Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Thanks, fellas. Hello Brazil.
Thank you for inviting me.
Let's talk about design.
I think this was build along the conversations
we've been having this morning.
Design is about optimizing, design is about pragmatism,
design is about fun,
as the other gentleman talked about fun,
I couldn't agree with him more.
Let's talk about The River of Design,
which will make sense in a second.
The first thing I want to say is,
I'm very privileged I get to speak on stages all over the world,
but I've never got to say what I'm about to say out loud.
Which is...
I think I have the answer.
I don't want to sound arrogant,
because I know you all will think to what.
I left you thinking I'm incredibly arrogant,
I'm going to end this break quickly.
I think we are standing on top of the answer.
I think it's called the Amazon.
And I think the Amazon is an incredible design enticing,
it's an incredibly designed piece of nature,
and I want to talk about that.
I have to say that the river has taught me to listen,
you'll learn from it.
The river knows everything, one can learn everything from it.
Over 11 million years old, the Amazon has pretty much seen everything.
I will conjecture that
the Amazon is probably the best design school in the world.
And I want to talk about all we can learn from it.
But, what on Earth must we been thinking about it so right now?
I hope my Portuguese translation is coming across here.
World have been in a mess, right?
I mean, the world is a big of a mess.
And I'm wondering if the Amazon can help guide us out.
If it can be a teacher as well as a river.
We practice school design thinking,
it's been lots of academic discussions about design thinking,
design thinking is talking about business magazines,
it's the world to joy, sort of design circles...
I will conjecture that design thinking is not new,
as that the Amazon has actually been quietly design thinking
for a very, very long time.
Actually, I find the Amazon incredibly inspiring.
And the more I learn this sort of construction
more I realize what I didn't know
and more I know how to tell other people what I have learned.
First, we'll talk about interdependence.
What an interesting concept.
We heard it a few times today.
But the ado with interdependence,
I think interdependence and collaboration sort of go hand in hand.
The formal definition of interdependence is kind of boring,
as I've got it in the Wikipedia.
Interdependence is defined thus
"A dynamic of being mutually and physically responsible to,
and sharing a common set of principles with others".
OK.
My definition, which is slightly more so simplistic, is
"the one need each other",
and "we need to hold hands and figured it out",
and most importantly, I think the clock is ticking.
I want to display for a second such a beautiful piece of film.
The Amazon spent absolutely millions of years
perfecting the notion of interdependence.
We've heard this word several times though, and it's symphony
and we've also heard the word choreography;
it's a symphony, it's a choreographed ballet of overlapping worlds.
800 species of mammals, 7,500 kinds of butterflies,
25 million different insects...
24 million that was in my bathroom this morning by the way,
because I left my window open last night.
A hundred different bats, 3,000 types of fish, 1,500 kinds of possums.
Incredible.
So, nature is an incredible systems designer.
We can heard this over and over again,
nature is just amazing design enticing.
It's symbiotic, it's supportive, it's harmonic.
And I think it's also ruthless,
and I think it's also a quite interesting idea.
If there's something that doesn't work in nature,
nature comes down and makes it disappear.
And I think it's a most interesting concept
if we think about it here.
So, I wonder, while we as humans consider bring to the table,
when the Earth has figured it out so incredibly well.
Maybe it's time to learn.
And I think design is very much an activity of learning.
It's about listening. One of the things
I'll be talking to you in a second.
It's the act of deeply listening, of saying nothing but listening.
And the act of observing, watching.
Not just talking, not just doing,
but really, really internalizing what's going on in the world.
So, I would like to show to you
what I'm calling "The Amazonian Design Principles",
just 5 of them.
I would like to show to you some ideas
and some work we've done,
some work we haven't done,
and I think brings somebody to add these to life.
The first one, I was just saying is the idea of silence.
Golden, if someone out in the audience
it's going to end this whole thing tomorrow.
It's going to talk about listening deeply out there where you are.
Listening deeply out there in nature.
We listen deeply out there in the world as well.
I think one of the things that I find really most interesting
about my life in the moment is the less I say, the more I learn.
So, going out there in the world and just listen and watching.
It's a very profound act actually.
There's a great quote here, I just love the local quote.
And here "Where the river is deepest it makes less noise".
It's very nice. A real Indian proverb.
So, I want to take you to a species
that we've been studying really deeply
over the last year.
This species is called Brazilians.
I want to talk about the idea inside.
