, 5 min read
Dean Kamen at Bates College Commencement 2007
Very inspirational and motivating speech held by Dean Kamen:
I'm playing this game under protest. I didn't know that I have to speak after two people who are world-renowned for their ability to communicate. That's not my thing.
I also think they were very gracious and were offering you advice. I'm much too selfish for that, and I think I have some urgent needs, so I'm not here to give advice. I'm here recruiting. I'm looking for help.
My little companies—I need help, and some of you might want to be there. And I'm recruiting on behalf of about six point three billion people. So let me make a couple of observations, because I'm sure some of you—woe is you—think you need sympathy. You got student loans and all sorts of stuff to pay off. So, a little perspective on the world as I see it: just pick up any newspaper. The polar caps are melting.
There's terrorism everywhere. We're running out of fuel, we're running out of air, we're running out of water. The population's gonna be nine billion people by the time you're in your mid-career. It's one depressing fact after another. Add to that that a billion people on this planet live on less than a dollar a day. Four billion people—that's two-thirds of humanity—live on less than $2 a day. So, for those of you that are looking for sympathy, not here, I think that the students all over the world better lucky enough to get an education or to keep those facts in mind and just keep asking yourself the same question: if the world's got all these problems, and we seem to be in a rush towards creating new ones, and we all believe that we want them solved, who's gonna solve them? The people—that four billion of them—that I get up every day with a problem like, can I find water that won't kill me or my kids, my babies?
Who's gonna solve them? The people that wonder whether there'll be food around? The 1.6 billion people that have never used electricity? I think there is a huge disproportionate capability among people on this planet to solve problems. We certainly can't expect most of the people that don't have the resources to be the ones that supply the solutions. That makes you a very small minority. I've heard different definitions of minority, but educated people that understand the laws of nature, the rules of engineering, or the laws of man—of economics and finance, politics and democracy—are an incredibly small minority of this planet. They have a huge advantage in the leverage they have, in the control they have over the world environment, the physical environment, the political environment. And you don't have to be a historian to note that most of the time that leverage is used to help the rich get richer. You can all think about how your education is gonna enrich you. I think you also ought to remember that if you're gonna solve all the problems that we're facing in this world, it's unlikely that the people and ideas that got us to where we are are either the people or ideas that are gonna get us to a different place. It's gonna require new people with new ideas.
[Applause]
And that would be you. And I think one of the new ideas, by the way, if I sound pessimistic, that couldn't be further from the truth. I am more optimistic now than I've ever been in my life because the power of technology allows us, like through the internet and through satellites, to get ideas instantly anywhere in the world. The bad ideas will get there too, but the good ideas can move instantly, resources can move instantly. I'm a tiny, tiny little company. I have two villages in Bangladesh that I'm electrifying with boxes the size of this podium. They've been running for 24 weeks on nothing but cow dung. I have a village in Honduras that we're supplying absolutely pure water to with a box the size of this supplies enough water for a hundred people. Yeah, I have a day job, and we make stuff for people that can pay for it today. But the idea that the world is moving to a place where I think really good ideas are not only going to be welcomed, but with some urgency, the world is really ready for change, makes me enormously optimistic. And the idea that we're moving from a world of stuff—you know, there's a finite amount of gold out there, there's a finite amount of almost anything out there, and throughout all the history people fought over it, first land, fuel, stuff—but in your generation, the most value that will be created isn't stuff anymore.
It really is ideas. You know, the Internet is an abstraction. You know, the value of Google exceeds the value of all the carmakers. In a world that's about ideas, it's not a zero-sum game. You don't have to win by somebody else losing. When you have the gold and or the oil or the water, somebody else doesn't. In a world of ideas, you all create and share those ideas, and everybody has more ideas in the end, whether it's a cure for cancer or a way to make water drinkable or a way to make energy that's non-polluting. And whether you like it or not, you are moving for the first time into a world where ideas matter more than all the stuff there is. But those ideas have to come from educated people, and they have to be used as a tool and not a weapon.
And that's the biggest change that's happening, because I think we're also facing a world where finally people are realizing we're all going to succeed together because the leadership of the educated will help the rest in this world where it's not a zero-sum game, where four billion more people creating new ideas will make us all richer, not compete with us to make us all poor. But in a world where ideas matter, where the educated people can lead and help and be cheerleaders for everybody else instead of competitors, the rate of change for the positive could exceed anything you can imagine. The alternative to that is something that's unimaginable. So I would beg every educated person in this world to remember every day when you get up, you're an incredibly small minority of all of humanity, and with all the privileges that I understand it gives us, I think it gives us an enormous responsibility to be leaders that do the right things for the right reasons and remember that you can be doing good while you're doing well. You'll all go out and get good jobs, but you'll make your living by what you do in those jobs. You'll make your life by what you give.
Have a good life.