Hello, welcome back. [COUGH] We're telling some stories about the zoom-in, zoom-out model. And I have six interesting stories for you, I hope, very different ones that help us understand the process of creativity. People who challenge their limits to change the world. I have a story about an unusual restaurant. A short story by Scott Fitzgerald about an old idea that rises from the dead. Airships. About a different kind of party. About a northern city in Norway that managed to find a way to bring sunshine to darkness. And about a French bakery shop in America that found a different way to charge people for their products. Very different, but similar thread of creativity through the moral. So, without further ado, let's get underway. This is the story of Blackout Restaurant. A very unusual restaurant. Don't touch your screen [COUGH]. That's supposed to be there. This is the inside of Blackout Restaurant. Here's the story [COUGH]. For my 67th birthday my wife, son, and daughter in law took me out to dinner. For me it was an inspiring almost [COUGH] a life changing experience. We ate at a restaurant in Jaffa, which is a southern part of the city of Tel Aviv. The restaurant is called Nalagaad. Please touch. And it's at a center that hosts thousands of people yearly to it's theater. Theater is unusual, the actors in the theater are those afflicted with illness that makes them blind and deaf. How in the world, as a director, do you get people to present plays when they cannot hear and cannot see? And a wonderful person named Nadina Tao found a way to do that. But the restaurant is in this theater center and its unusual. So here is our experience. We enter the restaurant we're greeted by Dalia, our waitress who's blind. Before we enter, we have to leave our cell phones and our watches and any source of light. We enter the restaurant and it's absolutely pitch black. You literally can not see your hand in front of your face and we're guided to our seats by Dahlia who's blind. And Dahlia is very unusual, she works at Blackout as a waitress. She works as a guide at a children's museum, she travels the world, she was widowed five years ago, she's indomitable. Her guide dog died of cancer, she carries on, and she's just amazing. And we have an outstanding meal. Asparagus and tomato sauce with smoked salmon, salmon stuffed crepes, baked salmon, fresh baked bread, chardonnay wine, chocolate ice cream and we eat this in pitch black. And you know, in the pitch black, because you can't see anything, all of your senses are focused on the taste of the food and the taste is really unusual. So Blackout Restaurant. And one of your challenges, one of the seven challenges is can you come up with a different kind of restaurant? And all over the world there are restaurants that serve every possible kind of food. Can you innovate? Can you be creative in your restaurant? Not just in the food but the way it's served, the way it's presented, the ambiance. Blackout Restaurant, the restaurant called Nalagaat absolutely innovated in that creative and unusual way that brings many people to the restaurant. Another kind of innovation, an innovation by a writer named F Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, who came from the university I studied at, Princeton University, the writer of the 1920s. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story in 1922 called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. And [COUGH] if you saw the movie, it was made into a movie I think with Nicole Kidman. The theme of the short story and the movie is rather unusual. Benjamin Button is born old and over time instead of aging Benjamin Button becomes younger as the years pass. He finally becomes a tiny baby and then disappears. The movie won three Academy Awards but its an example of taking a basic assumption, which is that human beings are born babies and grow old. And you change the assumption and then explore what might happen if things worked in reverse. He took a chance. Creativity is risky. He took a chance on people ridiculing this or not reading the story because the basic premise is too ridiculous. But if you watch the movie, it's actually pretty persuasive. You would do this what's called the willing suspension of disbelief. In much of literature, the author asks us to suspend our cynicism and our disbelief, and just go with him for a while. And as you get into it, you accept the premise, and you find the action rather realistic and interesting. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Zoom in on the short story. Zoom out to examine possible themes and ways we can change it and then zoom back in to develop it in a believable way with detailed characters and so on. Now we sometimes assume. Assumptions are dangerous. You could be creative by smashing assumptions that everybody accepts as fixed by pushing the limits. We assume that an innovation is something completely new. The truth is, as the Bible says, there is nothing new under the sun. In Hebrew, [FOREIGN]. But here's an example of innovation, which occurs when you revive something that's old and you improve it. So in the 1930s we had zeppelins, we had airships, balloon type vehicles filled with hydrogen that were lighter than air, that could carry passengers and cargo. Hydrogen is highly flammable. We're thinking of using it today to run cars. There was a terrible accident with the Hindenburg, a zeppelin, which crashed and burned. Many people were killed. This was done on live radio. And that was the end of hydrogen-filled balloons. But now we have airships that are filled with helium and helium is an inert gas. It's almost as light as hydrogen but it doesn't burn and it's much safer. So we have a company that is reviving the airship, and using it 77 years after the crash of the Hindenburg to find new economical ways to carry very large payloads over long distances. This is done by a project called the Hybrid Air Vehicles Project. It has a government grant and the company has built an Airlander, costs about $40 million to build, it carries 55 tons. It's about 300 feet in length which is much longer than the biggest jet and it uses 80% less fuel than a jet. So, there's a worldwide competition how to build these airships. Maybe that will be a way for us to carry cargo and reduce the cost, create value for people and to help our environment. One way to be creative is to learn history to think about old ideas that have disappeared for one reason or another, revive those ideas and prove them give them a modern design and expression. And that's absolutely creative because you're bringing something new to people who haven't yet experienced it. The Hindenburg disappeared in 1937, putting an end temporarily to airships. Daybreak Party, my next story. Innovation is not just about gadgets or new devices or iPhones or whatever. Innovation is also about when we do things. So most of us have been to parties, and parties take place at night. They start at nine, at ten, at midnight, they start at one AM. But it's assumed that a party, if you throw a party, then it happens at night after work, on a weekend, in the late evening. Why? Why not throw a party at 6 AM? Or at 7 AM on a weekday, on a Wednesday before work? So here is the story of Daybreak Party. Two