JEREMY HEIMANS: Well, hello.
It's fantastic to be here.
And we're going to
talk to you today
about how we can all be more
powerful but hopefully in a way
that also makes
for a better world.
And so to get started, we're
going to talk about two
very different--
HENRY TIMMS: I love
how you got stuck
right next to Harvey Weinstein.
JEREMY HEIMANS: I know.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
HENRY TIMMS: I chose the
right side of the stage.
JEREMY HEIMANS:
--doppelgangers really.
HENRY TIMMS: So think about
what Harvey Weinstein.
Think about the way he exercised
power in the world, right?
So for decades he was
literally atop Hollywood.
There was a researcher
who looked back
over who had been
thanked the most
times from the
stage at the Oscars,
and there was a tie for first
place between Harvey Weinstein
and God.
That's how powerful he was.
And the way that he
controlled Hollywood was he
had the, kind of, currency
of power in his hands.
He could make or break movies.
He could make or break careers.
He could squelch things.
He could keep things down.
He could command.
He could control.
It was a very definitive
type of power.
And the movement that
played a big role
in finally toppling him
thought about power really
very differently.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So
the Me Too movement
emerged about a decade ago,
as some of you may know.
A woman called Tarana
Burke had this idea
for this kind of hashtag,
this owner-less, decentralized
movement that
people could adopt.
And it got some traction.
But then in November of
last year, if you remember,
it just took off like wildfire.
And let's think about the
properties of that movement.
So if you think of Harvey as
using power as a currency,
you can think of the Me Too
movement as power as current.
So no one can actually control
or shape fully that current.
It surged across the world.
Many leaders emerged, right?
So Tarana was the instigator.
But then many leaders emerged as
the movement goes from country
to country.
In France, it becomes
Denounce Your Pig,
which I think is a very
creative application of the Me
Too frame.
HENRY TIMMS: Very French.
JEREMY HEIMANS: Very French.
It moves from
industry to industry.
So it came to tech.
It came to politics
all over the world.
And as it does,
it changes shape.
And as the current
sort of surges,
it's the voices of many
that unlock people's ability
to give their testimonies.
Because for so long what
had been under the surface
was that people were
unable to come forward,
because they didn't see
the people around them who
were coming forward also,
which created that safety
and created that swell.
So these are just two
very different ways
to think about power and how
it works in the world today.
HENRY TIMMS: Here's another
variation on that theme.
So it was in California.
There was some legislation
coming down from the government
there which was going to
curtail the way that Airbnb
did its work.
It was going to make it much
harder for Airbnb to run.
They did the thing you would
always do if you are Airbnb;
they got their lobbyists
and got their lobbyists
to be influential
over the government.
But Airbnb did
something else too.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So what
was really interesting
was the way they
mobilized their hosts.
So imagine Hilton Hotels.
If Hilton Hotels had
a regulatory problem,
none of us as prior
guests of Hilton Hotels
would, kind of, rally to
do their lobbying for them.
And yet here is this
multibillion-dollar company
that managed to
get its hosts, who
sort of share in the economic
value created by that platform,
out to lobby for them.
So they knocked on 200,000
doors in San Francisco.
And in that particular
moment, they
won and defeated
this legislation.
So it teaches us something
interesting about the way
some platforms are,
kind of, building
community in a different way.
HENRY TIMMS: And one more story.
So this was a
schoolgirl we learned
about when we were researching
a book called Aqsa Mahmood.
And she went to a school, a good
school, in Glasgow in Scotland.
And she loved Harry
Potter, and she
was described as
somebody who wouldn't
be able to find her way to the
center of Glasgow on a bus.
But in the evenings, she
had been radicalized online.
And one day she
simply disappeared.
And the next her parents heard
from her was three days later,
and she was on the border
heading into Syria, telling
them that she was making jihad
and she was never coming home.
But that wasn't the
end of her story.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So she
had been recruited online,
and then she became one of
the most effective recruiters
for the Islamic State.
And we sort of
studied her methods.
And really what's
interesting about the way
the ISIS kind of
ideology metastasizes
is that it allowed
her to perfectly adapt
a message for luring other
teenage girls like her
from the West to Syria.
So we looked at her Tumblr.