So, we were asked by Havaianas,
the Brazilian iconic shoe brand,
to help them understand what is uniquely Brazilian brand
then they could translate it into a proper category.
They want to get in the world bags and accessories.
So, we went out and we watched Brazilians.
I took this picture the other day, here.
This is one of the guys who was bringing in the equipment
to make this thing happen.
You have no hat in Brazil, you make a hat.
You have no shelf in Brazil, you make a shelf.
So, somebody asked me the other day for a Brazilian magazine,
"What's the Brazilian creativity?"
and I said, "Everything, Brazilians make something out of nothing
on a daily basis, it's incredibly inventive".
We look to how Brazilians construct things.
So, I'm making juice, I have no bucket, I make my bucket.
I need to hang things, I just hang things.
Brazilians just do whatever is required.
Brazilians carry things in a multiplicity of different ways.
Everything is a bag to Brazilians.
Whether it's a flag, whether it's a sheet, whether it's a sweater...
Brazilians will turn it into something.
And of course, the incredible Brazilian relationship with color.
Color here is cultural, color is identity.
So, studying all these things we can say anything we just watched.
It's a laundry line in Manaus.
This is a laundry line in an ordinary house.
This is also a piece of art.
It's incredible.
So, I didn't constructed these, I just looked and watched.
So, we started making bags.
Which was sort of straps with things
that you can carry that was based on Brazilian icons.
We prototyped them; we made millions of these things.
We designed them.
I reached it, but what I want to do as I thought was really interesting.
You just sell straps, to not actually sell bags, but sell straps.
They are made of rubber
that was the access to the flip-flop,
so the people could carry whatever they would carry in the world around them.
And fortunately, we didn't have to tune up.
We haven't to tune up some bags as they are.
They are actually in the market;
and to be honest, they are very successful
Flip-flop rubber based on Brazilian body language.
In a completely different space,
I want to take you to a quite profoundly moving piece of film.
We were asked by a health care line in Chicago
to help them understand how it felt for patients
who had an incredibly disfiguring skin condition.
They have rivers of data that explain this thing on paper,
but they couldn't feel it.
So, I called Nina, filmed a woman with this condition.
I'm warning you now, this film is a little bit scaring.
What's happening? I mixed my fingers?
Impossible to come out my nails, my nails fell.
It's just terrible! It's so bad. I'm so impaired, I'm tired.
I just called the med
who would dealt with this evil, terrible thing.
What can I do?
This woman... so, I'm going back this.
What's happening?
This woman has an incredible pain.
You see nothing, we ask nothing, and yet you feel everything.
We thought a lot about this subject today of coexistence, of collaboration,
of coming together around solving problems.
I love the idea of respectful coexistence and gender survival.
There's a brilliant quote here:
"Begin to live by the river, make friends with the crocodile".
So, I want to take you to the other side of the world.
I want to take you to Pakistan.
We brought together the Gates Foundation, and acumen.
To help to create a tool kit toward people in a hilarious hunt innovate
This is my colleague, Tatiana.
Also in field in Pakistan, plowing a field,
understanding what it felt like to be in that world.
So, we created Human-Centered Design Tool kits,
which is on our website, free.
We're giving away the methodology, we don't care who owns the solution.
I think now, 45,000 of this have been downloaded,
it's been an incredibly successful. A piece of work for us.
So, the whole idea of allowing people to participate, to contribute.
Second, I want to take you to London and I want to share.
Jamie Oliver, one of the TED guys in here. He was one of the TED prizes.
He asked us to help him to bring ideas to life.
So, we created Open Idea, which is a collaboration
that many of you have mentioned this,
and it's becoming well known.
People can contribute, it's fun, again, this idea is very important.
People can contribute to ideas, bring themselves to the table.
No one pays them, people want to contribute,
people are excited to participate.
So, this is about helping schools and food,
we help American school children
and help them to understand how to have a healthy food life.
So, people contribute with ideas about mobility.
And in the end of 98 days in 166 countries, 7,354 people contributed;
584 inspiring ideas which became 198 concepts
which 17 have now gone into production.
Jamie Oliver was thrilled with this.
Increasing this idea, a few things like education.
Sony, we just made a work for Sony, looking into technology environment.
Hold the thought because I'm going to suggest
in the end of this presentation, this is maybe a vehicle
for sort of collaboration, which TEDx Amazonia is talking about.
Next one.
It's the idea of scale. Small multiplied by many becomes big.
