Morning. I'm Praveen. The first question I wanted to ask you, if you were to give me a sense of where you guys are coming from in terms of technology, design, creative, which aspects of this world do you belong to? How many of you guys are technologists? Okay, so this makes sense. Okay, design. One, yes! Two, three, four. Fantastic. Which aspect of design? Okay, not visual. Not visual design. It sounds fantastic. Perfect. So I just wanted to get a sense of how I could cater the lecture or the conversation. It should be a conversation more than the lecture so we can get the most out of this, right? So my name is Praveen Vajpay and quickly I wanted to run a quick background about who I am, where I come from and then we could take it from there. I was born and raised in Calcutta many, many years ago as you can tell by my hair and I grew up going to a very interesting Jesuit school called Saint Xavier's. I don't know how many, usually wherever I go I find some products from the school here. There. I started my career interestingly enough in my father's printing press. He had a small printing press and I started working there in high school. There I was introduced to the Apple Mac and once I started playing with the Apple Mac in the late 90's I fell in love and before I knew it, I started doing things that were referred to, at that point in time was design, right? Design branding and other things. So I started creating for friends and then slowly word spread as to what we were doing and then beyond the friend circle and organizations started getting back to us including things like Tata and IBC way, way back, right? So we were, so me and our business partner of ours, we would take any aspect of design and turn it inside out, right? So how many of you have done well and speak this morning? You did, right? So what do you say that was really interesting? Backwards, right? So that's exactly what we were doing not knowing, so that's an interesting thing if you were doing this 25 years ago you did not know what the language was you did not know the language of design thinking but that's a lot of us have been doing that overtime we just don't call it that, right? So from there in the late 90's having built up a very successful business I got completely bored out of my mind and she'd take a sabbatical for two years each so that was the arrangement we had so I'd go away for two years do whatever I wanted to do and she'd go away after I came back so I went off to Parsons School of Design in New York City to do design and technology that was fun, it was great loved it, loved it, loved it and so my family was here my wife and kids were here and I'd keep coming back I don't know what keeps happening here by the way so I'd keep coming back every few months and then I'd go back so having graduated I decided let me spend three months to understand how the American mind works in the business world right, it's very different from us very different from us so I said that's one thing I need to get to the bottom of how to understand how they work how do they think, so decided to do that for three months and I joined a startup I joined a small startup which was an education startup, I walked in they designed skills and sensibilities took me back to the 80s they were at least 10 to 15 years behind where we were it was terrible and that was a great opportunity so I initially said I'm going to last year a week I'm going to leave them after a week but then there's a social aspect to the work the problems were very very hairy, very difficult to solve and that once you get hooked to education becomes much harder to get out of it once you understand that this aspect of the design and the work we do is difficult to get out and now it's 2018 and I'm still working in education so those three months have stretched I stayed a little longer and then a little longer and now I live there right, really interesting so my home is now in New York City it's great it's insane so but if you ever move from India to New York people say you have some kind of a culture shock, you won't from Calcutta Menemen there Calcutta that is as chaotic, New York is just as crazy so it works very well don't, please do not think it's any different there may be language issues accent issues, people issues it's the same shit that we have here so it's great but here we have to talk about innovation today and you're hearing a lot about that in the course of the morning it is really cool to be innovative everyone wants to be innovative it's sexy right, I mean the way we talk about it it's like, it's transformative it's everybody's business it's everybody's talking about and you know, I mean I've spoken to friends both here at the overseas and I've been asking them like would you really want to be an innovative business wouldn't you want to be the top 10 and so I went out to search which ones would be considered the top 10 innovative business in the world so it was really interesting different organizations have different ways of looking at it why I love the first, because they get these two you've got Hindustan hey, you get the deck, don't worry about it I'll give you the deck, so you can have that Hindustan leave an Asian pains would you pause to think that those two were innovative right, but Forbes claims that so it's not just so what is stopping us from unleashing our potential right why can't we just pour lots and lots of dollars into research and development bring some cool ideas and bring those ideas to life it's not quite that simple right, much as we like to think it is simple it's not and Steve Jobs, how many of you guys are big fans yeah, great, awesome so innovation has nothing to do with how many research and development dollars you have when Apple came up with the Mac IBM was spending at least 100 times more on research and development it's not about money, it's about the people you have how you're led and how much you get right, the it is the