This article was taken from the August 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
William Adams -- AKA will.i.am -- took 184 commercial flights last year, covering at least 600,000km -- which is what happens when you launch the i.am+ consumer-electronics business, serve as Intel's director of creative innovation, create and cofound the Coca-Cola Company's EKOCYCLE recycling strategy, explore tech investments with super-angel Ron Conway to add to your holdings in Twitter and Tesla, advise Dean Kamen's FIRST student robotics competition, found and host your own TRANS4M conference and benefit concert during Grammy week to boost underserved communities, design and build a not-quite-street-legal supercar, promote science, tech, engineering, arts and maths teaching in American schools, take meetings with tech entrepreneurs from Shoreditch to São Paulo, partner with Anheuser-Busch InBev to create a playable vinyl magazine page... Oh, and record, produce and perform music, and front BBC One show The Voice.
The 38-year-old is a wide-ranging and engaged musician-turned-tech-investor, bridging the creative and corporate worlds as a consumer-trends forecaster, tech-education activist and product designer. An early consultant to and equity shareholder in Beats Electronics, maker of Beats by Dr Dre headphones, he launched his own hardware business last December when his foto.sosho iPhone camera accessory hit Selfridges as the first in a range of products. In recent months he has spoken (remotely) at the TEDxCERN conference near Geneva, where he chatted to students who performed his song "Reach for the Stars" (which was played on Mars via Nasa's Curiosity rover), and at a UK Trade and Investment conference in Los Angeles. "I strive to be dope -- disruptive, optimistic, progressive, entrepreneurial," he tells Wired -- which invited him to involve his personal network of international innovators, from Segway inventor Kamen to Brazilian sugar-cane farmer Leontino Balbo Jr, in guest-curating this edition of the magazine. In a series of interviews with Wired editor David Rowan in Los Angeles and London, he shared some insights on how to inject creative thinking into business and life.
Be a maker
Last November, will.i.am launched a self-funded hardware business, i.am+. Its first product is an interchangeable-lens camera accessory built to fit over the iPhone 4 and 4S and, expected in late 2013, the iPhone 5. Called foto.sosho, the add-on, priced at £199-£329, utilises the phone's camera sensor and processor via Bluetooth, and comes with a proprietary app designed for the editing and instant sharing of photographs. Critics made much of the accessory's high price and its positioning as a "fashion camera accessory"; reports also noted that i.am+ CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan's previous company, Fusion Garage, went into liquidation last year with large debts built up in the development of its failed JooJoo ( formerly CrunchPad) tablet device.
But will.i.am sees foto.sosho as just the start of an ambitious global hardware business, and i.am+ now has a "team of experts" in place in territories including Singapore, the US, China and India.
They aim to bring products to market far more quickly than conventional consumer-electronics companies through rapid prototyping, low-cost manufacture and streamlined retail supply chains: Adams had the initial idea for foto.sosho ten months before the product went on sale. "You gotta move fast," he explains to Wired. "Nothing stands still for too long in tech. And he who does it first, wins."
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He said, 'No, it's possible. I can have the working prototype in two months -- the non-working prototype in a month.' I said, 'What?
Are you serious?' He said, 'Yeah, things are different from four years ago when we first met. You can do that nowadays.' And that's why you go fast -- because once everybody knows that, then watch out, all the big brands. Expressly, watch out if the person making it has a reach that could create a brand like Beats by Dr Dre. When everybody realises what's possible, the pillars that are holding up the building collapse. "Every young person is going to be inspired to be a maker from now on. It's like how everyone used to want to be a musician, an actor, an athlete -- but a maker is what people are going to want to be."
Wired: How much investment have you put in?
Will.i.am: "It was a lot."
Has it been a good investment? "Yes, because I know what's coming. The whole drill was not to make and sell many things, but to have skin in the game.
Because people in my world, a celebrity or pop person usually lends their name to some consumer-electronics company -- they're protected and safe. We made a couple of thousand [camera cases for the] iPhone 4s, and we sold a couple of hundred and gave away a whole bunch to influencers, photographers, other folks to consult on how to better it. In July we're launching the iPhone 5 [model] in America and we'll have partnered up with a great partner to offer mobile connectivity. "And then we have other products coming up, like a watch. It's pretty smart. But the watch is connected to a bunch of other products that we'll brand. One day last November I was walking through Harrods and I picked up a little stuffed animal. Right next to it was a speaker. Right next to that, there was a little MiFi wireless connector box. I took a day off, got the stuffed animal, ripped it apart, stuck the MiFi connector in its head, sewed it up, put the speaker in his belly, sewed it up, put a freakin' iPhone in his mouth. It's my prototype for the next product -- we're working to have it for Christmas. I want to be able to talk to it. I want to be able to tell it, 'Play this song, download it.' I want to be able to tell it, 'Put the next game on Tivo.' I want this thing to rule my house. I want my technology where I can have a conversation with it. I think there is going to be something that interacts with us that is a little more personal than my phone."
And are there other hardware products running around in your head?
"Yeah. Check this out. I called up Dean [Kamen]. That guy is my hero. He's today's Edison. 'OK, Dean, I'm rethinking Segway. Can you help me with the governor to make it go faster?' What does personal transportation look like in 2022? A motorcycle hasn't really changed since they created motorcycles. You have to rethink all these things. Let's reimagine the helmet, the jacket, the personal vehicle as one piece of transportation -- with a helmet that's also your dashboard, connected to the internet and with a camera on it. And your jacket is part of the vehicle. It's Segway technology as a basis to create a whole new personal vehicle. And we'll have a prototype, working, by August. "I haven't been this on fire creatively since I was 17 years old dreaming about doing music. One day I'm going to have 10,000 people
[working in the business]. It's the next 20 years of my life. I'd want a Willy Wonka factory one day, just a creative campus full of creative individuals coming up with things. That would be amazing."
