THE GEICO GECKO GOES TO THE WIRED BUSINESS CONFERENCE
While I’m quite a big fan of the classic, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance,” the “Disrupt or be Disrupted” rallying call for the fourth annual WIRED Business Conference caught my eye (ear?). This year’s event, called Disruptive By Design, happened on May 1st in downtown Manhattan—and I was there for my latest assignment as a WIRED Insider. By now, I’ve started to get the hang of this gig, so I was ready to keep up with the one-day symposium of super smart people (but, don’t get me wrong, I also needed a significant amount of coffee and tea).
This year, the speakers were hand-selected for their belief in the power of creativity to make lasting changes across industries. To me, it seemed fitting then that Yancey Strickler, the cofounder of Kickstarter, was among the first panelists to get the day going—especially since Kickstarter has spearheaded a platform where nearly anyone can launch a groundbreaking concept or product. Entire industries have seemingly changed overnight—everything from games to literature. In fact, I just helped some lovely gents with their mobile game Kickstarter for Saturday Morning RPG.
Speaking of innovation, one of the biggest highlights was being in the same room as James Dyson. Starting in 1983, Dyson pioneered a bagless vacuum system called the G-Force so potentially disruptive that no distributor in the U.K. would touch it. Rather than give up, Dyson took his concept to Japan and launched his company through catalogue sales. Now just imagine if he had had access to Kickstarter.
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