differentiator, what is the it is the qualifier, that makes it very interesting and in India how many of you heard of Jogar right, I love it, I mean Jogar as a principle is so damn cool so it's a word taken from Hindi which captures the meaning of finding a low cost solution to a very interesting problem of thinking constructively and differently about innovation and strategy again, as I said, we've been doing this it's just called innovation now right, so this stuff has been happening here for a long period of time and the BRIC countries there is, people know how to stretch their money a little and then a little more right Jogar means thinking in a frugal way and being really flexible which in turns requires the innovator or entrepreneur to adapt quickly to often unforeseen circumstances intelligence in this context isn't about seeking sophistication or perfection by over engineering the solution, it's about getting shit done which is really interesting right, and this is my favorite right, it is just, it's so simple right, I mean that's what I think the key to us thinking about things is how do you find simple problems to very complex thinking so now, this one is interesting by the way innovation the term, when you search for the term there are 677 million results that come back on Google, 677 so quite evidently there's a lack of appreciation or understanding what innovation is then the next port of call for me was Amazon sorry, I don't know why this keeps happening we'll have to just excuse this puppy Amazon where I had 70,000 books that would return to my search query that's a lot I've read about a couple of books 70,000 books is a bit much so there's a lot out there and trying to figure out what innovation really is becomes very very interesting I just pulled out some definitions and the way I think about it they were literally hundreds and hundreds of those and they are websites they just talk about innovation in terms of what they do is collect terms and phrases from leading entrepreneurs and they publish them in their website that's not really helpful because you don't have a context as to what they're talking about but here it's interesting innovation is the profitable implementation of ideas I'll go deeper into this in a moment and what I like it, it is an operating system that values customers over bosses repeat the after me customers over bosses which should be interesting collective intelligence over individual experts shared understanding over top down direction simple rules over bureaucratic procedures and transparency over control so it's a different way of looking at an organization this is something all of us want and it's not that easy and as was mentioned earlier this morning it is a cultural change that you're looking for and without that it becomes a little harder and there are some terms we often confuse with one another right it's innovation and invention innovation versus creativity innovations versus science the ones that people get very confused usually is innovation versus invention why aren't they the same fairly often an invention may be absolutely stroke of brilliance but may not have marketable value just then so when it becomes a product it becomes marketable it becomes valuable then it's considered innovation so it's a nuance more than anything else but it's interesting to think about that so creativity is coming up with ideas innovation is bringing those ideas to life that means implementing them making them real and science is a conversion of money into knowledge what does that mean you usually pour a lot of money into research and then you have something bold and innovation is a conversion again of knowledge into money all these ideas it's not something that you have to remember it's just a commonsensical approach to think about these things telling folks that we're going to have a creative process really means we're going to come up with some of that shit that really works basically whenever we talk about that if you are designing something that doesn't necessarily work in the market that doesn't make sense but design has to be marketable by the way can you guys sit in the corner and see this do you want to move closer you're good so innovation has transformed the world this data threw me off completely in 1850 almost all of the world's 1 billion people lived in extreme poverty right it's difficult to imagine because we had the British Raj here but we want and by 1950 75% of the 2.5 billion people remained in extreme poverty living at $1.9 or less a day in 2015 and in 2015 less than 7% of the 7 billion population it lives in extreme poverty from my perspective I found that information really fantastic and to know that almost 60% of Americans spend about 50 bucks a day right why is it important in the world today survival survival is important right for companies to survive innovation is extremely important survival in a world of accelerated change versus incremental changes it improves the standard of living as we saw in the previous slide it creates growth, increases productivity economic wealth reduces waste and environmental damage there are many nuances to this innovation is vital in the workplace because it gives companies an edge in penetrating markets faster and provides a better connection to developing markets which can lead to bigger opportunities especially in rich countries how many of you guys have heard about this club this is really fancy give me what do you know about it it is it is the unicorn club is an esoteric community a small community of companies or startups give me strength it's a fictitious club actually these are disruptive startups that reach a valuation of 1 billion before they go public so these guys are valued at 1 billion before they go public and a bunch of Indian companies have been part of that this club has been growing a little right so in the past only a few startups managed to reach that milestone but now the club