Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: I would invest in chemical technology. See, at the moment, if you want to build a building, you think it, you design it, you buy the materials, you build it. How easy it is for engineers to build. But chemists have a terrible time. Chemists work in the dark. They can’t see what they’re doing, and it’s all experimentation, and it’s like putting stuff and shaking the bag and hoping for goodness something will come out. And 15 years later, normally it does. But when we can get chemical technology for the same level as think, design, buy, build, wow, we can reduce the development cycle from 15 years to one year and not work with accidents.

Jonar Nader: Viagra was an accident. Penicillin was an accident. The pill was an accident. The major significant developments have always been accidents. Well, how about we actually, specifically, purposefully design? The only danger is that terrorist can then design similar. And if you think Anthrax is a problem, how about we design a chemical technology that says, “If you are an American, it will kill you, this powder?” How about we get mosquitoes and get the mosquitoes to fly and when they pierce you, if you have blonde hair, you will die, because that’s where that’s heading?

Jonar Nader: That’s the bad side. There are good sides – genetic engineering, to fix things like I no longer have to wear glasses, you can just fix that problem, going bald as I am, you could fix that problem. Speech impediments, you can fix with genetic engineering. I had a guy in my class who just couldn’t pronounce letter “R,” and the poor fellow, every time he did something wrong, the teacher would embarrass him to death – you know, talk about these teachers, I don’t know, probably in your days, too – she’d say, “Get up here and recite after me. Rabbit gave Richard a rep in the ribs for roasting the rabbit so rare.” The guy couldn’t pronounce the letter “R”. With all the dignity he could muster, he would stand up there and say, “Bob gave Dick a poke in the side for not cooking the bunny enough.” How about designer children? Yeah, exactly the way you want it. There’s a future for you, short-term, low-risk. Well, Willy went to his sister. He said, “Where did I come from?” She said, “The stork brought you, Willy.” He went to his mother. “Mummy, where did I come from? The stork brought you, Willy.” He thought he’d go to his grandmother. “Grandma, where did I come from?” “Willy, the stork brought you, and that’s enough.” Next day at school, he got up, and he said, “It’s a known fact there have been no normal sex relations in my family for three generations.”

Jonar Nader: Let’s go short-term, high-risk. How about skin farms and body parts? You could change everything almost today. You end up shaking hands with someone you’re not sure how many times you’ve met them before and how many permutations. And you realize that the baby’s foreskin, if it’s cut, that tiny little piece of skin, actually is used to grow a sheet of real skin the size of a football fields. But forget that, because, now, we can actually, make real living, breathing skin in a lab from nothing. And skin burn victims, et cetera, appreciate what that can do for them.

Jonar Nader: Human control devices, if you’re a thug of some kind, if you’re a criminal, instead of putting you into jail, every time you’re hormones play up, automatically, these jelly beans will be throughout your body, will inject you. If you have a high blood pressure, why do you have to take tablets morning and night? We’ll do it automatically through jelly beans and micro doses. If you need Viagra, it happens when it happens. So, human control devices aren’t just about controlling thieves, it’s controlling your daily life, sugar levels, et cetera. Comet mining? Boy, there’s a lot of stuff out there, but what’s stopping us from comet mining? Two obstacles and they are ownership and water. Who owns the piece of rock? And how can get enough water up on a pay load, because water is so heavy to take up, so that we can drill and mine. There are two things, but we might be able to make water up there, so that might solve that problem. Let’s go long-term, low-risk.

Jonar Nader: Long-term, biotechnology. Now, almost this very square inch Mr. Beatty was here last year or the year before for the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Is Mr. Beatty here yet, respectfully? I need to know because I need to tell you a story about him. We’ll go no further, I hope, because he did tell me in confidence. Anyway, he was standing here – well, as far as Mr. Beatty, but no further. Now, and he was declaring that biotech is where Queensland and where he’s pushing. So, perhaps, if you manage to speak with him, just feel his passion because he understands where this biotech is going so that we can help people and live a better life. My next-door neighbor was 90, sex mad, absolutely sex crazy, went to the doctor and he said, “Doctor, I want you to lower my sex drive.” And the doctor said, “You’ve got to be crazy. You’re 90 years old, for heaven’s sake. What do you mean? It’s all in your head.” He said, “I know, I know, I want it lowered.”

Jonar Nader: How about honeymoons? You thought – you thought, this act here was an act. These people know what they’re talking about. We will soon have to travel to the moon, and you can have your honeymoon up there courtesy of Hyatt. And Hilton’s already put a pitch on it. So, could we, perhaps? There’s your next venture. How do you get in to that? How do you get in to that? And, yes, you’re right Mr. Buchanan, it is expensive, absolutely expensive, but, you know, people win the lotto all the time. A friend of mine won the lotto, rang up his wife, “Sati, I’ve won, I’ve won a million dollars! Pack your bags! I’ve won!” She said, “Fantastic, Stan. What should I pack for? Summer? Winter?” He said, “I don’t care, just be gone by the time I get back.” Money is liberating. We want more of it.

Jonar Nader: How about artificial food where you can eat fish and any other such meat made in a lab and you wouldn’t know the difference? You do that Pepsi, Coke taste test, you couldn’t tell which meat comes from where. And soon you’ll have McDonalds homemade, it will be for real.

Jonar Nader: Long term high risk, nanotechnology. And funnily enough, nanotechnology is in The Financial Review today. I was having breakfast. Well, twice breakfast I’ve had. But it has got a feature on nanotech by a Grant Butler, a friend of mine. I didn’t know. I just saw it today and I thought, yeah, look, so if you get The Financial Review today, read up, but let me give you a quick, quick lesson in nanotech. It means that one day we will be able to find the – at the atomic level to build molecules so that if we need water or tomatoes or chairs, or a left foot or whatever it is, because, ultimately, they’re made of atoms, why can’t we use the genetic engineering and the chemical engineering and the biotech to build these tomatoes that we need up there at the atomic level, at the molecular level. So, nanotech is actually not about little tiny machines that can unblock your artery – which is one element – it’s about building anything and everything from the twenty or a hundred components that life’s made out of. Scary stuff.

