Name: 【TED】Martin Reeves: How to build a business that lasts 100 years (How to build a business that lasts 100 years | Martin Reeves)
Uploaded: 2016-09-03T17:32:23.000Z
Duration: 14 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Participle clauses

a new type of product, called the human immune system.

to a skeptical, strictly no-nonsense manager.

I think we all know at least one Bob, right?

for a completely new type of personal health product.

I can see from your face that you're having some problems with this.

Don't worry. I know it's very complicated.

I don't want to take you through the gory details,

I just want to tell you about some of the amazing features of this product.

First of all, it cleverly uses redundancy

by having millions of copies of each component --

to create a massive buffer against the unexpected.

by having not just leukocytes but B cells, T cells,

this diversity of different approaches can cope with more or less anything

that evolution has been able to throw up.

You have the surface barrier of the human skin,

you have the very rapidly reacting innate immune system

and then you have the highly targeted adaptive immune system.

The point is, that if one system fails, another can take over,

I can see I'm losing you, Bob, but stay with me,

because here is the really killer feature.

It's able to actually develop targeted antibodies

to threats that it's never even met before.

It actually also does this with incredible prudence,

detecting and reacting to every tiny threat,

and furthermore, remembering every previous threat,

What I'm pitching you today is actually not a stand-alone product.

The product is embedded in the larger system of the human body,

and it works in complete harmony with that system,

to create this unprecedented level of biological protection.

So Bob, just tell me honestly, what do you think of my product?

I sincerely appreciate the effort and passion

You seem to be saying that the key selling points of your product

And furthermore, you're saying that this product is siloed.

and is actually designed for somebody else's benefit.

I'm sorry to break it to you, but I don't think this one is a winner.

I think we'd actually end up with a more efficient immune system.

And efficiency is always important in the short term.

Less complex, more efficient, more bang for the buck.

Unfortunately, there's one very tiny problem,

and that is that the user of this product, you or I,

would probably die within one week of the next winter,

when we encountered a new strain of the influenza virus.

I first became interested in biology and business,

What do we have to do to make sure that our company lasts 100 years?

but actually, it's a little trickier than you might think,

considering that the average US public company now

Now, if you were the CEO of such a company,

badgered by investors and buffeted by change,

we might forgive you for not even worrying too much

But here's something that should keep you awake at night:

the probability that your company will not be around in five year's time,

on average, is now a staggering 32 percent.

That's a one in three chance that your company will be taken over

Let's come back to our tech CEO's question.

Where better to turn for advice than nature,

that's been in the business of life and death

I decided to immediately call a real biologist,

Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Princeton University.

Together, we looked at a variety of biological systems,