(Welcome to the UCLA Anderson Blog's coverage of TED Week. Our guest blogger for TED Week is Swati Desai, who will be tracking the various TED talks as we live stream them and also taking notes on various panels. For more information on the TED Week schedule, please click here.
Swati is a UCLA alum (Anderson, PhD, 1992 and Engineering, MS, 1984) and the link to her website is www.swatidesai.com.
What follow are Desai's notes on the Wednesday morning “Disrupt” session.)
Business Schools are typically thought of as being part of the establishment. But we know how the boundary between Innovation and Business blurs with the explosion of new technology invading every part of our life. This means being innovative about how to fund innovations and more importantly how to implement these innovations in daily life, in a financially meaningful way. If it means disrupting the flow of the mainstream, then let it be!
This may mean that you see an amazingly skillful yo-yo performance by a world champion, a couple of youngsters doing electrical skate boarding on stage, or see a video made with Google glass presented by a Google co-founder -- all this in a span an hour – and have these performances mixed in with a law professor talking about changing the way elections are funded, a musician talking about raising over a million dollars in a kickstarting campaign using crowd funding, and an architect speaking about his Wikihouse of designs for anyone to download designs to make houses – what he calls a Democratization of Production.
This is TED for you. Ideas worth spreading. How does all the above fall together in one session? The common theme is “Disrupt”:
Think about what you want to achieve, use tools that you are able to master, implement the tools in ways that may not be yet established, and in this process don’t worry about if you are disrupting the flow of the mainstream. If you achieve even a fraction of what you want you are the innovator who promotes progress.
While using innovation in a “disruptive” way to get results may mean using small money to achieve big impact. For example, Sanjay Dastoor came up with the electrically driven skate board like device by using cheap battery and motor found in a toy store, hoping to change the way San Franciscans transport themselves from one spot to another. If they take to this new transportation system, it could mean big money with small investment. After experiencing failure with a big record label, Amanda Palmer, the musician, believes in directly asking for help from her fans for funding her albums and tours. She uses social media to directly keep in touch with her fans asking them for food, accommodation, advise, and money when she is about to visit a place. She allows free downloads of her music in return for the love she receives from a few fans and feels free to do crowd funding, digital and literally with a hat! She has been successful in raising 1.2 million dollars in her kickstarting her album idea.
Professor of Law Larry Lessig has made big strides in promoting the idea that general elections need to be funded by small funders. He makes a compelling argument that the top 0.05% of the population controls the funding going into elections how this corrupts the flow of true democracy. These conflicting dependencies create economy of influence and feeds on polarization. He claims that American government is broken because of this conflict. All we need to do in this case is to promote the idea of banning big funders.
How do you think this would go with the current big election funders?
What would you like to see?
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