Jonar Nader: Solar One, the first mission to the sun, so long as go at night, you’ll have no problem. Near light speed travel, I wouldn’t be so daft to talk about light speed travel. Not just yet, but, boy, I do believe in near light speed travel. And decomp, where you decompose yourself and recompose yourself anyway you like, you can be in London in three minutes flat. Of course, your luggage will end up in Singapore, but that’s another problem.

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: What are the obstacles? How do we innovate in a way that is evolutionary? If we were at a meeting, we will find that peer pressure will not allow it to happen. And that is why at the IBM in the gold old days, it was fantastic that in fact the mainframe division did not like the idea of the PC, laughed at it so much that they kicked them out of the building and said” You’re wasting our time,” and they put them in Boca Ratan. That was the best thing they could have done. And then these guys far way from the peer pressure managed to perfect and perfect and perfect before someone said, “Hey, you know come over here and help us, we have a crisis on our hand.” Peer pressure.

Jonar Nader: Time versus timing is another obstacle that will deflate anything that anyone sees at a meeting. And we need to understand there is big difference between time and timing. Someone might come up with an idea that is absolutely brilliant but just not the right time and yet, we kill it. We don’t know how to shelve it and incubate it and bring it on later time. You go, “No the right time. I’m too busy. I don’t want to know.” It kills it.

Jonar Nader: Timing is another one where someone does something but it just doesn’t work. It’s like if you’re making cake, and we know that we need eggs for cake yet if you just crack the egg once second in the wrong place. Instead putting it with the flour and mixing it, you putting it on the hot pan and that you’re heating in the oven and you end up with fried eggs. You spoil it. And so sometime, our innovation or the suggestion that someone comes up with, they’re so crazy that it looks awful and it spoils and we kill it instead of thinking, “Hang on, maybe if we had applied it in a different way and in a different sequence it might work.” So I’m just saying be careful that, sure, there are times when ideas are fantastic, do we need to shelve them or apply them a little bit differently or have some patience to it?”

Jonar Nader: I will show this for example. Here are some experts who said about a product, “It will largely fail.” Another expert said, “The company should pull the plug on it.” Another expert said, “Nothing more than a temporary novelty.” And the fourth expert said, “I’m more convinced than ever that sales will be unspectacular.” And this expert went on to say, “They should sell off that part of the business absolutely quickly so that if anyone ever dares to launch it and it fails, the company doesn’t have embarrassment on its hands.” What product was that? I’ll give you a clue as to who said it. And these four people, I’m not picking on because in fact there were dozens more. Who were they speaking about and what was the product – which is reported in the paper today, Adrian, that you have one and recently purchased one? Anyone with hands up to answer the question? Yes? The iPhone. Correct. Now, The iPhone sold 4 million in two hundred days. And you just saw what the experts were saying and they were laughing on it; let alone what the competitors were saying. But that was little bit bias, of course. You know, what is the iPhone in terms of technology? It is not really revolution at all. This comes under the category of convergence where we bring things together and just make them better or brighter or smaller or cheaper or faster or something with the word “ER” at the end of it. I call it the ER suffix – cheaper, brighter faster, whatever. Now, the iPhone to me is genius yet really is just a convergence of things. We’ve the calendar for thousands of years, we’ve had the phone a hundreds years or more, we’ve had the camera for a hundred years, so it’s not in itself wow. But what it has done is it has created a sense of value to the user.

Jonar Nader: And I love watching the keynote speech when Steve Jobs launched this product. And I love watching what I call the “oohmeter,” when people in the audience, when they show them the features, when they go, “Oh, yeah.” And the “oohmeter,” the highest point when he had applause and laughter and almost had an ovation was the innovation that he introduced and he said with the iPhone, “Watch this. When you turn it on, it turns on.” And the audience began to applaud because they were so frustrated waiting four minutes for the whole thing to turn on in the good old days. And he just changed the face of it. But, interestingly, don’t assume – although this is genius in micro technology and telecommunications – don’t assume that the consumer always wants the “out there.” In fact, I’m going to riddle you this question: What is the world’s most expensive, most used, most profitable, least advanced product without which the telcos in ’90s and latter ’90s would gone broke? Thanks to this. It saved the telcos. It’s the most expensive, the most profitable, the most used, least advanced product. And the point I’m making is it is the least advanced product, so don’t always assume that people want space-agey stuff. And the answer to that question is SMS. Text messaging and SMS is unbelievably expensive, huge. It’d be like buying a Holden Commodore of $30,000 for $3 million. That’s the mark up price on what you’re buying. And right in this second, you’ve got $90 million of them going. Most used, yet it is really going back to the days of Morse code. But this appeals to my nephew, Jonathan, who puts it in his pocket, he can do it without looking. The teacher doesn’t know what’s going on and he’s texting all his mates. For him, for some reason, that was a great idea. Let’s go back to this idea of obstacles.

Jonar Nader: There are other obstacles. Bureaucracy is a big one. Now, what I am saying here is if we are to embrace innovation, we need to teach our people about OpEx, 1% excellence, we need to make sure that it is within our DNA, that we train people about this process that does not tolerate stupidity, that gives people the power to say, “This seems stupid to me. Therefore, it must seem stupid to the other people.” Now bureaucracy comes into play. “Prove it to me. Show it to me,” et cetera. I work for Acer. Stan Shih is the founder of Acer. Before he founded Acer Computer, he used to sell chickens and fish for a dollar just to live with his mom and his large family.

Jonar Nader: And Stan Shih is a lovely man. And he used to say to us all, all the countrymen, all the product managers, and he’d sit right here and right there and he’d say to them, “I really want you, all your countries to buy from my factory, Acer Factory. It’s really profitable for us to do it this way. But anytime you say to the factory, ‘I would like this Intel chip with that combination,’ and someone at the company uses this one word called ‘no,’ I authorize you to go anywhere you like to do anything you like.” And that’s why in Australia, we’re known as Acer. We are able to say – and back then, we were a small company – we’re able to say we’re the first with the Intel Pentium 90. And we took up full-page ads. The factory couldn’t help us, but we managed to do it. We got the local Intel office on board. We were the world’s first to have the Intel 90 into a certain microchip. And that was – that was Stan saying, “Don’t let the bureaucracy stand in your way.”