And it's full of these emojis
and these memes and, like,
these really
friendly tips for how
to prepare for coming
to Syria, like always
bring extra toiletries.
They're not widely
available here in Syria.
And you know, it seems banal.
Organic coconut oil was
her particular preference.
It seems banal, but
it was perfectly
adapted to creating that kind of
peer-to-peer intimacy and sense
of belonging that helped
people get over the line.
And so she did that.
She brought a number of
other girls from the West
over to Syria.
And we contrast
that with the way
the US government responded
to the threat of ISIS.
HENRY TIMMS: So here's
what the government does.
They fly a bomber
over Syria and Iraq,
and they drop cartoons out
of the back of the bomber.
And these cartoons
show how awful life
will be if you make jihad.
And they literally float
down from on high and land
on the heads of the
civilian population.
And this tactic was first
used 100 years before then
in the First World War.
They then finally got
smart and realized
that just dropping
paper leaflets alone
wasn't going to do the job.
So they decided to make
the leap into social media,
and they got to this.
JEREMY HEIMANS: "Think
again, turn away,"
which was an extremely
bossy Twitter account
in English designed to
dissuade potential jihadists,
where they picked just the
perfect messenger, the US State
Department, which is clearly the
way you dissuade someone just
on the brink of radicalization.
So again, here we have these
two very different applications
of power.
We have the US government
literally raining their ideas
down from on high.
You have this young
girl with a fraction
of the resources of
the US government
being very effective at
spreading her ideas sideways.
HENRY TIMMS: So the work we've
been doing together really
grew out of trying to
create a frame which
more accurately described
what was changing in the world
and give that frame for
practitioners to think
about their own world.
We all remember being
asked questions like,
did Twitter cause the
Arab Spring, right?
We've got these changes.
And they were always quite
reductionist questions,
which got to a question about
how technology was changing.
But the frame that we put forth
in our work and in our book
is to say that we need to
think a little bit less
about how technology is changing
and think a lot more about how
power is changing.
So the two forces we see
playing out in the world
right now we think of as
old power and new power.
So let's start, because Jeremy's
on that side of the stage,
with Jeremy talking
about old power.
JEREMY HEIMANS: Well, thanks,
and make me the old power guy.
So as we talked about earlier,
this analogy of currency
current and think
again about the way
those two scenarios with
Harvey and Me Too play out.
But you think about it
along other dimensions.
These new power models are
reliant on our energy, right?
So if you think of new
power as this critical skill
in our century,
which is the ability
to harness a connected
crowd to get what you want,
if you think about
Facebook, for example,
it's an empty vessel without
all of that participation.
So those models are based
on many of us participating.
They're based on upload.
They're often based on
sharing and peer dynamics.
HENRY TIMMS: And
there's a real contrast
we can see playing
out across all
of our lives between the
way that new power works
and the way that old
power works, right?
This is part of the battle
and balance of all times,
is how these two forces fit
together and where they're now.
And the argument that we
make isn't an argument
to say we need to get rid of
all these old power forces
and throw them out and replace
them all with the new power
forces.
Our argument is
the people who are
going to end up on top are those
who can blend power together,
so those who understand
how new power and old power
fit together.
And the place to start
developing those skills
is in double clicking on this
and thinking more about values.
So what we've been
thinking about in our work
is to say, well, look, with
the rise of this new power,
with all of this, kind of,
expectation of participation,
is provoking a shift in the
kinds of values people hold
and the way that they
approach the world.
And we can see a real
difference between a set of what
we think of as, kind of, old
power values and a set of what
we think of new power values.
JEREMY HEIMANS:
So we can say this
along a bunch of dimensions.
And I think as
Googlers, you'll sort of
recognize some of the values,
particularly these new power
values as probably values
that at least are stated here,
right?
So this is preference
for more informal, more
networked governance
over more formal,
institutional, and
managerial structures.
There's this tension
between competition.
Think of Donald Trump, right?
His world view is the
world is zero sum.
It's divided into
winners and losers.
No one can win together.
You can only win
against someone.
Whereas these new
power models tend
to supercharge collaboration.
That doesn't mean that
necessarily that collaboration
is altruistic.
But you think about how
you're successful on Airbnb,
you're successful on Airbnb by
being good at collaboration,
not by good at undermining
the apartment next door.
