Nigel Parker, Technologist, Live from TEDx AKL

Nigel Parker is here to talk to us about failure, and why failure is the best possible outcome. There will always be naysayers, people who say, "That will never work!" or "What were you thinking?" Thomas Edison had more than 1,000 patents and most of them were failures. He had the idea of a concrete house, which didn't work, so he switched to concrete furniture. What Nigel wants to know is how we handle failure, and how we can learn to handle failure.
 
He truly believes that you can't be successful in the absence of failure. Great companies and great people fail often.
 
Consider Sony -- started with the Walkman, had a good success with it, but then they just kept going with the same idea: the Discman, and then the Minidisc which was a failure. By the time they came out with an MP3 player, they were no longer the market leader.
 
Sometimes we get taken by surprise: when the Internet came along, it was a fifth or sixth priority for Microsoft (according to Bill Gates). The astronauts from Apollo 13 said "Failure is not an option," but it will always happen, so we need to be prepared for it and ready for it.
 
He then describes Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma -- the idea of a disruptive technology, something that comes in at the bottom of the market and takes the top of the market by surprise.
 
Why isn't there a disposable digital camera? It used to exist in the US, and it was being sold for USD$20. But people managed to hack it and weren't bringing it back, and it became a cheap digital camera instead of a disposable one.
 
He discusses a few more disruptive technologies, but then asks, "OK, I'm not technical, so how does this relate to me?"
 
Commitment vs. Attachment. Attachment, especially to an outcome, is a real problem. He believes you have to favour commitment over attachment. For example, he and his wife wanted a boy for their second baby, but sure enough, it was a girl. Yes, he was committed to having a boy, but he wasn't attached to it, so he was able to be excited about having a girl.
 
He's showing some very cool photoessays, built with Silverlight and Photosynth, a personal one from Piha, one for the AllBlacks, and one from AirNZ Fashion Week.
 
So what can you do to change the way you think about failure? Think of one or two things that have changed in your life that you're struggling with because of your definition of failure.
 
Nigel dedicates his presentation to his father, who was named Ted -- why he wanted to present here today. His father passed away in August, and sadly was from a generation that was afraid to fail. He wants us to know there is a better way.