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Jonar Nader: Let’s just have a little bit of a history lesson here to remind you of these things you probably know. There are many ways to arrive at these great punctuated points. You know, necessity is one of the fantastic ones. There was a time when this chap was selling ice cream in a cup, and the expo was so successful that he ran out of cups. And he knew that was the end of it. But he saw the chap across the hall from him making waffles, and he thought, “Well, maybe I can do this and sell the ice cream in a waffle,” which now is the invention called the cone. Frustration is a fantastic one that can breakdown the walls.

Jonar Nader: There was an undertaker who buried people for a living. And he lived in Kansas City, and anytime somebody died, they would in those days have to ring for the operator and say, “Please, operator, put me through to the baker, put me through to the butcher, put through to the undertaker.” But it so happened that the operators own husband was also an undertaker. So anytime business came this way, she never gave it to poor Alan, she always gave it to her husband. This guy is so frustrated at the lack of business that he invented the self-dial telephone you and I pick up the phone and we dial ourselves. He invented that. Who would have thought that come from that side of the business. Irritation.

Jonar Nader: Do you remember the story of the chap who sent some potatoes back to the kitchen saying, “These are too thick,” and he only meant them to be just that. And the chef was so irritated by this rudeness that he said, “You want them thin, mate? I’ll give you thin.” And he gave him thin, and they – everybody in the restaurant thought, “This is fantastic. I want some, too.” It was actually a joke that became potato chips and thin crisps. A combination where we see here a wastage of water on football fields and ovals and all sorts of places, here, we can put a mark or a chip or a jelly bean at every foot or meter and only feed it with water when it tells the jet to spray here not here, rather than this blanket approach. So we combine technologies, which is another way that we break new ground.

Jonar Nader: A dream, you’ve all heard of Goodyear, Charles Goodyear, who died penniless, been in jail three times. Over 14 years, he was trying to invent this thing that he knew in his mind would one day be rubber and then, by accident, one day, he – you know, he pursued his dream to such a degree that he had I think 12 kids and half of them died from asphyxiation, lack of food, all sorts of diseases. But he never gave up. He died absolutely penniless. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company has absolutely nothing to do with him. It was named in his honor. He followed his dream for 14 years.

Jonar Nader: An accident during the world war, the radar people were having this electron magnetron so they could detect aircraft. And so the radar team just kept noticing that their lollies, their chocolate in their pockets was melting every time they were working on this and realized what an electron magnetron does to agitate, cause friction and cause heat, and we have microwave ovens. Accidents are wonderful. This is a very dark shot. You can’t see it. And what it says is, well, this is a pack at night. And another way to arrive at innovation is to be crazy, and ask the crazy question, “Gee, wouldn’t it be good if we could light this up but not with electricity? Wouldn’t it be good if would could use nanotech, biotech, chemical tech, so that the leaves themselves can illuminate?” Could we do that? And I think it is important to always ask crazy questions and then see if we can work back from there.

Jonar Nader: The environment is forcing us to study how we use lawn mowers and meeting all sorts of problems with noise, pollution, CO2 and all sorts of problems. And so can we use biotech, nanotech or chemical tech to ask the crazy question? Why does grass keep growing? Can we engineer a type of grass where, you know, like the hair on your head, if you cut it, it grows and grows and grows? The hair here on my arm, if I shaved this off, it will grow and grow and stop. Can we apply that kind of logic to lawn so that it’d be real lawn, but grows and stops – and same with trees and overhanging wires and all sorts of problems?

Jonar Nader: Urgency, brings the best of minds together and brings the best out in people. Hut here is now point. All of these things that I mentioned to you are unstable. We cannot sit back in business and wait for somebody to do something like this because even if they would come up to you in your organization with anyone of these crazy ideas, first of all, the idea is going to be first a seedling, and the one thing you’re going to do is to immediately say, “All the blood – white blood cells are going to kill it.” Any great gem of an idea that comes to your business sounds unstable, don’t have the time for it, don’t have the tolerance, don’t have the patience, the white blood cells in your organization flowing at such a speed will kill it. Therefore, there has to be another way.

Jonar Nader: We cannot have innovation in the way I’ve described it to you just by sitting and waiting for these wonderful emergencies and innovations and frustrations to take place. Our organizations don’t allow it. So what do we need to do? There is a solution and the answer is right up here for you. We need to understand how to have an organization that can evolve ideas and concepts bit by bit so the white blood cells do not kill it. And if we can apply this 1% excellence on a daily basis, let’s now look and see how evolution happens but why does it fail so many times. In the same way, we see customer service, a spouse, left, right, and center, and you have search hard to find it.

Jonar Nader: Let’s look at the hard way. So at first, I normally would like to engage a room completely. But because of the size of this room, you’ll forgive me I ask for volunteers to join me on stage…

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Announcer: Jonar Nader is a management consultant, a futurist, and a technologist. He started as a programmer at the age of 15. To show us “How to Lose Friends and Infuriate Innovators” and to outline why organizations find it difficult to evolve, please welcome, Jonar Nader.

Jonar Nader: There are three reasons why we need to innovate. The first is that in life those who are content are the richest of all. Yet, in business, those who are content I would say are sitting ducks. You cannot apply the same formula. So, therefore, what we are saying is that innovation is absolutely mandatory and the first reason is that it provides growth. And by growth, I don’t mean expansion. People think that growth is when we just sort of open another offers and make lots of sales. That’s expansion. Growth, to me, is like a tomato. It has to grow at every molecular level bit by bit in 360-degree fashion. And so our organization needs to grow completely from every angle.

Jonar Nader: The second reason why I say innovation is vital is that even though we might be successful today and customers are lining up for our product and, we can say that while our customers and while your customers are beating a path to your door, your competitors are tunneling a door to your path. And so that is all about security. Innovation is vital to keep you secure.

Jonar Nader: And the third reason why innovation is vital is that we all understand the importance of health. And health requires constant exercise. You don’t decide to be healthy when the doctor says you’re in dire strait, you better do something about it now and you can hardly get off the chair.” So, funnily enough, looking after your health is best done when you don’t need to. Like advertising is best done when you don’t to, and innovation is best done when you don’t need to. And so I say the third reason innovation is vital is because it does to your company what exercise does to your health. And innovation, therefore, here, is about power.

