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INNOVATION
MAXMCKEOWN
An expert in strategy, leadership, innovation and how to create a better future. He works as a strategic
coach with Fortune 100 companies. He is best-selling author of The Strategy Book, The Innovation
Book and five other award-winning books, winner of the Commuter Read at the Chartered Management
Institute Book of the Year 2013. McKeown is also a popular keynote speaker at conferences worldwide.
Max has an MBA and PhD from Warwick Business School. He is a fellow of the RSA and member of
the British Psychological Society.
future MAKERS.TODAY
MaX McKeown
nh
Is it infinite then?
mm Its infinite until the universe turns in on
itself, and we find out if theres anything else.
If youre religious, you might believe you carry
on, but most of us dont really know where its
going to go, because human progress is about
increments. Probably, our biology suggests that
we like to be safe sometimes, we like to be
excited and interested these other times, we
like to be loved. And these two or three things
will probably carry on, shaping the stuff were
interested in in the future.
future MAKERS.TODAY
MaX McKeown
10
future MAKERS.TODAY
MaX McKeown
11
nh
Yes.
Innovation requires sharing, necessarily.
This is idea sex. Ideas have to talk, they have
to have sex with other ideas to create more.
Just like normal evolution. You need those sets
of chromosomes in order to create something
else. Mice are used in experiments because
they breed very quickly. Fruit flies are used
in experiments, because they have multiple
generations, so you can play. Its the same with
ideas. If you just have one idea, maybe the idea
is not so good, and then you release it into
the world and its not ready. If you have lots
of competition and movement between ideas,
you find that youve got the thing you need,
and your neighbour has another idea, and you
put them together and move them around. So,
fast collaboration is hugely important and its
happening in places. Thats what Silicon Valley
is. Its walking along the street, meeting a guy,
giving him your idea, him stealing your idea,
you stealing it back, and eventually it works.
mm
future MAKERS.TODAY
MaX McKeown
12
I think as ever, theres a Bell curve of intelligence in the world, just as theres a Bell
curve of everything. Somebody can be very
intelligent but very lazy, and somebody can
be very dumb and very hardworking. Were
this three-dimensional Bell curve. No, I think
its unbelievable that were becoming more
stupid. My seven-year-old can do more things
right now than a seventy-year-old in a university could do two thousand years ago. He can
understand all these amazing things.
mm
nh
Do you think that we are getting dumber, because technology simplifies everything?
nh
nh