I've heard everyone's big ideas
but big ideas are some sort overrated.
I personally thinks that small ideas are very important.
Like drops of water become a river.
So, I want to take you next.
All the way to Peru.
We just finished the project. For the Peruvian,
Citizens of Peru happened to understand
how to engage in the demographic process.
So, the idea I want to talk about is prototyping.
This is the project.
So, we went out to communities in Peru,
talked to citizens about what frustrates
and upsets them about their government.
And we developed a series of ideas
for campaign promises they actually hope that a candidate afford.
And I was looking the campaign dash
to see how the audience remain in action.
So, and also a controversy around this.
I personally found this really engaging
to see people whose lives were transformed for US$7 a time.
This woman here and her son were living in this dwelling here.
Actually, animals live in there as well as people.
She got alone, for US$7, to buy a cow.
She put him into the school.
He just graduated in Mathematics.
US$7, that's a very powerful thing.
This is Grameen out in Bangladesh collecting milk,
creating yogurt, giving to children rather than selling, educating.
And there is the result.
Next one.
This is the idea of building movements.
The trip tree leads to the ocean.
We didn't do this, but I'm very interesting in it.
So we can see several movements.
The desire of the gentlemen in this morning
is designing a movement around helping people,
increasing cultural value in doing that.
Takes you to Nike. I think that Nike would join
with girls for the girl's effect.
This is amazing. Taking a real social stands on teenage girls
and getting them out to think on things like prostitution,
slavery in an early age. This the video.
It's just background music, it's fine.
It's called Girl Effect.
Amazing.
So, my own small part.
I went to Middle East last year, and get involved...
it was TEDx, actually.
I was really involved in the conversation about women in the Middle East.
That provoked a series of conversations
where we were working with some people
who was trying to get at TEDx and say it's wrong.
Women is an issue which I think it is very interesting.
I was in Australia a couple of weeks ago,
where I ran a workshop for the Australia government.
Looking at food I've got one of the insights
which rose in this entire thing was the rights of the women
as agricultural entity.
Small against small, they run their farms
and produce small amounts of products
and bounding together in cooperative forms.
Fantastic to see.
Girl power!
And finally, I just want to talk a little about the design process itself.
Nature is an incredible teaching tool for design.
It's a great proverb here: "Life, death, life".
So, I make calls in Boston everyday in a really interesting project.
Looking in what we can learn from nature
and what design can take from that.
I think most people think that design is something like this.
Something you do on a spreadsheet in Excel,
which has a series of boxes that you kind of work through like this
and you take off from them and you design something.
So, design is this incredibly sort of boring, linear thing.
I disagree with this fundamentally.
By starting to look at things like mushrooms
or fish, as we did in Boston, or even shrimp,
we were able to conjecture that
design is actually this kind of organic enticing,
that design felt like it was an active learning.
This is all about making.
Among all of the things I talked about today was about adapting.
It's getting back.
And it's about learning some more, just like nature.
So, rather than design looks like that,
which is incredibly boring,
I think design looks like that.
Which is, actually, the Amazon River.
And that's why we are all here.
So, to end, however, 50 seconds, I'll do this quickly.
A few thoughts about what this river can teach us.
Hopefully, looking into the depths
and listen and looking for the golden presentations with silence;
to depend on one another.
It starts small but it's a dream bake.
That's one of the things we heard throughout the whole morning.
One person to give time to build
to put back what we take.
And ultimately, like daisies beloved dolphins this morning,
we can interdepend.
So, that's what I'm asking to you today.
But, one of the tendencies of these conferences is just stand up here,
be very clever and then we will leave.
I don't think that is the point of this.
I think it's a too critical conversation,
is a too critical time for us all
to just leave tomorrow on a boat and say good bye.
So, I'd like to suggest a sort of closing thought,
which is to decide collectively to do something.
The guy this morning was saying that
they were putting notes on the back and they were really excited.
I'd like to see how we can help to get some of these thoughts together.
So, what can we do, as a group here?
We are perfectly happy,
and it's up to somebody else to host a challenge,
to work with you guys to host a challenge.
Should we talk about how to make deforestation?
How to go to everybody on the planet?
Should we talk about how to create a shady vision of the Amazon basin?
Should we talk about... as the theme of this conference,
how do we create a collectively life for all species on the planet?
So, I'm really excited to see what ideas you guys have,
and I'm happy to see if we can contribute to that in any way.
Thank you.