young entrepreneurs, their names are Matthew Brimer and Radha Agrawal. They are 30 years old. They are Edupreneurs. They're engaged in educational technology, tried to crack the problem we talked about earlier, can we teach our kids better. And they have a company that offers online classes. But they had an idea, of creating something they called a morning rave. It's a get-together held at 7:00 am for two hours before you go to work at 9:00 am. These are day-breaker party. No drugs, no alcohol, no liquor or other substances. What do you do at the party? You get together, you mingle, you chat and you dance. And, they don't have alcohol because they want people to have the full use of their senses, and enjoy the music and the body movement. Engage all the senses. So, the parties are held monthly, in mid-week, different locations. You sign up by e-mail. The idea spread from Silicon Valley, now started in New York City, spreading to London, San Francisco, Tel Aviv. It started in my country and we've had parties for thousands of years. But just change the time from say midnight to 7 a.m., and you have an innovation. So how can you innovate, how can you be creative simply by changing the time for a familiar event when people actually do things. Can you create a restaurant and offer breakfast at midnight? My favorite meal is breakfast and I would love to order breakfast later in the evening. And some restaurants allow it and many others are too inflexible to allow that to happen. Zoom in, zoom out. Zoom in on the idea of a get together. Zoom out to examine different ways to do it. Go up to the 989th floor, come up with this wild idea of having a party at 7 am before work on a work day on a Wednesday. And then zoom back in, find a place, make it happen, find a a way to invite people and see if they come. And in fact, they do. Next story. This story is about a remote village in Northern Norway called Rjukan, Norway. And the village of Rjukan, because it's very far north in Norway and because it's nestled in a valley within high mountains. For six months of the year people who live in Rjukan do not see the sun. The sun rises briefly and then sets and it never does come above mountain tops so people just don't see the sun. That's tough. That's what nature has given, right? Mountains, you can't chop down a mountain. So some engineers, creative engineers, challenged themselves with a question. How can you bring the sun to the people of Rjukan, Norway? During the six months of darkness. And here's the answer. It's possible and it's doable. You take three mirrors, solar powered, wind powered mirrors. You place them on strategic points on top of the mountain, focus down on the village square, down in the valley in Rjukan. And these mirrors bring sunlight from the sun down to the village square. After church on Sunday people flock to the square. They bring their deck chairs, they put the deck chairs down in the village square, they talk to their neighbors, they drink coffee, they chat, they socialize and they enjoy the sunshine reflected from these mirrors. So we can learn a lot I think from Rjukan and these engineers. There's always a solution, this is the theme of this course. Challenge yourself with hard problems, ask yourself hard questions and then use your creativity to tackle them and see what you can come up with. So we do one more story before we end the session. And then I'd like to tell you about my weird tie. Panera. Panera is an American French bakery and cafe, and they've come up with an innovation. They've broken an assumption. They've zoomed in on their business, zoomed out to observe needs in the world and zoomed back in with a solution. Normally we assume that in a business you make stuff and you sell to people, and you charge a price, and you tell people how much the stuff costs. And you try to set the price reasonably to create value for people, but also to leave enough profit so you can sustain your business and pay your wages. But Panera works a little differently. So when Jonathon walked into a branch of Panera called Panera Cares, it's in Boston near Government Center, it's a main center where the underground the subway is. A smiling employee greets Jonathon at the door, Jonathon waits in line, he orders a tomato, mozzarella Panini, really good, and then he asks the clerk, and wait a second, the clerk when he takes to the cash register there's no cash register. There's no cash register in the entire store. What's going on? So, he ask the clerk can I pay two bucks, because that's all I have? That's all Jonathan has. And clerk says sure. Now there's a box. And Jonathan puts his two bucks into the box and gets his sandwich. And, in fact, that's the innovation of Panera cares, and there are several other branches of Panera that do the same. There's no fixed price, you pay what you can afford. If you can't afford anything, you get the food for free. If you can afford to pay more, you pay more, so that you can fund the sandwich for, perhaps, a homeless person who doesn't have any income. So the restaurant at 3 Center Plaza, very busy, but the co-Chief Executive Ron Shaich calls this a test of human nature. [COUGH] It depends on donations from customers, and people are, in fact, generous. Now, Panera's gotten a lot of good publicity for this and they're doing well and doing good at the same time. Simply by being creative about an assumption. No, you don't have to have a fixed price when you sell food to people. People can decide themselves on the price. The last story. [COUGH] And this story about my rather strange tie. This tie looks like it was scribbled on by some children. I use it when I travel. It gets a lot of reactions. It's created hundreds of conversations with people who notice it. I've even managed to get a smile out of airport security guards at a German airport. If you think that's easy, you try it sometime. So what's the story of this tie? Well, this tie is by Tender Loving Care for the Children of Bellevue. Bellevue is a hospital in Manhattan. This hospital has some sick children. Some people thought it would be nice to try to make life a little better for children in a hospital. By providing them with games and toys and movies and music and other things, and it costs money. So we need to raise money. How do we raise money? We ask people for money, that's the conventional way to do things. Can we widen the range of choice, can we use our creativity? So why not have the children design ties, and then make the ties, sell them in Macy's for $12. And then give $6 of the money, $6 of the price to the kids, and use the other $6 to pay the costs of making the ties. And that's where I bought this tie at Macy's, and this my best tie by far and it is indeed designed by children. There are other ties by this and they are a lot more interesting than striped ties. If you wear striped ties my friend, you are broadcasting to people I am conventional, I think like everybody, I conform. If you ware weird ties like this you tell people I am creative. I'm different. I think different. So that ends week session eight, that ends some of our stories. I have more stories for you. I look forward to seeing you for our next session and continuing our discussion of the zoom in, zoom out framework.