HENRY TIMMS: And some
of these tensions
really play out in
interesting ways.
You think about the way people
think about the workplace now.
And you'll see a
lot of people come
in the workplace, a lot
of people in this room,
will have high expectations
around transparency, right?
You expect to know
what's going on.
Many workplaces people expect
to know everybody's salary.
They need to see into
the institutions.
It's a big clash with the world
that really prioritized things
like confidentiality
and discretion.
JEREMY HEIMANS:
There's a story we
tell in the book of a politician
who's currently running
for governor of Colorado.
And he's sort of
gotten ahead of this.
He's like, OK, I get this.
Things have changed.
I'm going to really embrace
radical transparency.
So there's a section
on his website called
Scandal and Controversy,
in which he self
declares his entire--
quite interesting, I
might add-- sexual history
in elaborate detail and
just says, yep, I'm proud.
I'm happy.
I wish everybody
else, basically,
has as much fun as me.
HENRY TIMMS: He did seem
to have quite a lot of fun.
JEREMY HEIMANS: He did.
There was a lot.
There were many things.
I encourage you guys
to check this guy out.
HENRY TIMMS: It
wasn't a short entry.
JEREMY HEIMANS: No,
it's fascinating.
So this is a very
different way to think
about engaging with the world.
HENRY TIMMS: And I think we also
want to make an argument, too,
which is to say
that we also don't
think that we should give up
on a lot of these old power
values.
So for example, you can
see the tension right now
between expertise and
the maker culture.
You saw in the
Brexit debate, right,
we've had enough of expert.
This is a real kind
of zeitgeist-y tone
around this right now.
But actually there's
lots of areas
we think we really deeply
care about expertise.
So I had my appendix
out four weeks ago.
The last thing in the
world I would like
is a group of makers, kind
of doing a do-it-ourselves
appendectomy, as hipsters
from Brooklyn who
got together and got
some tools of off reddit
and took out my appendix, right?
I clearly one Dr. Chu
over here, who's got
15 years of experience.
So we very deeply feel that
there are some old power
values that really matter.
But we think something else too.
We think things like experts--
you think about the role
of experts in the world.
If they are simply holding on
to their power as a currency,
which is they've got it
and other people haven't.
And they're not
entering a world where
they need to work how the ideas
move like a current flowing
through the world.
If they don't make
that transition,
they'll be lost in a world with
all the righteousness and all
the facts and all the
peer reviews in the world.
But their ideas simply
won't break through.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So imagine,
the stakes here are very high,
and they're playing
out all around us.
You think of the
climate scientist
up against the climate denier.
And I think the mindset is
often like, well, I'm right,
and that should be enough.
But it just isn't enough.
And so one of the
reasons we wrote
this book, really the
most important reason,
is that we wanted to get these
new skills of how you build
movements, how you spread ideas,
how you create communities, how
you lead in a different way into
the hands of the right people.
And so think about that
tension between the doctor
and the anti-vaxxer.
So these are the stakes,
right, in a world
in which misinformation
is spreading much, much
more quickly and,
frankly, more effectively
in many cases than the sort
of enlightenment values
that people here
generally, I think,
would probably subscribe to.
HENRY TIMMS: So let's now
shift and ask all of you
a question about Google.
When we first did this
work, we wrote a piece
for "Harvard Business Review."
And you're basically
legally obliged,
if you write for "Harvard
Business Review,"
to at some point do
a two-by-two matrix.
So here's our two-by-two
matrix that we put together
for "Harvard Business Review."
We started to help people
think through where
their organization
stands in the world.
So it maps two things.
The first thing
it maps is values.
Are you an organization with all
old power values or new power
values?
The second thing it
maps is your model.
Do you have an old
power model, or do you
have a new power model?
JEREMY HEIMANS: And
so just a quick tour
around this compass--
Apple.
So obviously, there's
a lot of dinosaurs
here, but then we
also identify Apple.
So one of our points is being
a technology company does not
make you a new power company.
This is really about
your model, how much
it depends on peer dynamics,
and what your mindset is.
So think of Apple,
Apple's business model
is based on the genius
product designer in Cupertino
who decides what we need
before we know we need it.
