The following blog post was finally published by Russia's Harvard Business Review last week - because it was delayed by the publisher, it became slightly less topical.
Why Russia needs TED
A few weeks ago at the World Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin famously told off entrepreneur Michael Dell. Dell’s crime? He had praised Russia’s technical and scientific skills and gone on to ask how the outside world could help Russia. Putin’s answer: "We don't need help. We are not invalids. We don't have limited mental capacity." Putin is wrong. Russia needs help. As does every other country wishing to be a part of a global society. Coming from a small, insignificant country like Sweden, we know this better than any other country.
I’m just back from the four-day TED conference (www.ted.com) in Long Beach, California. The conference is a hipper, younger, more dynamic alternative to the more political World Economic Forum in Davos. Over the course of four days, more than sixty different speakers take to the stage to present something they’re passionate about or try out new ideas. Bill Gates was there to talk about philanthropy. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, urged us to demand ”Raw Data Now!” from our governments. Russian Regina Spektor played some fantastic music. There were oceanographers, special effects experts, authors, scientists, musicians, artists, innovators, pioneers and many, many more. Over 51 nationalities were represented in the audience and paid over 6,000 dollars for a conference whose contents are given away for free online. Not all speeches were good. Some were terrible. But the value of a gathering like this, for the participants and for the organizers, is priceless. Russia should organize its own version of TED.
Having been to Russia a number of times in the past year, I’m struck by two insights. The first is the immense capability and openness of the people I meet. The second is the lack of a cohesive idea. What are the businesses for? What is a nation for? I’m optimistic that the former can solve the latter and Mr. Putin seems to agree with me. In his argument with Michael Dell, he claimed that “Russian scientists were rightly respected not for their hardware, but for their software”. The implications of this statement are profound. Russia has had a hardware-driven economy in the past decade with the rise of commodity prices. The next decade will have to be about leveraging the software – the people. What better way to do this than to create a world-class conference to rival TED. Just imagine a haven of intellectual debate and conversation. Located in a beautiful area somewhere in Russia. Spread over several days with speakers from around the world. Where Russian, Swedish, American, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Norwegian, Brazilian and many other minds meet and merge. This is what I’ve encountered in many informal settings around Russia. At coffee mornings with young entrepreneurs in St Petersburg, in an agricultural exhibition in Moscow and so on. Let’s formalize it! Let’s make Russia a meeting point for the world’s intellectuals. To do this, we need help. We need people from around the world to organize and market the conference. I’m happy to comply and I know of many others around the world who would be too. All that’s needed are three simple words: “We need help!”
So far, I've had more than ten people write to me with their own idea of a Russian-style TED or similar. If you want to help me in any way to organize and event with some of these people, let me know.
I've just spent a week on the road in Sweden visiting local councils and asking them about their future. The results are frankly quite depressing. Most small towns and councils in Sweden have a vision wherein they will all grow by thousands of inhabitants before the year 2020. The only question is how? When I ask them, they give me a range of generic answers ranging from "our lovely scenery" to "quality of life", i.e. the very same arguments used by everyone from Yemen to India in their lifestyle commercial on CNN. Nowhere have I met bold, tangible initiatives to actually sell small towns to strangers and persuade them to settle down there. It's as if people think that 30+ pages of "visionary" hot air will magically attract people to Staffanstorp, Sollefteå or Sunne (Google them and prepare to zoom in very close on the map). The simple fact is that the smaller towns and countryside villages in Sweden are dying. They're either facing actual decline in their population or their growth is stagnant. People want to live in cities. The reasons may be numerous but if we are to believe economist Tim Harford, people are attracted to the ideas, diversity and innovation in cities. In the seminar by Kjell A Nordström that I attended (and blogged about) in January, he called the non-growing countryside of Sweden junk space. The vast plains of Skåne or Norrbotten may be suitable for wind turbines or adventurous excursions for weary city slickers but that still leaves a helluva lot of, well, junk space. I will continue this tour in the coming month and if anyone that I'm about to meet is reading my blog, this is what I want to hear:
- Tangible, brave, risky ventures built to grow the town, village or region
- A clear and differentiated set of goals for the coming decade, not just devalued vocabulary stolen from CNN advertisements
- Simple explanations - not 10-minute ramblings - on what could set the specific town/village apart from its peers.
This Twitter was just sent to me by a friend:
One of the lessons I've learned as a trendspotter is that human beings are a lot more prone to dicuss and spread convenient, sensational and sexy lies rather than boring, complex and inconvenient truths. Just consider how much more often "Paris Hilton" (sexy gossip) is Googled compared with the word "pi" (boring fact).
"The things you own usually end up owning you", said Tyler Durden in the movie (and book) Fight Club. In tough, turbulent and frugal times, luxury consumption naturally declines. Everyday, we see articles and features attacking extravagance, luxury and premium brands whilst proclaiming "the death of this" or "the end of that". Yet luxury - although cyclical as an industry - seems to be an inherent need in society. We want to reward ourselves and indulge every once in a while. Recession and climate change may have done their fare share to dent luxury consumption but new ways of consuming luxury are emerging. Bridgepoint Magazine recently wrote about Fractional ownership - a new way of not-owning-your-cake yet eating it anyway:
When walking in Stockholm yesterday, I came upon this optician who uses Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley as an endorser and shop window display character. This struck me as a bit odd considering a) he doesn't wear glasses, at least not in any images I've seen and b) his connection to this Stockholm-based optician is...vague at best. I guess their promotion worked since I couldn't stop thinking about it and I'm blogging about it right now. Who said advertising had to be relevant? Just think of David Lynch's (in)famous Playstation 2 commercial from 2000.
London Business School's Don Sull has coined the phrase "The fog of the future" to describe how mysterious and scary the future can appear to many of us. Tomorrow morning, I'm due to speak for a congregation of local newspapers in Sweden and I can only imagine the fear gripping some of them (if they're not feeling it, this will make them). Media strategist Clay Shirky has written a terrific essay on the subject of newspapers wherein he points out that it's never clear when you're in the middle of a revolution where the whole thing will end up - things get broken a lot quicker than they are replaced by something new. Furthermore, adds Shirky:
"Revolutions create a curious inversion of perception. In ordinary times, people who do no more than describe the world around them are seen as pragmatists, while those who imagine fabulous alternative futures are viewed as radicals. The last couple of decades haven’t been ordinary, however. Inside the papers, the pragmatists were the ones simply looking out the window and noticing that the real world was increasingly resembling the unthinkable scenario. These people were treated as if they were barking mad. Meanwhile the people spinning visions of popular walled gardens and enthusiastic micropayment adoption, visions unsupported by reality, were regarded not as charlatans but saviors."