Jonar Nader: Andrew this morning mentioned the word “momentum.” The reason we require power in business is so that we can get something pushed and going and let the momentum take it for wall while we turn our attention somewhere else and keep growing and innovating. Momentum is your most important resource in success and the formula to success. Now, when I say innovation, I do not mean this fantastic idea that comes and changes your life. I am talking about the essence of the DNA of your organization. I called a hotel just the other day and we were booking for dinner, and I asked the lady, “Well, do you have parking for us?” She said, “Yes, there is a parking station downstairs. But it doesn’t belong to us. Certainly, you can park there.” I said, “Do you know when they closed, because that’s an important consideration?” She said, “No, I don’t.”

Jonar Nader: Now, when I say a company must be absolutely innovative 360 degrees in every cell throughout the entire lifestyle, it means how can that person hang up the phone from that point on and go to the next call without logging the question? “Gee, I think I should know when the car park closes.” And so innovation isn’t about the invention; it’s about the way of life and everything that we do and touch. If that lady did not thereafter go searching for that very good question, “When does the car park close?” I don’t think that business has any hope because it just doesn’t happen with acquisition or buying a new satellite system.

Jonar Nader: I’ll give you another example of what I mean by that innovation comes through the essence of who we are. I find it amazing that I can receive a bill from a telephone company and at the top it says, “If you have bill inquiries, call 13XXX. And you….” And it says, “For bill inquiries call that number.” And you call that number, who do you think you’re going to get? Not bill inquiries. And then you have to navigate through the process. Now, if a telephone conglomerate cannot so much as engineer it that when it tells you to call this number for bill inquiries that that’s who you’re going to get, I just don’t understand how that organization can be innovative. Buying a new satellite or micro chips and globalization does not make it innovative. It has to start with an aching question in everybody’s mind: “This doesn’t seem to make sense.” And I am the best and most stupid customer of my mobile carrier who I left only a month ago. I’ve been with them for years and I’m the most stupid customer because whenever I travel, I can’t be bothered buying calling cards. And I’m on a $79 plan and I’m always above 400 and when I go anywhere it’s about 600. Every bill is 600 – the most stupid thing you can be doing. And I came back from Paris and I get the bill, I pay the bill. I get the bill, I pay the bill. All of a sudden, I mean, amazing, my phone doesn’t work. After all the rigmarole, “We cut you off.” Why? Because apparently I owe them $9. “How am I supposed to know I owe you $9? You send me the bill, I pay you the bill. Did you send me a bill?” “No.” “What happened?” “Oh, while you were roaming in Paris and….” I said, “Am I the first person in the world to whom this has happened? But never mind. How can you cut someone off without so much sending a text message and how much does that cost you?” So you see? This company cannot be innovative until that guy who heard my side of the story thought to himself, “This does seem crazy. We should at least give people 12 hours notice because we cut them off. We knew it was coming.” Now, if that guy doesn’t hang up and run up to the CEO’s office or to his team leader’s office or something and take ownership of that and say, “This is stupid. I don’t want to work for a stupid company,” you cannot be innovative.

Jonar Nader: So, therefore, we need to push innovation at every fingertip and every point or, otherwise, you will absolutely fail like people do fail. So, you cannot innovate if you cannot improve. These huge punctuated chunks of new innovations do not work in a business context, by work, if you’re a solitary, crazy entrepreneur who is just going to go. But in a big infrastructure like an organization, everybody has to have it at their fingertips. Now, how do we improve? We improve by what I call OpEx. And OpEx, you know, people say is operating expense, right? To me, OpEx stands for “one percent excellence.” And we must demand it of each other. Whether on sales or you’re finance or marketing or logistics, we should all look at each other and say, “Let me give you a hug. That was fantastic. What you did there was fantastic, but can we improve this by one percent?”

Jonar Nader: And if every day we can look at each other and encourage each other not with a critical eye but with an uplifting eye that says, “Hey, that was great. What can we do to tweak that just a little bit?” In anything that we do, whether the door squeaks or whether the phone is ringing or whether the car park just doesn’t, you know, years ago I learned about this difference between being aggressive and assertive. And, apparently, an aggressive person, if they hear the tap dripping at night will just get angry. An assertive person will just get up, turn the tap off and go back to bed. And we have so many people in organizations who are aggressive and angry and not happy with their work environment, yet what can they do? And, therefore, before you innovate, make sure you have a system in place where anybody at any time can do something about it.

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Male: Well now, we’re about to meet a digital age philosopher, a post-tentative virtual surrealist. His name is Jonar Nader. He’s a fascinating person and he’s right here. Welcome, Jonar.

Jonar Nader: Hi.

Male: Thank you very much for coming. Tell me first about this surrealist thing. What is that? What is it all about?

Jonar Nader: It was an exclamation. I was at some meeting and you know when you go to meetings, everyone wants your business card so that they can see if they can use you and abuse you and if it doesn’t have a decent title on it, they will move on. It’s called networking, which I absolutely hate. And I didn’t have titles on my business card and people would always want to know what job do you have, who do you work for? You know, just say hello first, you know, before you try to abuse me. And one lady insisted and I said, ‘Well, I’m a post-tentative virtual surrealist.’ I don’t know where it came from.

Male: You just made it up.

Jonar Nader: I made it up on the spot and she sort of believed me. I thought, ‘Oh, you can’t be that gullible.’ She said, What does that do?’ I don’t know. I just keep inventing new things. But I quite like the title. And so, what it really means is digital age philosopher. Someone who thinks about the philosophical questions of life for today because our philosophers have all did a good job but they didn’t have the things to deal with that we have to deal with today.

Male: How is technology affecting us really? This is a specialist theory of yours, isn’t it?

Jonar Nader: Yes.

Male: Surrounded by information technology in every aspect of our lives. What’s it doing to us, Jonar?