And then the product descends
without the headphone jack,
and we go and buy it, right?
That's the fundamental model.
HENRY TIMMS: You really
haven't gotten over that.
JEREMY HEIMANS: I'm not over it.
HENRY TIMMS: [INAUDIBLE].
JEREMY HEIMANS:
I'm very irritated.
No, actually, that's not true.
I quite like the ear pods.
But also, if you think
about Apple, its mindset,
right, it's not a
good collaborator.
It's very secretive.
It runs in a pretty
old power way.
The only new power
flank of Apple arguably
is that App Store, right?
But even then, if you
compare it, for example,
to the way Google has done,
has entered this foray,
it's quite different,
right, because you guys
lean much more heavily into open
source with Android, et cetera.
So that's an example
of where we're not
trying to say anything
that's new is new power.
And then we can talk
about the cheerleaders.
HENRY TIMMS: So we see a
lot companies in this space
right now, which these companies
who essentially have old power
models, like Patagonia
is a good example, right?
They essentially
sell clothes, right?
That hasn't changed.
But they've got increasingly
new power values.
So they're thinking much
more about transparency.
They're thinking much more
about things like collaboration.
Interesting, too, you're
seeing Patagonia now take
on some quite campaign
activist-y moves.
They're creating a kind
of activist platform
to engage their customers as
activists in their causes.
And you can see
Patagonia making a move
we see a lot of companies
making now, which
is they start by kind of sending
a lot more new power signal.
And then they start
to change their model
to move up into what we
call the crowd's quadrant.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So
the crowd's quadrant,
there's a lot of variety
in this quadrant, right?
But it goes from
companies like, say,
an Airbnb, that we would
contrast to Uber, sort
of, largely based on values
and ability to deploy the base.
So if you think
of Uber's drivers,
they're unionizing against it.
And Airbnb's community
has been better managed,
and there's something there
that is meaningful to draw out.
But also, in that
top right, you've
got folks like
Black Lives Matter.
And these are very
different, right?
These are radically
decentralized.
They are what we might
think of as "leaderfull."
They come with
lots of advantages.
We talk a lot about Black
Lives Matter in the book
and spent quite a lot of
time with the founders.
But they've also
got real challenges
that comes with that
degree of new power
without some of the, sort
of, strength and structure
that old power produces.
And I think that brings us to
the most interesting quadrant,
which are the co-opters.
HENRY TIMMS: So these are
the organizations, arguably,
the strongest organizations
in the world right now,
who have worked
out how to master
new power in their model,
but actually their values
are tending towards old power.
So Facebook is obviously
in the news right now.
And I think there's
a moment of, kind of,
political consciousness
amongst the users of Facebook
right now to recognize
the tension here
between an organization, which
can get to such amazing scale
with our, quote, "power
to share," close quote,
and their openness and
their connectivity,
or the kind of the framing
of the Facebook argument.
But there's a real tension
that people recognize now,
that actually the value created
by all of our participation
is extracted by Facebook.
Also, to think about the
governance of Facebook
is actually quite shrouded,
as indeed is the algorithm.
So there's a real realization
that there are co-opters here,
people who are grabbing
all of this new power, all
of this thirst
for participation.
And they're actually pushing
it towards their own ends.
JEREMY HEIMANS: And
one of the things
we do toward the end of the
book is sort of re-imagine
what these platforms
could look like.
So we describe Facebook in the
book as a participation farm.
And what we mean by
that is that we're
all the animals on the farm.
And we're very
delighted and distracted
by all the participation
that we're doing on Facebook.
But ultimately, the farmer is
extracting all of the value,
right?
And we have very little agency.
And we're fenced in
by that structure.
And so at the end of the
book, I think the, sort of,
nerdiest bit of
the book is talking
about how would we
re-imagine platforms to make
them more interoperable.
How would we think about a
public interest algorithm?
So we can come back
to that in the Q&A.
HENRY TIMMS: We're going to take
a lot of time for Q&A today.
But before we do that,
I want us to tell--
I'm going to flip
through some slides--
the most interesting
and fascinating story
that we learned about when we
were writing this book, which
was the story of a video
game called "Star Citizen."
Does anyone know "Star Citizen?"
So in "Star Citizen,"
there is a man
called Chris Roberts, who was a
legendary creator of PC games.
