we are moving from a very, very industrial economy

to a knowledge economy, to a creative economy.

But what does this really mean?

How do we learn to prepare for this new economy?

The first thing we need to figure out is:

we need to create a community of people,

people that are sitting right here,

to open up our imagination

and then turn our imagination into impact.

Now even that, what does 'that' mean?

I have a confession to make.

I work at Intel, for many years.

And I am from India.

So the only two ways I know how to learn

is either through acronyms,

or through stories.

That's it. I can't learn any other way.

So I thought I will subject to you the way I learn.

So A.P.P.S.

Everybody has apps these days.

There's an app for waking up,

app for sleeping app, app for everything.

But let me tell you my definition of apps.

You know in Indian mythology,

or in Indian philosophy,

we said that there are four stages of life.

There's childhood, youth,

at age where you are responsible, you're head of the household.

and then ultimately Nirvana.

You know, you retire and then you make your final journey.

So if you think of, what does each of this age entail?

So the first thing is A.P.P.S. In the A, is

Ask.

What does a child do all the time?

They keep asking.

Why is the sky blue?

Why are we going there?

Why are we not going there?

Are we there yet?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

They keep asking.

Because that's the way they learn.

And the next thing is Practice.

You know a kid gets up, walks, falls down,

gets up, walks, falls down, and that's how they learn.

We need to practice our ideas over and over and over again.

And then, we have to become the head of the household.

We have to figure out how our ideas are gonna

actually create an impact out there and make a profit,

so that we have the whole world sustainable around us.

And finally, the S is the most important part of this.

is that every learning has a stage

when you need to Surrender to the next generation.

Because otherwise you'll never let someone else come.

And when I say next generation,

I don't mean somebody younger necessarily

but maybe the next person who has been working with you.

So you need to know when to complete that.

So in this A.P.P.S,

You know we ask, we practice, we create a profit,

we surrender.

Now, in the past, we used to do this only once in our lifetime.

Then, maybe in my generation, we do it three or four times.

But in the new generation that's coming out,

including all of us who is here

who's planing to live for another 20, 30 years,

we rather learn how to do this

over and over and over again.

So there is a circle there with no particular arrows

because it's an infinite "do loop".

We have to ask, we have to practice,

we have to profit from it,

we have surrender ourselves. Go on to the new idea.

And this is a paradigm

of the new generation of the new economy is that

we have to learn to let go and keep on.

And to remember this I'll tell you one quick story.

There is a movie called "6 Degrees of Separation"

which is one of my favorite movies.

And in that, you know, Donald Sutherland is telling

this story of this teacher of his child.

Since I go to my child's school,

and I asked the teacher:

Look at the paintings of the second grade.

They are blotches of black and blue.

Look at the paintings of the fourth grade.

They are… you can't even understand.

But the third grade, every painting is a Picasso.

What is your secret? Let me learn with you."

And the teacher says,

So knowing when to give up

is the most best skill we need to learn.

Now the second thing is,

this is Taiwan, this is the country of manufacturing.

When I say B.O.M,

what do people think?

They think of bill of materials, right?

But I want to give you a different definition of

it after I tell you a few quick stories.

Bill of materials is what is the content of things,

what is in something.

I want to introduce you to a few people

who truly are my heroes.

I mean these are the heroes of the new generation.

This boy Sushant Patnaik.

When he was about 15 years old,

he went to the hospital and saw someone

who was paraplegic

and felt really about the person

not being able to move.

So he figured out what is common

between him and the person who can not move

is breath.

So he created a wheel chair

that moves through breath

when he was aged 17.

And since then he is all of 20 right now.

He has already invented, you can make

cell phone calls using breath,

you can turn light on and off using breath.

So he's dedicate to this idea.

And this is Nam Do,

who runs a company called Emotiv.

And what this is, is that by thinking something,

you can move objects on the screen.

So what is the power of our thinking

in making things happen in the physical world?

Arunachalam, he is a 6th-grade-failed,

and he was sitting at his house one day

and he saw his wife was using rags

when she had her periods.

And he decided to invent the sanitary napkin

that is affordable for women.

So that over 90% of the women in India

and around the world who can not afford

to wear a sanitary napkin would be able to use this invention.

And to do that, he had to sacrifice a lot of things,

because people thought he was weird.

First of all, a guy trying to do this was weird enough.

So when he couldn't find anybody to experiment

to find out if the sanitary napkin is working or not,

he actually wore it.

And he took pig's blood,

and connect it to the sanitary napkin.

He'd be riding bikes, he'd could be walking everywhere,

pumping this, to test how this works.

I mean it takes guts to do this

for a man from a small town.

Elora Hardy is building homes out of bamboos.

Not just any home, luxury homes out of bamboo.

Mansukhbai, he has created a refrigerator

that runs through water that does not require electricity

that keeps food cold for at least 2-3 days.

And Maira Kalman,

who is the illustrator with 'The New Yorker',

who's a children's book artist.

And Tod Machover who is the music composer,

who's creating symphony of cities.

He collects sounds of the cities and creates symphonies out of them.

And the reason I'm talking about

all of these people is that in my mind the B.O.M

actually stands for

Billionaires of Moments.

And one of my favorite quotes is that:

but by the number of moments that take our breath away."

So each of these person that I've talked to you about

is creating a world where there are many, many

precious moments that are collected for the people around them.

That's the billionaires that we all should aim to become.

We should be greedy about collecting these moments.

And finally,

when we do this, when we do these crazy things,

when we do these out-of-the-box things,

when we do this nobody believes in,

there are times you wonder

You know there was a time

when I used to love climbing mountains.

So in the middle of the night

you know you are up in some snow mountain,

and it's cold as hell.

And you are thinking of

You know? And then you go down

and then like an idiot next weekend

again you're back up again.

So what is this craziness that makes us all move?

It is this word I want you to remember: one.

Yi. Ek. Any language.

one

we should always think of one person

or one incident

something in our life

that makes us go forward.

And, to me, is this girl.

I called her my flower girl.

And I met her about 5 years ago.

And she is in a home

which rescues sex workers.

And she was one of the girls that was rescued.

she was about 6-years-old

when was rescued.

And she was brought home

and she was taking care of.

And then,

um...you know she's mentally challenged.

So they put her at the home.

And they found out, two years later,

that in that home she's been abuse again.

So they brought her back to the home,

and Sunitha Krishnan who runs this organization

spoke in the conference just like this in India at TED.

And she shared her story about

how difficult it is to create a home

for women like this who get rescued.

Because no one wants them living in their neighborhood.

And just like you

there were people sitting in the audience.

They got up.

And we actually work with her for 6 months.

And we got her enough money

to build the home

for all the women.

So that 18 months from the time

she stood and shared her story,

there's a home where all these women were living.

And to me, I felt that

this girl, this face,

is what haunted me.

I felt I wanted to give her a home

at least for one day

where she was happy.

And they built the home

and pretty soon after that,

she died.

Because at age 9 or 10,

by the time she was rescued for the second time,

her body was ravaged with so much disease

that she could not survive anymore.

But to me,

every time I think of the crazy things that we do,

every time I think of all these

billionaires of moments we are trying to create,

every time we are sitting here biting our nails

wondering if we are ever gonna make it through the year,

and every time when I wonder,

should I just go back and get a job,

I just think of this face.

And I think of the story with which I'm gonna end.

And the story is of a little boy and starfish.

And this boy goes to the beach,

and there's millions of starfish out there.

And this boy is taking each starfish

and putting it back into the ocean.

And then the waves come and wash a few more starfish