 Hi, my name is Arash Azami, and this is the Service Design Show. I'm Mark Fontaine. In this special episode of the Service Design Show, we're going to give you a taste of what to expect at the upcoming Service Design Conference that is taking place on October 27th and 28th of 2016 in Amsterdam. My guest in this episode is Arash Azami. Arash is the founder of a studio called Kamagir, which designs solutions that transcend generations. And Arash is also a phonetic guitar player. So let's jump right in and ask Arash to give us a preview of his talk. Welcome to the show, Arash. Thank you, thank you, Mark. You're in a beautiful location at this moment. I am indeed, yes. I'm blessed with the backdrop of Tercelling Island on the Wadden Sea. I guess a lot of people will have to Google what it is, but we'll leave that up to them. Arash, to open this episode, please give the people who are watching a 30-second overview of your talk. What will be the main topic? So the topic of the conference is business as unusual. And I've been granted the opportunity, actually, throughout my life until now to be involved in a number of businesses that were rather unusual, such as an energy company that earns more when it sells less energy. And right now I'm involved in a company where we developed and designed eyeglasses that we can distribute in sub-Saharan Africa for the, in total, 1 billion people with poor eyesight for under $5 in retail. So that's a complete redesign. And there's a bunch of other businesses. I'm not really going to go into the details of those businesses, but what I'm going to try and share with you guys is what made me decide and design those businesses like that. So it's like counter-intuitive, basically, for businesses to do less and then earn more. Yes, it is counter-intuitive to do it. But if you look at nature, it happens all the time. Interesting, nature. What is the most important takeaway that people will have? What will they have learned now after seeing your talk? Well, I'm going to leave that to the people themselves, of course, because I visited the conference and seen the talk. What do you hope? What I'm hoping for is that we can shift paradigms as to how we design business, how we regard topics such as value, what is the worth of a business, regard topics as purpose, why am I doing what I'm doing, why am I here, actually, and why I'm being so busy. And one of the questions that I'd like to pose to the visitors of the conference is, let's say that all the work in the world would be voluntary work, and nobody would get paid for anything. But in the meantime, you have the power to change one thing that you wish to see changed in the world. What is the work that you would do as an individual? What is it that actually drives you? I guess a really tough question. It is a very tough question, and it's meant to be tough, because you're going to go deep if you really want to go into the details of that question. But I've come to the conclusion that whenever I asked somebody else that question, it would really set something in motion. And if I would ask myself that question, even then, it made me, for instance, leave my previous business, which was actually rather successful at that moment. So why would you do that? It's a crazy thing to do. But I really felt that if all the work in the world would be voluntary work, I wouldn't be doing that, and I needed to do something that I would do, whether I would get paid for it or not. So I guess this is a topic that is very close to your heart, right? What is your motivation to talk about this? Well, we have, as human beings, enormous potential. And I dare to say that most of the potential we do not utilize throughout our lives, because we're busy doing all kinds of stuff that we deem important at that moment. And if we look at the bigger picture, one may ask, was that really worthwhile? Was it worth all the stress to be so involved in something that perhaps in the end doesn't have all the impact that I would have wished for? Doesn't make that change in the world that I would wish to see? And I believe that we are immensely powerful as human beings, because we have the power of choice. We have the power of making connections with each other. We have the power of making connections with nature. We have the power of transgressing through all kinds of boundaries, basically, that keep us smaller, smaller than we could be. And I am on a mission to see whether I myself, but also the people that I get to meet, can unlock that potential within themselves, and they're making decisions that not only positively impact their own lives and their own happiness, but positively impact their surroundings and the world. Wow. And it would be a really interesting topic for a service design conference, I guess, right? It's helping people to become more purpose-driven, I'd say, right? Yes, absolutely. And I'm not saying that I help other people become more purpose-driven, but what I try to do myself is to be driven by my own purpose, because that's the one thing that I can control. Right. Well, maybe one of your own purposes is to show the world that it's possible to do this. Well, you know, the amount of possibility that we see in the world is immense, and in human beings is immense, and we do not realize how powerful we are to change things, and to rethink things, and to do business as unusual, because we need unusual businesses. All right. It's a live setting, so it's okay. We have the mailman here walking by. Arash, I'm really curious. You probably, I hope you don't have all the answers, and answers are usually boring, so I'm really curious to what is your biggest question surrounding this topic? Oh, wow. Oh, wow. We're moving. We're in transition right now. We're moving from business as usual, whatever's being dictated by economists and businessmen and our parents to businesses unusual, so we dare ask the question, is that so? Is it really done this way? Is there a possibility for me to do it otherwise? And my big question is not only how do we do business as unusual, which is all fine and rebellious and I believe very healthy, but if we go beyond that and we could do business as natural, which would mean completely in line with the laws of nature, with ecology, I'm wondering how we could do that. I'm sure we can. I don't know how. And I'm trying to find answers or clues. Let's hope some of the people at the conference will be able to at least discuss this with you. I am sure that there will be people that are completely relating to this topic and have insights that would be so valuable. And you know, it's almost like I shouldn't be on stage. You guys should be on stage. The stage is you. So maybe the final question, Arash, if you think about the conference, what is the thing you look forward to the most? The thing that I look forward to the most is, let me put it this way. There is, as far as I'm concerned, nothing more enriching in life than travel. Through traveling, traveling the physical sense, you get to see new things, see new ways of looking at things, meet new people, be introduced to new paradigms, new languages, new ways of doing business, business that may be usual for those people, but unusual to us. And what we do during this conference is we are traveling. We are traveling through the minds and the hearts of the people that are there that we get to meet. And just to have these little encounters a couple of days on end is going to be amazing. I mean, we're all traveling, so it will be mostly enriching. Well, that's the thing I hope a lot of people are looking forward to. Arash, this is all we had time for, so the only thing left for me to do is thank you and I look forward to meeting you and talking to you in Amsterdam. Well, thank you so much. It's been an honor to do this, and I'm really looking forward to an awesome conference. See you there. Bye-bye. Ciao. If you enjoyed this episode with Arash, make sure you check out some of the other episodes and subscribe to the channel. If you want to learn more about the conference, go to www.service-design-conference.com. For now, thanks for watching and hopefully see you in Amsterdam.