is not as exclusive as it was there were 185 unicorns by the 31st of January 2017 and the numbers keep increasing you can look at the acceleration over time it started in 2009 and look at this it doesn't by the way it doesn't mean that they stick there a whole bunch of them fall off right they you know some of them just implode they don't do very well the rise of the unicorns has implications for analog organizations analog enterprises need to reassess and remodel every aspect of the business if you want to successfully compete for the attention of business I mean digital natives it's how the digital native is a new generation of millennials and others who use technology as a prosthetic all of us do a prosthetic is an extension of ourselves right like I mean this guy it is my prosthetic I don't really like very often I have a hard time remembering the numbers of my children phone numbers I don't need to anymore because this guy has it all so that's my mental prosthetic right it's an extension of my brain or my schedules I maintain there and hell I can't remember all that anymore so we have all learned to do it that way but the kids who are growing up in this world right they have a very different attitude towards technology from us and they have to keep that in mind in very many different aspects we talk about education in a minute because that's the college board I'll talk about that in a moment is an education company and what do we do I'll talk about that also in a moment right over the past few years technology startups have been steaming ahead really fast and one because they're lighter in the feet they can make decisions they can move faster bigger companies have a much harder time moving ahead in that direction right and 14 fine words this is a very simple but very interesting narrative here a quick quiz what did these companies have in common group A, group B, groups A anybody it's fairly simple we're all 4500 companies the first lot they exist in 1955 not in 2014 the second lot existed both in 55 2014 and the third did not exist right in 55 but they exist now hi, look what we have here right and what is also interesting is the lifespan Helen you also alluded to that earlier today the lifespan of these companies is just kind of collapsing at the current pace by 2027 75% of the S&P 500 companies will not be in the index right so where does innovation start and who's the primary catalyst for this who's the primary catalyst for innovation any guesses sorry you basically and you are a customer too right it's all of us a catalyst for change because there are so many reasons so is the consumer from my perspective is the educator, is the student is the human who refuse to accept the status quo right who refuse to accept compromise and basically the person who goes around life treating it like the rubik's cube of life keeps moving things around thinking about things in a different way these are the guys who don't constantly question everything right and they will not accept anything mediocre from anybody else which makes it really interesting it is your appetite for change that is driving innovation because you do not accept what's out there if you look around right I mean every day you hear of something new you hear of drone technology that amazon is using drone technology is using other things but let's just talk in terms of amazon it's safer and it's going about delivering packages through drones it hasn't happened here but they are experimenting with the US and other parts of the world really interesting right why did they do that it's easier and the rate of acceleration and innovation those are the changes that are going to continue to happen right things that we feel unimaginable today will take shape tomorrow we can talk about that innovation is often very widely regarded as the key to the future almost everyone wants to promote it this is going to make me weep you know that so why must we innovate beyond the sheer joy of being cool why should we innovate what's out there this guy the reasonable man adapts himself to the world the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself progress depends on the unreasonable man it's a very very interesting quote so what that basically implies those who accept the status quo can go on it's fine for them and for innovation to happen it's usually when we it's the Jougar technology there's something that's not working for me how do I fix that instead of driving myself and other people crazy it's the things that people do how do I do that and when we do a quick fix like in the use of a bottle with the fountain but if you were to scale that if you were to make a product and take it to the market that becomes innovation otherwise it's still Jougar you're doing something for yourself so at the center as we all accept a customer because without somebody to consume the innovation we have nothing to do it just gets created it has no monetary value and how do you keep these guys engaged in a world where our attention spans are shrinking dramatically do you know that from from 2000 to now our attention span don't you like the graphic I've designed from 2000 to now it's gone down by full seconds so in 2000 it was 12 seconds less than 8 and that is less than a goldfish less than a wild fly and that makes me sad at least I want to be superior to a horse in that respect but why is this happening why is this happening it is because of the nature of addictive technology somebody asked you the question about social media it was a very interesting question and I have a very radical thought about that I just said chuck it don't engage in it really don't engage in it there's a beautiful book I'd recommend to everybody it's called Deep Work it's a brilliant book and there he basically posits why social media affects you in a damaging manner and how people who are extremely successful can make certain choices on how they interact with social media the