Jan Chipchase At TED

Of the 6.3 billion people on the planet, 3 billion have cellular connectivity and in another 2 years another billion will have it too. Jan Chipchase of Nokia spends his days out in the field looking at what people carry in their pockets and why.

In the talk Jan says that if you ask people what the three most important things they carry – the answer is always keys, money and the mobile phone. Why? Survival. For us and our loved ones.

The mobile phone also allows people to transcend space and time. Space through a voice call – and time through sending a message at your convenience and receiving at the recipient’s convenience. This is universal.

Jan also talks about delegation. We have to carry these things but we forget. Most of us have a center of gravity – where people keep their objects. Those thing’s aren’t there all the time, it’s where you expect to find stuff – where you look first. The guaranteed way never to forget anything is to have nothing to remember. It’s about the art of delegation. Delegation can be the solution for nearly anything. There are 799 illiterate people in the world. If you can’t read and write how do you manage your contact details? The illiterate are masters of delegation. They delegate to people.

Jan concludes with 4 themes:

• The immediacy of ideas – if you want a big idea you have to embrace everyone ont he planet
• The immediacy of objects – as the mobile phone becomes smaller, as the functionality become greater – the speed of adoption of things at a speed we can’t conceive
• The innovation of the street – the street will take our stuff and innovate in ways we cannot anticipate, and do it better than us – and if we’re smart we’ll use this
• The community – communication is no longer one way from company to user – it’s all about listening and being part of the conversation.

TED
Jan’s Blog