Jonar Nader: Well, nothing at all really. We seem to think that the problems that technologies causing on you, in fact, yes, you can say it’s creating stress but we’ve always had stress. You can say that it’s making things go fast and then go, ‘Wow! We live in a fast world.’ I go, ‘Hang on a minute. Your grandmother and my grandmother saw more things than more you think you and I are seeing.’ I mean, they saw the moon bit. They saw the cars and the televisions, and the radios, and the phones, and the fax. And you’re telling me that we’ve got the internet and a bit of extra power somehow the world is woe upon us.

But what technology has done is it has actually separated the thinkers from the non-thinkers in a sense that technology is fast. You call your bank. You want to know your bank balance now to the second by the minute and though the staff member can’t make a decision, so what technology has done is it had shown how inadequate we are, how incompetent we are because you go, ‘Hang on a minute. Your computer says this but you can’t make that decision.’ ‘Oh, no. We have to go into conference. You have to write a letter.’ And the stupidities of life.

Take for example internet banking which I do. If I do internet banking, all I need is my card number which anyone can have access to. Whenever I go shopping, everyone has my card number and a 4-digit code. That’s all. Card number, 4-digit code. That same bank, the same thing I want to do. You call. You say hello. What’s your name? Jonar Nader. Age, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, password, and the fifth security option. Why do you need five things? Why don’t you ask me the four things? So, we are showing the stupidities that we have to keep going against. Then that’s what I think technology has done.

Male: If we continue on this path, what’s your vision?

Jonar Nader: Our total collapse, total collapse. And at the moment, already I’m saying that the corporations of the future will collapse. I wrote a book and people said to me, ‘What’s the solution?’ I said, ‘There is no solution.’ The thing is this, this thing called the law of complexity and we are making life far too complex and far too complicated. So, there’s no hope for them. So, you’ll find corporations will be collapsing because there is no soul, because the people who are running it have no sense of wisdom. They don’t really understand what compassion means. They’re just bureaucratic beasts who know how to say, ‘policy, policy.’

You know, I was up in Oakland recently and your biggest hotel in the country and I wanted $20 cash. I ran out of my cash. I’ve been in the country for 14 days and the lady said, ‘No, I can’t give you cash to your room.’ I said, ‘Okay. Put it on my credit card.’ She said, ‘No, I can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Let me see your manager.’ So, the manager came down and I explained myself and she said, ‘Well, it’s our policy.’ I said, ‘Is that the first word you can throw at me?’ And I gave her a big spill about they couldn’t iron my shirt and so on. They can run a big fat casino but they can’t iron my shirt. And she said, ‘Well, it’s our policy.’ I said, ‘That’s twice you’ve said policy. There’s no point talking to you. Goodbye.’ That’s all people can talk about. You know, how about engaging a bit of the brain?

Male: Is this U2F that you referred to? Is this U2F that we’re talking about now?

Jonar Nader: Well, this is one of them. U2F stands for Undetectable and Untraceable Fraud. That’s another area that’s going to show us up, you know. Take for example, what’s undetectable and untraceable? At the moment, when you buy a car, the high-end cars have a key ring that comes with a key. The – when you click the button to open and close the door, an infrared signal is sent. Most of our mobile phones, most computers, and most hand-held devices can listen in on that signal. So, if I were a thief, which I could do any day tomorrow, hide behind a tree, wait for you to lock your car, go shopping, I come around from behind a tree. I’ve already heard the signal on my device, open your car and steal it. Steal your camera let’s say. Close the door. No fingerprints. No one heard the alarm go off. No sign of forced entry. Undetectable and untraceable fraud.

Now, you’re going to try and prove to your insurance company that somehow your camera was stolen.

Male: Yes, yes.

Jonar Nader: They’ll suspect you.

Male: How do we do it? The book you referred to, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People, will immediately ring bells with many viewers I know for another famous book that goes the other way around. Is this a deliberate attempt to gain publicity for your viewers, Jonar? Or is this your truly held belief? Is this the essence of what you’ve spend ideas writing about?

Jonar Nader: Right. Obviously, a book is judged by it’s cover and the title is important but I didn’t concoct the title because of the other famous title.

Male: Well, the essence of outcast too, isn’t it? The person who says, ‘I think that you will not persuade me in any other way. This is my belief.’ Often, the essence of the outcast.

Jonar Nader: Yes, you’ll find the visionaries in fact, are people who are often locked up. Pythagoras wasn’t allowed to have a mathematics club. Copernicus and others who said that the world was not flat were locked away and died in their cell. And anybody who looks to the future is often ridiculed and made – made fun of. And I was ridiculed on the backseat of the bus. And when I thought, ‘Oh, we’re now all adults, we’re wearing fancy suits.’ Now, I was ridiculed in the boardroom. Why? Because they were jelly back lily livered people who didn’t have an opinion of their own. And I’m saying, claim your lives. Stop letting people waste your life. If someone steals your camera or your watch, you’d get mad. But when they steal your time, thief of the highest order, we just make up for it by working later.

Male: It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Jonar. Thank you very much. Welcome to Canterbury Today.

Jonar Nader: Thank you.

Male: I love your book. This is it. A controversial book, How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. It’s not just what it’s about but if you want to know more about what this man is saying, you need to get this book.

That is Canterbury Today for this edition. I look forward to your company again same time tomorrow.

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Here is the transcript:

Male: Tonight, inside the digital revolution.

Female: We’re in the middle of a bigger change than the industrial revolution.

Male: As bits and bytes take over our lives, where is the information superhighway taking us?

Sandra Davey: It’s just an extra tool. It’s a means to an end and not an end of itself.

Male: Welcome to this special edition of the 7:30 Report. It seems hard to believe now but just a few years ago, the internet was virtually unknown and invisible to most Australians.

Jonar Nader: I have had corporations come to me and in particular, one I remember is the cereal company that came to me and said, ‘How can we now reach out target market if our target market is not watching as much television and they’re apparently on the net?’ And so, they are really concerned now how do we advertise on the net? But you know, the net is much more sophisticated than television because kids know when an ad is coming and they sensor it out and they can bypass it.

Male: Jonar Nader is a hacker turned corporate manager. Starting a couple of decades ago as a forum for scientific information sharing, the net is now whatever you want it to be.

Jonar Nader: Unfortunately, the internet will have to collapse before it rebuilds itself. Because what is happening now, it started out as a good device then it got into the hands of the marketing gurus who’ve convoluted it beyond recognition.