biggest problem we have constantly is the interruption is the feeling of has my image been liked how someone responded and it's mostly inconsequential nonsense that most of us don't need I don't use it very often I don't use it very often because it just causes me a lot of anxiety when we live in the US of A there are a couple of topics that are very high one is the president and that's enough to aggravate anyone so we try not to go into social media because all my friends are liberals like me and they all have the same kind of opinions and every time I read that it just kind of spirals out so it's for self preservation and the notion of deep work is if you carve time for yourself every few you know in the course of a day you define time like I'm going to spend 4 hours in deep work then I'll go back to checking social media it's a very effective strategy the name of the author is Gal Newport he's about 34-35 brilliant man he's a professor at the university but I highly recommend deep work it's a nice twisted way of looking at life and say that makes sense and some of the biggest authors, writers people that we know and read they choose not to engage in that it's fascinating they don't use twitter because they don't see the amount of time they put in twitter what are why they get what is the return investment so choose not to be there what is also interesting there's a strong symbiotic relationship between innovation and consumers so what I mean by that innovation helps create more goods and services for the consumer consumers expectations keep rising we want more and more and more the attention span of these products and services that don't offer go down faster it's come down to about 6 months now and that's because consumers have choices it's a buyers market, it's not a sellers market it's not that we don't have choices I mean this is just some of the things that I pulled behind you the attention grabbers it's a buyers market you can make choices because they're more than one choice you can make at any point in time so the rate of obsolescence is going through the roof can I ask you a simple question as I said this is going to be the death of me can I ask you a simple question if you don't like a particular application that you downloaded from the web on your phone or otherwise how long do you maintain it yes we delete it because our expectations of technology are that technology has to work in ways we want it to that's the mental model we talk about mental model is accepting the fact that this is going to work in the way I want it to because the biggest thing that we hate is feeling stupid technology makes us feel stupid we're like screw that I don't need to feel like an ass I don't need that shit so we delete it it's done it's really interesting how we are changing and our behavior and our galloping ADD our galloping ADD is causing huge changes in the market really interesting so innovation in the digital age era is not just about adopting new technologies it's also about embracing a culture of innovation encouraging collaboration and restaking and tapping into digital ecosystems to achieve results well beyond the scope of individuals I don't know how many have you been thinking about this this is something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about there's something extremely democratic about innovation what I mean by that if you go back a decade or decade and a half maybe two decades right what happened we had the internet what did the internet do to us most of us small organizations could start competing very large organizations so the investment was not that much initially they were just websites so websites was fine because it was sharing information and you could have a shopping cart and you could make a little money then as it became more complex you had algorithms and you accelerate over time now you have artificial intelligence so bigger organizations can invest that much more money it becomes harder for the smaller organizations to thrive in that economy but now what's happening a lot of this work we can use Amazon cloud for right hyper connectivity and cloud competing is again leveling the playing field really interesting if you spend some time just thinking about how is it getting leveled it is because now you can access all the back end systems that you could not build yourself or invest in to give an illustration last year before last I'll come back to that when I talk about the college board one of the things we deliver administer tests so there's a test called the PSAT we administer 7 millions of those different tests very often we have to go through dense data to pull out information right and there was one such opportunity that we had to buy some servers and those would have cost us tens of thousands of dollars someone at IT said hey why don't you try this on the cloud guess how much it cost us for there were tens of thousands of dollars vis-a-vis Amazon cloud $126 $126 that's crazy but that's the way it is it's leveling the playing field in different ways who cares about the back end anymore this kid doesn't not do his parents his family nobody cares I don't care how you're building whatever's inside this I honestly don't give a damn anymore all I need to know is it going to function the way I want it to and that makes it that much more interesting we all users want to know how can I use this technology to meet my needs that's all I'm interested in anymore nothing beyond that and what is my goal and how do I meet my goals at the bottom of it at the core of it all it is about experiences appeal to customers reason and they yours for a day appeal to the emotions and they yours for a lifetime in other words emotions do matter a lot very often we do not understand that and they never be designed we have to think about designing for emotion because the connection is the emotional relationship we build with the clients with the customers even after what we consider