He created the legendary game--
PC-- "Wing Commander," which
was a huge hit back in the day.
He finished this
game, and then he
disappeared and went
off to Hollywood
to make movies for a long time.
And during the time
he was in Hollywood,
the PC game fell by the wayside.
It was the era of "Angry
Birds" and "Candy Crush,"
and that was what was
getting all the heat.
And PC games really weren't
the force they wanted to be.
But he had no idea
for a new video game.
And he wanted to come back.
So he had this idea of this
game called "Star Citizen."
It was going to be
a PC-based game,
and it was going to
be a world that people
would invent together.
It wouldn't be a
game which was just
dropped down on people's head.
But it would be kind of
co-created by the crowd.
He shopped it around to
the traditional funders.
They all said no.
So eventually he went
to South by Southwest,
and he did a talk at
South by Southwest.
And he started talking
about this game
and said, well, here's
how it could look.
And you can imagine
your own ships,
and we could build
them together,
and we could create
this new world
and think of all the
things that could happen.
And he had these amazing
visuals that he went through.
It was a very
powerful presentation.
And about halfway
through he says, look--
and he kind of-- he lost some
of his confidence at this point.
It was a very
powerful presentation.
He got a bit "unconfident."
And he said, well, you know, if
you wanted to help support it,
you could help me crowdfund
it and put a very simple
ask out to crowdfund it.
And he set a goal, I
think, of $500,000.
By the end of this presentation,
15 minutes later, his website
had crashed because of the
volume of people donating.
And by the next day, he
had hit his initial goal
for crowdfunding the game.
And then it didn't
stop raising money.
They said they would try
and raise-- $3 million
was their goal,
to set $3 million
to really make the
games hugely successful.
And in no time at all,
they had raised $3 million
from their crowd to
make this game together.
But they didn't stop
raising money at $3 million.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So
the dynamic that
kicks in at this point is
that, essentially, they
start selling future assets in
this world that does not yet
exist.
So they start
selling, like, ships.
And there are
these great moments
as the target goes up and up
and up, like you could buy--
what were those things?
HENRY TIMMS: Decals.
JEREMY HEIMANS:
Decals, like, sort of,
animal decals for your ship.
You could buy
insurance for a ship
that exists in this new world.
And if you imagine this--
HENRY TIMMS: Just to be
clear about that, what
you're essentially purchasing--
insurance for an imaginary
ship that doesn't yet
exist for the
condition in the future
that it might get
into an accident.
JEREMY HEIMANS: Right.
HENRY TIMMS: It's very
important to understand.
JEREMY HEIMANS: Yeah, #youngmen.
And so basically, long
story short, this target
goes up and up and up,
until it eventually
reaches $150 million.
HENRY TIMMS: This is now the
biggest crowdfunding game--
this is the biggest crowdfunding
campaign in history.
They've got now, here we are--
JEREMY HEIMANS: Oh, 160 million.
HENRY TIMMS: It's
actually even higher now,
1.8 million star citizens,
$160 million raised.
And there's an amazing,
inventive world
around "Star Citizen."
So this is one of
the citizens says--
the Imperial News Network--
this is one of the people
who is playing the game, who,
with his friends,
created his own news
network around "Star Citizen."
And the whole thing is
amazing, because it's
full of all this kind of ideas
about how things could be.
And the fan forum is
very busy, and there's
all these amazing
things happening.
There's this incredible creative
community around the game "Star
Citizen."
But there's one really
interesting thing
about all of this and all this
money and all these people
and all of this excitement.
The game doesn't yet exist.
It's over three years later.
So the game that all
those people funded back
in the day, the
game that they said
they were buying on
Kickstarter, that game
still hasn't been delivered.
It still hasn't shipped.
And in fact, as we
speak today, there
seems to be no immediate
prospect of the game arriving.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So you might
think these 1.8 million
star citizens would
be up in arms, right?
They put all this
money into this game.
And there was this
moment when the game
is a couple of years late.
This guy emerges from that
crowd called Derek Smart.
And he says, listen,
there's no insight into how
this money's being spent.
And some of the spending
was like really absurd.
It's like we're going to get
Gillian Anderson and Mark
Hamill to record the
voices of these characters.
