the representation
in Constantine’s political program of
this victory was very much reposed on
the fact that it happened at a bridge he
himself wanted to represent the bridging
of an old Rome and a new room and then
most specifically a pagan Rome and a
Christian Rome because he claimed to
have seen a vision in the sky telling
him that in the sign of the Cross he
would win so in Greek and total Nika or
in Latin in hooks signaling kiss both
meaning in this sign you shall conquer
but that metaphor isn’t maintained
without reference to this conjunction of
political systems religious systems and
social systems that come to constitute
late antiquity and ultimately the Europe
that grew out of it here’s Europe what’s
left of it and interestingly what’s
notable about the euro note is what’s on
the reverse of every every note have you
noticed have you noticed their bridges
each of the denominations all whatever
there are eight of them has a bridge on
the back this is the ten euro note and
there’s a bridge on it
all of them have bridges they all
represent this idea that the European
community its economic and its political
form are meant to yoke together entities
polities ideologies that had in the
fairly recent past been polarized in an
extreme way but the European project
represents itself as leading out of that
chaos leading into some sort of
community and it’s not insignificant
that it’s a commercial or a financial
mechanism that first brings this sense
of community about it leads these
warring nations together what better
motivator or interest than the financial
interestingly interestingly though all
of these bridges every single one of
them is fictional none of them exists
they’re all just dreamed up by the
designers who designed the currency but
even more interestingly an artist in
Holland has recreated all of them in a
small village in Holland if you go I
forget the name and I wouldn’t know how
to pronounce it anyway but you can go
and see these fake bridges made real in
a way that’s meant to acknowledge the
fractures in the European project and
also the fact that it’s now more than
just a financial project more than just
an idea of credit or connection through
transactions and in fact more like a
social system that is for all its
complexities and difficulties
nonetheless becoming real becoming solid
just as the fictional bridges are
becoming real bridges here in a place
that is visible but visit able by all of
us here’s the one on the 10 euro note
looks even more real because of the
saltpeter coming out of the stone and in
time we’ll forget that it’s an art
project and only remember it as being a
symbol of connection I study this sort
of thing the metaphors that allow us to
connect the commercial world and the
cultural world and one way that I’d do
it is by looking at the heritage
industry we look at how there is
actually a lot of economic advantage
economic contribution from culture in
the UK particularly it’s a big engine of
economic activity almost to the extreme
of being 22 billion of the annual of the
gross value add into the economy that’s
two percent of the economy which is
about the eighth largest sector of the
whole economy it’s 20 billion of that is
tourism so the large majority of it is
tourism
but there’s other in things like
heritage property development if you
build or renovate a heritage house the
value of the whole neighborhood goes up
in measurable ways and in fact it there
are jobs and taxes that come from this
confluence of culture and commerce that
are truly not inconsiderable the people
in this industry who’ve seen it are
leading Britain’s ability to
generate economic advantage from culture
one small statistic that I just love is
the fact that just last year the number
of people visiting historic houses so
not even towers or castles but just
houses of Blenheim Palace for example 24
million its larger than the number of
tourists visiting Japan altogether
there’s something about the demand for
culture that constitutes a connection to
industrial economics that’s really worth
studying we’re not doing enough of it
and that’s that’s the way I spend most
of my time I could think about it in a
different way a polarized way for
example a business guru like Milton
Friedman who’s famous for having said
the business of business is business
it’s about profit it’s about
shareholders but on the other other side
another polarity a famous Oxford
aesthetician and philosopher Walter
Pater who famously remarked art for
art’s sake tantalizing and nomic remark
that’s meant to make you think but also
meant to make you think only that the
value of art is not to be quantified not
to be considered something instrumental
in the way that historic properties add
economic value to a neighborhood how do
you reconcile those two well it’s
possible intellectual leadership shows
that there’s a position in the middle
for example another Oxford figure
William Morris famous for his designs
and also for his business acumen in the
19th century remarked that objects in
homes ie really as close to us as we can
get should be both beautiful and useful
or we should consider them from either
side he’s trying to think his way
through this polarity to bridge the gap
between them and along the way he made
quite a lot of money and perhaps more
importantly quite an enormous and
outsized influence on British design you
will have seen his wallpapers you’ll
have seen buildings influenced by his
own home and sense of style even today
companies like Habitat are still
peddling his designs of Sanderson’s
interior decorators that was his company
he’s everywhere William Morris he’s
particularly vivid in Oxford though
because he
a lot have influenced a lot around here
but also because of another weird
coincidence the fact that there is
another William Morris in Oxford a
businessman possibly comparable to Henry
Ford in UK terms William Morris Lord
Nuffield who built the factory that’s
now run by the BMW Group on the edges of
Oxford where the Mini is still made and
where the designs around Industrial
Engineering were refined and made
efficient under William Morris’s
leadership these two men both of the
same name both living in Oxford it’s a
coincidence that someone who stops to
think about it can draw a connection
between them but it’s a connection that
has both aesthetic and economic
advantages when you stop to think about
it both of them have made Oxford a
wealthier place than it might have been
otherwise and have made Britain as a
whole more advanced and sensitive
environment for all of us to live in
which do you think is the bigger lie
either these polarities the business of
businesses business or art for art’s
sake after after hearing my thoughts I’d
be curious to see whether you find it
possible to polarize ourselves in this
way clearly there’s much more subtlety
to thinking about these extremes
subtlety that comes from bridging the
gap between them rather than thinking of
either of them as true to the exclusion
of the other I’m pleased to see that
this is a debate a debate in graphical
form to summarize what leaders do is
build bridges
there’s no good definition of leadership
but it does involve all of these verbs
and nouns connecting affiliating
collaborating commanding and so on
legitimating expressing and that’s what
I hope my examples and metaphors have
indicated that thinking about leadership
as an act of bridging or thinking about
bridges as acts of leadership allows us
insights into how this is not only a
metaphor but something that’s real that
makes art happen that makes wealth
happen
and it makes ideas come to life and very
vivid in useful way so let me leave you
one more chance to end with your input
and one more question what does the idea
of a bridge mean to all of you well the
words emerge let me take this
opportunity to thank our organizers and
heed all of you for taking 15 minutes to
think about how the idea of a bridge is
a wonderful example of leadership thank
you very much
[Applause]
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