logical reasoning requires emotion not surprisingly then a wealth of research reveals that the emotional component of customer experiences how customers feel is better predictor of loyalty than cognitive component functional aspects like is it effective is it easy if we meet the emotional needs we build a connection and the connection stays for a long period of time it's a I don't know if there was a sound in that a brand is beyond the technology that is used to create these products and services beyond that right so here I want to talk a little bit about brand as an experience often we think of brands as visual systems easy to identify a particular organization that notion has changed a lot so this this slide pardon that this slide is basically my team at the college board is called brand experience because I believe a brand is an experience it's not an artifact it's not a logo it's a lot more than that it's a connection that you build with your users so it was fairly radical for my organization to accept this and go who's this guy why does he want to call this that and I said no let me work with you let me help you understand why I believe that's how because we were going through a big branding exercise that inherited when I got there and it was really interesting so as Jeff Bezos puts it a brand is what other people say about you when you're not there right so there's there's a Yin and Yang to a brand by the way people get both confused also there is culture and there's brand right culture is internal facing brand is external facing and you have to somehow match those two and unify them because all of us, whichever organization we work in whatever it be it our business somebody else's business, we are ambassador drawers of that business right when you're talking to other people that's a reflection of the organizational culture if you bitch about the company oh you know my boss made this and that that's also a reflection of the culture so how do you put your best foot forward and present yourself to the world it's a very interesting thing so a brand is experiences experienced experiences create emotional relationships a good experience makes one happy and a bad experience frustrates a person right that's why we keep deleting the apps that we don't want because it's frustrating and so it's important for us to start thinking of experiences beyond identity don't just think about how to make it visually pretty think about how business is going to work because fairly often there's another thing that you need to keep in mind for the technologists in the room right so when you build an app much of it the branding aspects of it are not necessarily visible as you're interacting with it right how it works is a crucial import and that's where the innovation lies how does it work how is it meeting my needs right so this is another one this is a slide that helped me impress my manager make him understand what I meant so this intrinsic relationship between brand and emotion so emotion is what drives loyalty and loyalty drives business right that's branding 101 basically but how do what is the underlying principle what do we use to innovate in the world today technology a technology ski and fundamental to innovation digitization is shifting the vast majority of our everyday processing into the virtual arena right just a few years ago we faced many constraints on how far our digital technology could go today with the foundation of hyper-connectivity right and cloud computing there have been huge breakthroughs they have augmented reality we have speech and image recognition we have connected services and artificial intelligence by the way how many of you have heard of the Babel headphones this is something that Google is trying out you heard of them so these are headphones by the way this is innovation for 2018 watch out so these are these are headphones that translate even so if you could speak in language that I do not know it would translate on the fly and when I speak to you in the language so if I am speaking to you in Hindi or Bengali and you do not know either and so you could immediately translate the language of your choice it is fantastic and so what is great about that do you see how it is going to normalize the world what social impact these things can have it is fantastic I love it so hundreds of startups are exploring these different ideas different thoughts and if you sit back on your haunches even for a minute they will have your lunch because that is what they do they are really good at that because they are small, they are frisky they are light on the feet and they keep making changes so there are some of these guys that are important technologies that all of us are aware of and that are happening today so here we are this is what I was alluding to the top 10 technologies for 2018 3D printing metal printing maybe so cool I have tried 3D printing and other non-metallic printing is really great artificial embryos and they are from stem cells alone this is great for science this is great for genomes sensing cities so this is something that has been tried out by alphabet Google's they are trying it out in Toronto it is still going to take a few years for it to mature this is so on and on take a deep breath cloud-based AI about the fish earbuds is what I spoke about one big one is this one is really important perfecting online privacy that guy is really important because it is something that we constantly worry about within my organization we work with secure student data and these hackers all over the bloody place they drive us crazy right so how do we build an innovation driven culture because unless innovation is part of our DNA it will be a struggle it will be something external to us not internal out so it becomes a question as so how do we think about it one can build an innovation driven organization in 5 steps I am going to really make it simple for everybody in 5 steps it is