Male: Author, commentator, and IBM manager, Jonar Nader sees his role as dismantling a lot of media hype about the future of information technology.

Jonar Nader: The public in the future will start to use the net as a tool. Today, they’re not using it as a tool. They are using it as some sort of an exploratory device. They’re actually looking at the net as some trivial thing and – and they are actually wondering let me click here, let’s click there and see what there is. Well, that is an overuse and sometimes an abuse of the net. Pretty soon when they have faster machines, better software, faster processing, better modems, they will in fact be able to access the data they want but it will be on a needs basis not on an exploratory basis because basically, these kids will soon realize that playing a game of tennis or walking down the street is perhaps just as good and as much fun as plugging into the internet.

Sandra Davey: Where is it going in future? Well, I guess, maybe in a couple of years, it will be completely different to what we see now. I don’t know whether it will be combined with our television or our phone system or whether it will be just one big nice entertainment unit in the lounge room. As long as it’s black, I’ll be happy .

Male: The black box will be here next year, the converged screen we’ve all heard so much about.

Jonar Nader: Families for example are saying, ‘Isn’t it great to converge a TV with a computer?’ But is it really? After the Christmas unwrapping, what happens thereafter if a child wants to watch TV and the parents want to play videogames or vice versa, which is often the case? So, you’ll then say that ‘Gee, this convergence is a great idea but now, I need two of them in the house to solve the family problems.’

Male: While convergence may lead to more complex machines, another development is leading towards more simplicity. The so called network computer is just hitting the market.

Don Lowe: It’s more like an appliance than like a computer. That could look like a coffee pot or something. But in fact, it’s a new way of looking at computing. And what it does is takes complexity of the traditional computing and puts it back on to the network.

Jonar Nader: It’s unfortunate the way some marketing people tend to say, ‘Wipe the slate clean. Stop the world. We have a brand new product.’

Male: While Jonar Nader sees some advantages in the simplicity of the network computer, he says it could be seen as a return to the early days of computing.

Jonar Nader: In the olden days, we had mainframes. And the person in the mainframe room had full control of what went on because you only had what was called the dumb terminal. People then complained and said, ‘I actually want a smart terminal. I want a terminal with power in my fingertips.’ So, we had the PC. Now, we’re going back again to the network computer where the power resides again in some central location and then you will have another dumb or smart terminal, whatever you call it, it’s still the same thing. In fact, some people are calling it the clever terminal for trademark purposes.

Male: Wherever the technology is going, Sandra Davey is clear about one thing.

Sandra Davey: It’s not going to solve our problems. It’s not going to make politics more inherently democratic. It’s not going to enhance in any real way the way that we communicate. It’s just an extra tool. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Male: Ray Monahan.

Here is the transcript:

Female Speaker: The social observer, philosopher, author and lecturer, Jonar Nader has spent years studying people and their habits and he knows some tricks to surviving in the corporate jungle and he joins us now.

Jonar Nader: So I used to get up from a meeting and say, ‘Excuse me. I have an appointment with life. I am going, not putting up with this nonsense.’

Female Speaker: What? Are you nuts?

Jonar Nader: I almost got caught.

Jonar Nader: Because in the future, I can tell you, money will be linked to performance.

And what next? What will be the next big thing?

The idea about being a futurist is not that you’re this clairvoyant. My friend’s father was a clairvoyant and his mother was a contortionist and as a result, he could foresee his own end.

Jonar Nader: My father said to my mother, ‘You know, we have been married 36 years. And not once have we agreed on anything.’ She said, ‘Thirty-seven.’

Female Speaker: His new book Z is a fictional novel about the worst act of terrorism the world could ever see.

Jonar Nader: Even if I were the president of the world for 10 years, I still could not think of a way to generate peace. I finally did.

Half of the world is in conflict. Half of the world is at war. And I see it as a war on our destiny rather than a war on terror.

You must be forbidden from working anywhere, touching anything if you don’t know what it feels like, what it tastes like. You know, what’s on the menu? Chicken. What does it taste like? I don’t know. I just work here. Well, find me someone who doesn’t work here so I can find out.

Jonar Nader: In the future, companies who put us on hold will have to pay for our time.

And I think there should be two types of managers, the manager that says, ‘Any problem you have, come to me. I’ll fix it,’ or the manager who says, ‘Look, any problem you see, go fix it and I’ll back you up.’

Terminal.

Jonar Nader: They say the bottom line is the most important thing in companies. And I say no, no, no. Then they say, oh, hang on. You know, the triple bottom line is the most important thing. Oh, yes? What’s that? I say, the triple bottom line is you have to take care of profits, you have to take care of the environment and you have to take care of society. That’s called the triple bottom line. It’s being taught all over the MBAs at the moment. I say, that’s still useless. Talk to me about the triple top line. It’s your staff, your quality and your customers.

Teamwork is a lot of nonsense because it doesn’t work. What I want are teams that work.

See, I don’t think you can share energy or you can share power because the most you do, you’ll dissipate it. So, in essence, the function of power for me is to generate momentum. There is this notion of the perceived power. For example, people think that the queen is powerful or that a minister is powerful. What people do not realize is that in fact, it is the department that runs the minister, not the minister that runs the department.

Do you know how we say power corrupts? You know this notion. I don’t believe that power corrupts either. I think certainly corruption is powerful and that’s why people seem to steer away from power but in itself, it is better to have power than not.

Male Speaker: Jonar, you get the last word.

Female Speaker: Stick around, would you?

Jonar Nader: Yes, sure.

Female Speaker: Thank you.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is a digital age philosopher. For the past 22 years, he has maintained a dual career as an expert in both technology and management and presents to both kinds of audiences.

Jonar Nader: Are you actually delivering on your promise?

Female Speaker: For example, he was the opening speaker for the IT Summit and the CEO Summit. Sometimes, Jonar wears two hats at the same conference as he did for the Institute of Company Directors where he gave two keynotes, one about leadership and another about technology and the future.

Jonar Nader: So, is it good to always have a bit of dirt in the bottom drawer? On someone.

Male Speaker: How does it come down for you, Jonar Nader?

