Eddie Obeng: Smart failure for a fast-changing world“This is what happened to us in the 21st century — someone changed the rules about how our world works,” says Obeng in this energetic talk. “The way to successfully run a business, an organization, even a country has been deleted. Flipped! There’s a completely new set of rules in operation … My simple idea is that the real 21st century around us isn’t so obvious to us, so instead we spend our time responding rationally to a world we understand but which no longer exists.”

In the past 40 years, the world’s population has doubled. Meanwhile, large tracts of people have settled in cities, and the Internet has greatly deepened the density of interaction among us. “The pace of change overtakes the pace of learning,” says Obeng. And yet, most institutions are horribly unprepared to handle rapid shifts. As Obeng explains, “You have to wait all the way for a cycle to fail before you can say, ‘There’s something wrong’ … We solve last year’s problems without thinking about the future.”

It is this challenge that inspired Obeng to found the virtual business school Pentacle. The school focuses on teaching people how to think and innovate in a world where change is the only constant. The key: what Obeng calls “smart failure.” In other words, rewarding those who trailblaze new approaches — even if they don’t work out — as opposed to those who trod along well-worn paths.

To hear more about Obeng’s philosophy, watch his fascinating talk. (Or see several of Obeng’s lessons on Pentacle’s YouTube channel.) Below, take a look at seven other TED speakers who founded schools with bold ideas for how to better prepare individuals for our ever-shifting world.

Gever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkeringGever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkering Gever Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School, where students are given the materials, tools and guidance to let their creativity run wild. In this talk from TED2009, Tulley shows photos of students building unique boats, bridges and roller coasters in a curriculum that stresses the ability to make things.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the CloudSugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud At TED2013, education innovator Sugata Mitra accepted the TED Prize, offering up the idea for a School in the Cloud. A learning lab in India where kids are free to explore big questions on their own online, the school won’t have teachers in a traditional sense. Instead, it will use “the granny cloud,” a network of retired teachers who will cheer learners on.

Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a timeShukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time Two million people in Bangalore live in slums, and the majority of children there will never attend school. In this talk from TEDIndia in 2009, Shukla Bose describes her impetus for founding the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit that runs four schools for poor children, giving them chances they might never had had without an education.

John Hardy: My green school dreamJohn Hardy: My green school dream In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, John Hardy jokes that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth ruined his life. The documentary inspired him to start the Green School in Bali. While the main school building is open-air and built from bamboo, the curriculum teaches students to build, garden and create.

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movementBunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement Bunker Roy attended a college that was expensive — and elitist. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, Roy describes how spending time in an Indian village, where poverty was rampant, changed the course of his life and led him to found Barefoot College. Unlike a traditional school, Barefoot College is only for the poor, and teaches rural men and women to tap into their innate intelligence and become engineers, doctors or artisans.

Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio SchoolGeoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School Far too many teenagers are bored with school. And when they finally receive their diploma, employers complain that students often aren’t prepared for success in the workplace. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, social innovator Geoff Mulgan describes a new approach — The Studio School — which focuses on developing student’s creativity by having them work on practical projects rather than simply listening to lectures.

Kakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded schoolKakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded school Kakenya Ntaiya runs a very unusual school in her Maasai village — a school for girls. In this powerful talk from TEDxMidAtlantic, she shares how she started the school. It not only involved making a deal with her father to go through the ritual of female circumcision in order to continue to high school, but then appealing to her village elders to get their approval to go to college.

This post was originally written in October of 2012, to accompany Eddie Obeng’s talk from TEDGlobal 2012. It was updated in May of 2013 for TED’s Education Week, in the lead up to TED Talks Education.

Eddie Obeng runs Pentacle, an online business school where he teaches “new world management.” He also has more energy than seems quite feasible in one human being. Soon after his arrival onstage, it’s clear why he won the unofficial award in rehearsals for “most words per minute.” Hold tight. This is quite a trip.

Obeng starts off by giving the audience a test, asking them to look at an onscreen image and tell us which line is longer. “It’s the same!” everyone dutifully replies, harking back to school tricks of old. “No! They’re not the same!” Obeng splutters excitedly in reply. He changed the rules, and he did it to demonstrate what’s been going on all around us. “It happened at midnight while we were asleep. They switched all the rules around. The way to run a business or country has been flipped. You missed this one?”

The problem with this change in the rules is that we all still behave according to the same old rules. “We respond rationally to a world we understand and recognize, but which no longer exists.” The audience laughs, a little nervously.

Obeng brings up companies that make their executives draw up planning forecasts and budgets — which are obsolete before they’re even published. We’re meant to be good at making things happen, he says. But if you were to describe a product launch in terms of a family of five going on vacation from London to Hong Kong on a budget of £3,000, the outcome wouldn’t be pretty. “The family ends up in Sulawesi having spent £4,000 and having lost two of the kids.”

The thing is, even eminent economists get this wrong. Obeng cites Tim Brown of IDEO, who has argued of late for the importance of “big” design. Why, Obeng wonders, was design ever small? “Why did we ever build these hierarchies? What’s going on?” The fact is, we haven’t noticed that the world has changed exponentially. Technology and other many forces have shifted our worlds and lives dramatically. “You are sitting at the headwaters of a global corporation if you’re connected to the Internet,” he says. “Every time you tweet, a third of your followers follow from a country that’s not your own. Global is the new scale. People think this is a metaphor but it’s a reality.”

Yes, of course it’s possible that we might learn to deal with this change. But there’s another problem: we still expect that there is one right answer. And that’s not the case. The turgid rate of change within corporations means learning is flat. The pace of change has overtaken the pace of learning. “We solve last year’s problems without thinking about the future,” says Obeng, who is speaking so quickly the audience doesn’t quite know whether to laugh or shush others so they can make sure they don’t miss a word. “If you haven’t understood the world you’re living in, it’s impossible to think that the solution you’re coming up with fits.”

Back to CEOs and their relentless requests for innovation. “Take risks and be creative!” they exhort, while their workers promptly hear “Do creative things and then I’ll fire you!” Our attitude toward failure and doing things differently needs to be transformed. “If you do something no one has ever done before and it fails, how should you be treated? To free pizzas!” he says.

Obeng closes by telling us he gave up his safe teaching job to set up Pentacle in order to preach this message to as many people as he can reach. (“And I haven’t lost my house yet.”) He concludes: “Next time you’re making your absolutely sensible and rational decision, wonder if this still makes sense in our world after midnight.” Big cheers, perhaps for the fact that he said more words in 12 minutes than most people utter in a day.

Plus:

Been asked a hundred times about my magic pen - its a papershow papershow.com/en/

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Eddie Obeng (@EddieObeng) June 26, 2012

Photo: Ryan Lash