optimistic but let's give it a shot but basically it is about at the core it is about the culture of the organization what does that necessarily mean so how do we think about culture how do you create a psychological space for innovation an atmosphere where creativity is welcomed it is nurtured it is nourished it is actively engaged in so where you have the license to feel like you can deliver an idea and no one is going to say what the hell are you talking about where you accept it this is another question that was asked how do you build that culture how do you build a growth mindset so that is another book I am going to recommend it is a woman called Carol Dweck it is a good book for parents particularly she has written this book called growth mindset can I take away for a second so the growth mindset the experiment was with kids very small children the idea was there were some kids who were brought to believe they were really intelligent so the parents were oh you are such a bright child you are intelligent, I love you, you are beautiful etc and the other kids were just normal kids like some of us and whose parents were like ok go play do what you will so these experiments were conducted with these kids and the kids so the experiment was they were brought into a room so the kids who were really smart academically did really well in school so they they kept playing with these puzzles one, two, three, four and after that as the puzzles became harder they paused it took them longer and at some point in time by the six puzzles when they knew they could not get it they just stopped working they got frustrated with themselves they got frustrated with the person who was administering this whereas the kids they just kept jumping through it they did not get 7 they didn't give a damn they just went on to 8, 9, 10 that's the growth mindset the growth mindset is they do not accept limitations that other people have defined for you but the kids whose parents told them they are so intelligent so that was definitely that they were defined I have to be intelligent now if I get this wrong I am not that intelligent so the puzzle is wrong not me the puzzle maker he is broken it somehow the other so it's a very the book gives you very interesting tools to think about that for yourself because very often what happens we have these negative voices in our own heads that come up and play this game with us you can't do this because X, Y and Z you know what I mean so it's well worth it it's a good book to read so try and build a growth mindset and find rule breakers those who question the status quo and break rules constantly break rules those who are not too good at following directions intend to find shortcuts and use the product in unintended ways so using products in unintended ways is basically it's a gap analysis it shows you what is missing in the product that the person has to find a different way to deal with it when I several years ago I was working at another education company in that education company the only way I used to understand how a teacher is using the products was to go to a teacher who had been using their product for 3 years and I used to ask her for a printed book and all the post-its on the book so the post-its on the book were her way of filling in the gap that we hadn't given her so veteran teachers so this is just to think how's the product functioning how do I want it to function then I will figure out a way to make it work for me and those are the post-its so I take these books take them for 5 or 6 teachers in the next product because fairly often when you bring them together to ask them is it working yes it is working they'll say yes to you but when you go into the field when you really sit down and do qualitative research generative research in contextual inquiry different research methodologies you will see the gaps it's really interesting then it's loads of fun you'll enjoy that try that sometime break down the bloody silos in the organization bring in bring in people from different disciplines to work together so bring in people from research, design, marketing engineering all different disciplines to come together because then you will own the problem and the solution it's not external to you this time sorry are we running out of time yes we are right invite the marketing other people to just get engaged in this become a part of this conversation and as I said always focus on the customer the consumer they come first they are the most important element here in any conversation draw insights from big data see where your customers users are spending the time leverage that use it and this is of course for the technologies in the room it's really important use big data as much as you can and simplify as much as you can make it simple and stupid as they say keep it simple and stupid that's another book by the way so how does innovation happen this is left and right brain thinking I'm going to run because I think we are running out of time are we five more minutes okay so I'm going to breeze through this and people you are welcome to hang out with me after that so this is something I'm not going to spend too much time because a number of us have this is basically the principle of design thinking how do you think about that I don't know if any of you who are lucky enough to cast the workshop yesterday there was a gorgeous workshop here yesterday thinking the core principles of design thinking but the way I think about it they are wicked or team problems how do you approach them how do you think about them if they are for the human yes otherwise there are other tools that exist these are linear analytical tools so not every problem is going to be solved through design thinking be very clear on that so the human centric problems are solved through design thinking not the other ones and we often forget that when we talk about problems solution we keep talking about everyone thinks design