They were spending
money like crazy.
And he said, listen,
we want accountability.
We want deadlines.
We want our money back.
And instead of the crowd
rallying around him,
he was, like, shouted
down by the other people.
And we did these interviews with
some of these star citizens.
And the line that really
came out and struck
us coming out of
that was one guy
said, listen, I pay to dream.
And what he was really saying
was he pays to participate.
And the participation
is the economic value.
HENRY TIMMS: So you can
see this obviously--
an easy story to be
dismissive of, right?
It's an easy story
to just say, well,
this is just a Ponzi scheme.
But actually what
it's telling us
is something quite
important about how money
flows in the new power world.
And so we put
together this equation
to try and unpack what's
going on behind "Star Citizen"
that we see it
actually playing out
much more widely in society.
There are three parts of
this participation premium
that we're thinking about here.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So
the first is there
has to be something in return.
So you think about
these new dynamics,
these crowdfunding
sites, et cetera.
You're not just investing
in the Red Cross
and hoping that
something good happens.
You're getting something back.
So these people are
buying their ships.
They're getting these
material or, in these cases,
immaterial benefits
from the transaction.
The second thing they're
getting is a sense of purpose.
So the way Chris
Roberts builds this up
is he creates this mythology
where "Star Citizen" is
about group identity and it's
about us versus the world,
because these PC-space sim
games had been forgotten.
So as absurd as it might
sound if you're not into them,
this was incredibly motivating
to the people who then got
involved with "Star Citizen."
But there's this extra element.
There's this
multiplier effect which
I think we've described,
which we think
really unlocks this
willingness for people
to spend huge amounts of money
on something that is delivering
them certainly ambiguous value.
HENRY TIMMS: And this
equation isn't just
playing off in video
games, like "Star Citizen,"
but also in big companies.
There's a company in
China called Xiamoi,
which is a phone company.
It's a startup.
It was founded in 2010.
And it's been valued at
$45 billion, with a B.
They set a world record for
the most phones sold in a day,
selling 2.1 million
phones in a single day.
What's so interesting about
how Xiaomi works is they
have built the company around
the participation premium.
So they have three
things going on.
First, they have
something in return.
They sell very good, cheap
phones that people like.
So, so far, so good.
It's a good economic
transaction.
But secondly, they have a
real sense of higher purpose.
JEREMY HEIMANS: So they've
cultivated, again--
and we can look
at this cynically.
But it's very meaningful to
the people who are involved.
The company actually is
a Chinese colloquialism
for the word "millet," which
basically means revolution.
It's a colloquialism
for revolutions.
Obviously, it's not the
political revolution
that some people might hope for.
But these people have this
countercultural community
ethos.
They gather all over China.
There are thousands of
these Mi fans gatherings.
They've got this
unbelievable group
of basically QA, volunteer
QA people and people
on their forums.
They've got 40 million
people on their forums.
And I think at any
given moment, when
they release their weekly
updates to the software,
they have hundreds of
thousands of people
doing voluntary
testing on it, unpaid,
like it was Habitat
for Humanity.
And so they built this
very clever community,
and they've also been
quite smart about the way
they've gotten their
consumers involved
in product development.
There's a particular story that
we tell in the book about a guy
gets drunk, stumbles home.
He realizes there's a
problem with the flashlight.
And that causes a
change in the product.
And that story then gets told
to the rest of the community.
HENRY TIMMS: Please
do two things--
in fact, three
things with the book.
First, if you haven't
been given a copy--
some people were here--
please buy it.
We launch today.
So this is our very
first talk in the UK
here at Google,
which is terrific.
So please buy the book.
The second thing is please
respond to the book.
One of the things we really
wanted to do with this book
wasn't simply have
people read it,
but have people build on it.
Think about how it
applies to your own work.
Think about ideas
that you can share.
We've seen a lot of
user-generated content
already, which has
been super cool.
And then number three,
again, a very new power idea,
share the book.
If you have a copy today,
give it someone else.
Make sure your copy doesn't
end up on your library
but give it on,
because we really
wanted to start moving
around these ideas,
because we need the
right people to start
taking these issues up.
It's been lovely to
be here at Google.
And we appreciate
the invitation.
JEREMY HEIMANS:
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