Jonar Nader: Well, I’m glad you’ve asked me this question now that I’m a consultant…

Jonar Nader: Because I’m making a lot more money now.

Jonar Nader: Whenever I see a bad employee, my first impression is, ‘Who is his boss?’ And so, I would like to know why that happened and spend my energy there because …

Male Speaker: Well, you were his boss…

Female Speaker: Whether he’s humorous or controversial, Jonar delivers tantalizing messages.

Male Speaker: The irrepressible Mr Jonar Nader.

Female Speaker: He’s known for his captivating after dinner speeches like the one he presented at the Australian Business Awards.

Jonar Nader: So, what’s going to be the most important thing for your business is your brand. And when I say brand, I don’t mean just only your logo or your brand awareness of brand image or brand building or brand recall or brand values. As important as they are, the single biggest important thing about brand is the brand bet. That means what the customer is prepared to bet on.

The issue is I know that we all know how to make a cake and we all have flour and we all have sugar and we all have eggs and we all have an oven and we probably have the ingredients sitting right now at home. But how many of us can actually make it? The process of knowing is not good enough.

Female Speaker: Around the world, tens of thousands of people have attended Jonar’s presentations. He’s popular with professionals in finance, law, science, technology, manufacturing and sales.

Jonar Nader: I don’t want to hear any more terms and conditions and conditions apply…

Most people don’t learn a new word after the age of 18. Their vocabulary stays the same thereafter. Most people don’t have a new dream beyond, you know, whatever they’ve been – now, that’s it, mate. You’re going to be a plumber the rest of your life.

I say to kids, don’t worry about what you are going to be when you grow up. How you’re going to live as you are living.

Female Speaker: Jonar Nader is the author of the best-selling book How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People. He has also written a book of modern wisdom called How to Lost Friends and Infuriate Thinkers.

Jonar Nader: If you stand up and rise and say, ‘Look boss, you know, I really don’t think this is the way we should be doing it,’ then others will get – gain energy from you because it usually just takes the minority to create something big.

Female Speaker: What’s your view on anger and what it does to us, our bodies and its purpose?

Jonar Nader: If anger happens, you stop and say, ‘This is great. The alarm bells have gone off. Now is the time to assess why.’ Not go down the pub and, you know, laugh it off but to say, ‘What triggered this? Because this is not the trigger that I will allow into my life.’

Customer service isn’t just about being nice to people. It’s about product knowledge, knowing your industry inside out, knowing everything about everything you can possibly know. If you don’t get out of the way because selling is as much a profession as nuclear physics.

Are you actually delivering on your promise? And if we do that, the rest will take care of itself.

Any executive who has a ticker tape of their stock price or to be sacked on the spot. Your job is not to check the stock price. It’s a check about Mrs. Smith the last time she paid you good money to buy her husband a nice something rather that just doesn’t work and when she calls to complain, you say, ‘Oh, wow. Well, 20 minutes on hold. Your call is important to us. And please bring it down. It might take two weeks to repair it. Theft!

Today on Wall Street, people are just running around for bottom line figures. And what are they doing? They’re really only cheating themselves because Wall Street is a joke and the sooner it blows up, the better.

So many corporations are failing today because there is a them and us attitude. We might think we’re making profits but they’re all manipulated. The real profit comes when people are actually satisfied, happy.

For me, success is not what you amass. It’s what you …

And if you hate your boss, do not treat your boss badly. If you don’t like what you are doing, all the more reason to do it better so that you can climb out.

You know, and who gets promoted in corporate life today? The backstabbers who know how to do it well enough.

Male Speaker:

Jonar Nader: You know, the creative people. Where do they end up?

If I put this on my head, people will go, ‘What’s this guy on television got this on his head for?’ Because the visible things, everyone is an expert at. They can see that’s wrong. But can they see that someone is a back stabber, a manipulator, a hound, a con artist? Can they? I don’t think executives and people in an office environment can see it.

Female Speaker: Jonar is also the author of the best-selling illustrated Dictionary of Computing and the technology writer for Butterworth’s Legal Dictionary and the Student’s Legal Dictionary. He also serves as an expert witness to the legal profession.

Jonar Nader: Unfortunately, the internet will have to collapse before it rebuilds itself.

Male Speaker: It will be exciting, real funny up here.

Male Speaker: That’s a must for everybody.

Male Speaker: Jonar C. Nader.

Male Speaker: Jonar: Stiff!

Female Speaker: Jonar’s last assignment as a corporate executive was at IBM where he led the consumer division in 18 countries. He’s the co-founder of both the Information Technology Society and The Leadership Foundation funded by McKinsey and Company and Qantas. Programs have been held at the Royal Military College and at the University of New South Wales. As a guest lecturer at tertiary institutions, he conducts his courses on technology, leadership, management, advertising, marketing and politics.

Jonar is a coach to high profile executives. He gives thousands of radio and TV interviews worldwide. His articles are published in some of the most respected business and IT publications. As a magazine editor and writer, he has worked for motor racing, art and fashion magazines and has held exclusive interviews with the likes of Stuart Devlin, jeweler to Her Majesty the Queen.

Jonar has interviewed the biggest names in art and design including Count Faber Castell and fashion gurus such as Jean Muir, designer to the late Princess Diana. He has interviewed many fashion giants including Count Zegna, Lagerfeld, Missoni, Kenzo and the late Gianni Versace.

Female Speaker: As the chairman of Logictivity, Jonar Nader guides CEOs and boards to engineer a successful future. To learn more, please visit Logictivity.com and find out how the world’s only post-tentative, virtual surrealist can rearrange your molecules.

Here is the transcript:

Jonar Nader: He said to me, ‘Do you think they will believe you?’ Because I’m about to tell you things that are disturbing and unbelivable. And he triggered a thought in my mind. So, at the very last – at 5AM yesterday morning, I got up early because I thought, ‘Oh, you’re not going to believe what I’m going to tell you,’ which is a plight of my life. So very quickly, I added this at 5AM yesterday morning just to share my track record with you.

You know how every male member sitting here delegate has a mobile phone? I could bet most of you do, 99% of you have mobile phone. Would you believe that this time next year, most of the male members would be wearing red lipstick and red nail polish?