thinking is applicable to everything no it is not and it's not needed right so I'm going to jump through these my principle my one is really simple the one I use is just the four questions what is to understand what is basically the research what exists out there what is it out there what if how do I think about it what is the new future because if you don't take what is take account of what is and you start thinking about a different future you basically you don't have a foundation to stand on so what if and what vows what really works in the market that's a beautiful spot what vows customers want we can do it and economics can sustain it that's the vows zone that's where the product is a success story wow that's great what works this is when you take it to the market and you iterate you play this is a sense of play you play with guys you understand what is working in the market and then you iterate again make it firmer and firmer we found very successful co-creation bringing in the customers to kind of roll up the sleeves and work with us I was going to jump into a few case studies I think we could be running out of time but I'll still run through a couple of them really fast so these are more about case studies of the college board so a quick background I work at the college board it was founded in 1900 and was created to expand access to higher education it's a not-for-profit and the two the products that you're probably familiar with are SAAT SAAT and AP SAAT is a global test that administers to about overall the college board administers about I think 70 million assessments every year so it's a membership association and it's made of 6,000 world-leading education institutions and it is dedicated to promoting excellence in education and bringing about equity in education that's a purpose statement that is our galvanizing principle and the galvanizing business is what all of us own and believe in so what is our challenge? our challenge is how to be clear a path for all students to own their future right it's a very interesting thing so every year we help more than 7 million students prepare for a successful transition to college through programs and services you know they design college readiness and college success the biggest ones are SAAT and AP so I wanted to briefly talk about the redesign SAAT I don't even know if you guys know this but few years ago four years ago our CEO decided it's time to redesign the SAAT and that was based again on user input so for 18 months we went on a listening tour we went out into the field and listened to what colleges were looking for in students and what industry was looking for in students what were the skills they wanted and what were the skills that our test was not giving them so what had happened over time the SAAT had become really broad based so what we did was here we go again what we did was just narrowed it down and we had the assessment focus on a few things that really mattered to these audiences really interesting back what we had realized that students were still graduating unprepared for college based on the scores and those scores have remained unchanged that means 43% meet the college readiness benchmark and those numbers have remained unchanged for the last 50 years that's really sad that's really hard and so what David said sorry let's go back so David who's the CEO of the company so he expressed this very beautifully he says it may not be our fault but it is our problem David is the CEO of the college board he said this in March 2014 when the redesign was announced the decision to redesign the SAAT was not easy but we had to do it based on our research we learned that we had to focus on fewer things done well rather than many things done poorly besides redesigning the exams the college board wanted to confront the inequalities that surrounded the assessment and leveled the playing field so we also announced a partnership with Khan Academy Khan Academy makes access to free practice globally it's available anywhere in the world and that is by the within a year or two it knocked down the profit margins of a whole bunch of these test prep companies by at least 30% which is not too bad brought me a lot of joy the second one I wanted to talk about which I think I'm running out of time I am out of time okay sorry so I'm out of time but basically I wanted to talk to you about a brand transformation that we were going through and from my perspective how I thought about the brand and how I thought about the brand across every judgment so here what I have the journey map that we have created and the whole idea was where is the point of friction and how do I change that into smiles and this is just an overlay but the whole idea is when you look at a journey map you know what a journey map is so all of you need to engage and work together especially technology technology should be part of product development and user experience design if there is one thought I can leave you with right now what do you think about within your organization right being outcome focused instead of output that would make a huge difference if there is one thought I can leave you with for a true innovation to happen within the organization I think you should be outcome focused because outcomes are based on user needs right instead of output very often we as organizations are very output focused everyone does their job and that's it right but even in technology that's what we are trying to move and that was my third case study next day I'll do that but in our organization what we are trying to do now integrate IT so it becomes end to end they become part of this and I hold my IT team responsible for user outcomes right and that's where data and analytics comes into play how do I ensure that they own the success of the product and their ownership is crucial for us to be successful right thank you so much if you have any questions you can take them outside thank you