Have You Got The EFactor
good afternoon
welcome to tedx cookstown everyone
my name is david gibson or as i call
myself with my fancy titles
professor david gibson ope
and and they were hard-earned mike my
question for you
is have you got the e factor
you want to know what the e factor is
want to see if it’s relevant and i’m
going to talk about it talk about its
history
and how i feel it can play a part in our
lives
and in changing the world
the e-factor is a set of competencies
that i came up with
through my work at university and out
with businesses and you
you can see it includes creativity
resilience putting yourself forward
negotiation
a range of of areas
we all have some of these skills but we
all need to work
and be competent at them all and i want
to talk about
how i come up with them the impact it’s
had
and how we can move forward together
so let’s let’s start after
uh graduating in a degree in in law and
a management postgraduate
i decided to become an accountant and
the reason why i did that was not really
a particular love of figures
but i reckon this was a good area to
start my own business in and would give
me
access to work and help entrepreneurs
develop
i did this i was successful and got
involved in various ventures and
and working with entrepreneurs and what
i did discover out in the field was
there was a set of skills you could
follow really people believe
entrepreneurs are born not made or you
just happen to come from
a certain family i didn’t believe that
and my work
made me see i would see the same skills
like creativity or
negotiation being used again and again
to save an entrepreneur’s life to
to to do a deal and yet it was difficult
to get them
to change and adapt and realize they
needed to be competent
in them all and they needed to develop
because personal development maybe in
one way
was was quite a new thing then i then
got
a really good opportunity i got a
very good offer for my business and i
got a junior job
in queens university belfast
as a teaching fellow very low paid job
no one really told me what i was going
to do i thought i was going to give the
odd
lecture and do a bit of consultancy what
i found was after a week i was in there
i was meant to embed
entrepreneurship and innovation into the
curriculum of all students in all
subject areas
there was only there was just one
problem and nobody told me this before
the interview
queens were bottom of the league in the
uk in it there were only 10 students
doing
one theoretical module and no one had
done it
in the world um so it was really sink or
swim time for me
what was i what was i going to do should
i leave or should i try and swim
and i tried and it was difficult
even though queens had had a lot of
money to to do this
uh from the government it was about to
be withdrawn they were right at the
bottom in the uk
and i and i was trying to sort this
people would avoid me
in the in the quad people wouldn’t turn
up for meetings
and i kept going until eventually i got
one chance
uh a lecture in environmental planning
let me talk to his
class in property development and
i got them to do live things i got them
to be creative i got them to look at
outside
social economic problems and apply it
and learn
and they loved it and they and they
changed things
and they did really well and and and
their work
and and so it happened and the great
thing was as a good new zen spread
it went into every subject area it went
into nursing it went into medicine it
went into drama
um it went to engineering it went into
biology
we became the first university in the
world where it was
embedded this these skills the skills of
the e-factor
they were learning to be creative they
were learning to be resilient they were
learning
to lead they were learning to
sell and persuade not just as
necessarily as a business but in
in making things happen and then
changing things
and it was incredible i i developed an
occupational questionnaire with it
where they were measured before after
two years eight years and ten years
uh with thirty thousand students and the
skills that stayed
businesses were created as ceos were
created
social change was was created on queens
one loss of awards i almost innovative
educator in the uk
queens one times higher entrepreneur
university of the year
our reputation spread but the best thing
i got out of queens really was
a day one r with some very very tough
guys
from a very rough area in belfast they
were brought into a bus they really
taught me
they came in for an hour and they’re
meant to be a room with me and i was
meant to entertain them by teaching them
creativity
something called social inclusion where
universities invite people
from tough areas to make them see what
the big university is like
so i did all my usual things let’s look
at the problems that pet owners have
because they’re all
16 year old kind of kids at home
they wouldn’t do anything they wouldn’t
listen to me it wasn’t working
it was five minutes to go before the end
of the class and i
tried something desperate what i said
was
please my boss makes me walk my dog at
five o’clock in the morning i don’t want
to do that
help me please it was just something
disruptive
something to change they all laugh they
weren’t quiet
then they laughed then they start making
some suggestions
so i won’t mention most of them but the
leader of the group
in the corner this guy said get your big
dog a doggie treadmill and laughed
and fell on the floor and the class was
over so what what a great success that
was
but in actual fact it was a great
success
because six months later i’m watching
dragon’s den program on tv
and looking um for new inventions coming
out
and new businesses which is an
investment program for entrepreneurs
and i’d love to say one of the guys out
of the class came out but no it wasn’t
one of them i i wish them well
it was a lady from england what was her
idea
doggy treadmill like a million pounds of
investment it became a multi-million
point
selling product around the world and
that taught me
that if we could learn to be creative
and learn to take ideas forward
it’s amazing what we could do it
wouldn’t matter about our education or
or our background if we could learn to
disrupt and connect
and bring creativity and resilience and
personal branding
and these skills into our life i then
went on to work in
liverpool with liverpool john murs
with the the deputy mayor of liverpool
with one and a half thousand educators
charities and all the disadvantaged
areas the local businesses
and 000 students at the helm driving the
projects
that one best in britain best in europe
best in the world
but it was fantastic to see when you get
a civic place like liverpool
irish civic place as it is bringing all
this together
how they use the e-factor to change
lives
to change businesses to change
executives lives and to change
everything else what has happened since
then is that the e factor has
gone outside the world i’m now a
professor at the university of cumbria
and it’s been used with social inclusion
it’s been used with schools
it’s been used with university it’s been
used with executives and
and with changing the entire region but
the exciting thing is
it’s been accepted as a model right all
across the the world
china have been working with it i’ve
been training
school and educators in china um
it’s been used in africa it’s been used
in in in the middle east it’s been used
as go as going out to make a difference
it’s a simple model that that
that works and and i
to give you an up-to-date example last
night
two emails one from a guy who’s running
it he’s taking it over in south africa
and he’s using it to change rural and
city entrepreneurship and drive people
poverty get them trained in these
competencies
getting them to assess where they are
and he’s beating all the national trends
during covert my view is not of course
i’m wanting to change people
into entrepreneurs or run their own
business that’s okay
that’s where the skills come and that’s
where people traditionally face
disruption
today covert 19 the world but
the global economy we all face
disruption and people need
these skills to move forward so
i i’m delighted as that it is having
impact on i’m determined to keep sharing
it and this is my
my message to you is yes
you have the e-factor already you
do have some of these skills some of
them you’re better at than others you
may be creative
maybe you need to learn to be more
resilient maybe you need to promote
yourself more
maybe you need to work in teams we all
need to be competent in all the skills
use our strengths and work with other
people so i’m asking you
out there whatever you do business
social enterprise working companies um
personal skill educator whatever you do
put on your
old mask first as the airline says learn
these skills and competencies
and then please pass them on to the
people you work with
we can make things happen we can change
lives and we can move forward thank you
very much
you