Jonar Nader: Now, if I said that to you with all earnestness and I keep going for an hour like this, if I keep going for an hour like this, it’s going to get to the point of embarrassment where you wouldn’t give eye-contact with me. Now, I said that to you just to remind you of what it feels like to not believe somebody because they were the ridiculing sniggles that I received when I told people long before the Department of Justice had a case about Microsoft. I predicted some issues with Microsoft that it will have a downturn and they sniggered. Unbelievable it was, cookie they say. No wonder I’m still unemployed. Really, no one wants to know me.

Yet, only 18 months later, my cookie prediction came true and it was front page news that Microsoft lost $80 billion of it’s market capitalization. Cookie. I said the same of Intel. When Intel was riding the biggest rides ever. I published this and everything that I say and just said, it’s published. It’s on radio. We’ve got records and it’s in print and it’s in books. This disturbed the industry so much. I get letters threatening from all sorts of lawyers. My bosses overseas because I used to work at the likes of IBM, Compaq, and Acer, and my bosses overseas reprimanded me officially with a letter, my first ever letter which I now framed with pride but I cried about it back then. They said, ‘Don’t you dare open your mouth like that.’ I said, ‘Don’t you believe me?’ They said, ‘No. You are an embarrassment.’

And not 12 months later, the biggest NASDAQ drop ever, thanks to Intel, exactly what I predicted but they sniggered. A friend of mine owns several buildings. He and his family own many buildings in Sydney and elsewhere. They are mega, mega, mega rich. And he said to me, ‘You know a bit about telecommunications and technology, what do you think of Onetel?’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t touch them.’ He said, ‘Now, I know you’re really stupid.’ He said, ‘Packer is in on it. Murdoch is in on it. Look at the numbers. Look at this. Look at telecommunications. Look at that.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t touch them.’ You know Onetel, went in a blaze of glory. And the phone rang one day. I just pick up the disc as been normal, ‘Jonar, good afternoon.’ He said, ‘You bastard!’ Who could that be? It could be anybody because they all hate me anyway.

Jonar Nader: He said, ‘How did you know?’ For another time, I’ll tell you how I knew it. I was up at Coolum or something like that talking to the Institute of Company Directors and I was speaking about what will make rich and poor. We’ve got access rich and access poor, money rich and money poor, technology rich and technology poor, military rich and military poor. And I was talking about the absolute importance of the infrastructure rich and infrastructure poor. Couldn’t say it two years later, the head of the Business Council was on Channel 7 and all over the news having made the announcement two years that we must invest in infrastructure. To you now, it means nothing. But at the time, they sniggered as they did when I was talking about portals and then two years later, Mr. Murdoch himself, Mr. Murdoch himself Senior, made the same comments I had made two years prior.

I was talking about nanomation. Nano, not micro but nano. 10 to the power of minus 9. I was merely trying to explain that it’s not that we need infomation but we need nanomation. Meaning, we need to act now at the speed of thought and Bill Gates two years later wrote a book called Business at the Speed of Thought.

I stood up at another major conference where there were 750 of the most senior directors and I was speaking about the skills that managers will need in the future. Now, in the past, you had to understand manufacture and you had to understand the in sales and you had to understand finance. And then no manager could be a CEO of a company if you didn’t understand marketing. At first, marketing was nothing. Then you had to know it at the board level. Then you had to know IT. You cannot be a CEO today and not appreciate the impact of technology on you, your society and your business and your manufacturing process and whatever. Then you had to understand globalization. I was simply talking on an on. I said, ‘What’s the next thing we will have to teach execs and every exec and every CEO must know.’ And I said, ‘Risk!’ And this was over ten years ago. Everything up on that screen was over ten years ago.

And only last week, I was at the Qantas Club. I don’t read otherwise. I never read anything. And there it was. Boss Magazine from AFR, a feature on the new, not CFO or CEO but Chief Risk Officer and large organisations now have entire websites dedicated to risk and they understand now just how big this thing is. But isn’t it interesting? Ten years. Super. I called AMP ten years ago and I said, ‘Get my money out and put it in a bank.’ Now, they’re advising everyone, ‘put money in banks.’ I was cookie. And I had arguments with people.

My publisher – I’ve had many publishers including HarperCollins, and Penguin, the world’s largest, part of the Paramount Pictures Group and the Tri-Star Pictures Group and Pearson Education, the largest in the world. We had tiffs and battles and legal issues costing untold money because they wouldn’t publish a book of mine because they said, ‘It is woolly. It is unintelligent. It is ridiculous. It is ludicrous, Jonar. We cannot publish a book like this.’ I said, ‘Fine. You call it cookie.’ Two years later, exactly as I had predicted, WorldCom happened and prior to that, Enron happened precisely as I predicted. But all this cookie and woolly, lawyer to lawyer they say. And the greatest compliment I was ever paid was by Paramount Pictures in the US when they took my screenplay. And the greatest compliment I think Hollywood could ever pay anybody is they actually said, not that my screenplay was badly written or whatever. They said, ‘It is not plausible.’ You can have Lord of the Rings …

Jonar Nader: … with trees that walk and talk but mine was not plausible. Wow! So, I sent my story off to people including the former Chief of Defense in this country called Admiral Chris Barrie, MI-5 people, MI-6, KGB, CIA, FBI including the head of the FBI who headed the September 11 response team. And all around the world, military from British Intelligence and they all said, ‘This is so amazingly disturbing. It is so plausible. It is so scary. Not any of us had ever imagined such a scenario.’ But people don’t listen.

I went to the US and all over the TV stations. They couldn’t believe what I was saying. They were mesmerized by my Australian accent and then they thought, ‘This guy is looney.’ And I put out the picture of the Twin Towers long before whoever blew them up. And there they were, the pictures of Twin Towers and I was saying, ‘Wall Street will have to blow up and the sooner it blows up, the better,’ because I knew this was coming. Normally, they only want you for two minutes on television and we went on and on. And they said, ‘Can you stay? We’ll record another three sessions and play them next week? This is unbelievable.’ And here we are.

Jonar Nader: I’ll just leave it at that. I prefaced all that, it pains me to stand here and boast, the point being that you’re not going to believe what I’m going to tell you.