[VideoLibrary##12371##Title¬Behind the scenes of our Will.i.am photo shoot]
Don't assume everyone can be creative
"Creativity is relative. You encourage it, but you can't teach it.
Everybody is not going to make it. And that's a hard rock to swallow. If you talk to a creative person, it's life or death. 'If I can't be creative, I don't want to live any more. Just kill me.'
Then there are people that want to be creative -- that's not how creative people think. It's like, 'I gotta do something, make something, because I'm going crazy just living in this thing called reality. I got to change it up. I don't want to live in that last person's reality.' A lot of people, when they think of Intel, they don't think of it as a creative company.
But those are the most creative people on the planet -- because they create things that you create with. To me, they're the Jimi Hendrixes. We value Hendrix more than we do the person who invented the lute -- even though, if it wasn't for the lute, there wouldn't be an electric guitar. I see the same spirit in the music world [as in Silicon Valley]: it's like we don't see the world the same. In school, they called me 'Space Cadet' -- they thought I was odd.
It's like [Napster cofounder] Shawn Fanning: what he didn't have was acceptance from everybody. If people like him had been the most popular person in high school, I don't think we'd have Mark Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey. Even [Nikola] Tesla wasn't the most social person in the world. It ain't like he was rocking with the Rockefellers going out to the freakin' swing spots. The oddballs are always the ones that reshape the sphere."
Look for the voids -- and fill them
"Pointing out a void is priceless. With Intel, I'll have sessions with their executives just before a conference, or they'll show me a new line of products for my input. I'm like, 'How come this doesn't do that? You should want it to do that.' Or: 'This is cool.
When I was in Brazil people were doing this, and I think that is going to catch on.' Sometimes they'll say things like: 'We're going to do that in version 2.0.' I have to tell them that 2.0 will be 2.2 late. You've got to get that [feature] in right now. What I see coming is this collision between popular culture and what you call
'tech culture', 'deep culture'. These two worlds are bleeding into each other so that you're not going to know the difference between a geek and a tastemaker -- and right now there's still a big difference. "I'm a fan of Wired magazine -- it helps me figure out what's missing in popular culture. You have to understand what are the scenarios in life that you want to fill voids in. For instance, we went on tour with Macy Gray. I noticed in the audience she had a 50-year-old, a 30-year-old, and the 30-year-old's kid -- you had a whole family. That was the beginning of my search to understand how you can attract the family... because if you get the family, you win.
So I think, 'OK, let's make a song for when a 30-year-old mum is driving their 12-year-old daughter to school. Let's make a song for when a 16-year-old's getting their sweet 16 or a 13-year-old is getting his bar mitzvah.' Because subcultures come and go, but what always stays is freakin' families."
Study nightclub culture to forecast change
"I don't go to clubs to talk to girls -- I go to clubs to see what's happening. Everything starts in the clubs. If you're a billionaire, or a guy in the underground, or someone doing things that are illegal, we all meet in the same place. You get to see life from all walks and if you study it right you get to see what's coming. I call myself a 'popthropologist'. You see what's happening and what's not. 'Yeah, I'm so over Facebook. Freaking Mum's on it and, shit, she saw my freakin' pictures...' The young kids don't like the fact that their parents are on Facebook. And Google+ didn't do it right -- it looked and talked too much like Facebook. It's waiting for the new. It's not going to be Instagram. Why? Because it's all on my Facebook. It's probably going to be Twitter. Twitter is the pulse of the world. In a club, the secret is to figure out the commonality in behaviour. So you ask, 'What are you guys going to do with this picture?' 'I'm not on Instagram any more.' 'What are you on?' 'Have you heard of Vine?
Can we take a Vine pic?' "You also notice the tempo of the music. When I was in Brazil, and Japan and Indonesia, everything's 140bpm now. That means pop is getting ready for a tempo shift. You see if the drum sensibility shifts in the next two months. If it happens consistently, it means there's a thirst, so you want to change it."
Provoke collaboration
"When I met Steve Jobs, we talked for four hours at the house and then at dinner. We talked about how there was a small community that was thinking differently when he was growing up. It's always a small pond of disruptive thinkers. He was no different from anybody else in the creative community. He thought just as obscurely as all of us weirdos, but what he was special at was how he assembled people in the creative community to work together on an idea. That's the difference. Like, wow! You're an amazing assembler. Not many creative people have the ability to do that. I saw laser
[thinking], and who cares if you think I'm a dick? You'd ask him,
'How're you doing today?' 'I'm not doing too good. I'd really like to be alone right now.' That's honest. Most people would see that as rude. That's direction. He was such a creative force that he understood collaboration.
So when we think of an iPhone, it's synonymous with apps. 'Hey, like, everybody in the creative community, contribute to this platform. What do you want to do? Calculators? Self-help?' They initiated the garden. He had the trust of the creative community.
When you think of Samsung, I don't really know the person there.
There has to be some person or idea associated with tomorrow's big company around consumer electronics. And I would like that to be i.am+."
Monitor how technology changes behaviour
"It changed behaviour just by putting a camera on to phones. It changed how people watched concerts -- in 2003, they started watching concerts like this [with his phone in the air]. The whole social experience of being around people had changed because of a camera. I saw that shift, and planted the seed in [LA-based music producer] Jimmy Iovine's head that we should do hardware. I go to him and say, 'Jimmy, the world's changed. Because of that shift in behaviour we should be in the hardware business ASAP, preferably computers or phones.' Two years later, he says, 'What about headphones? We have to start somewhere if we're going to get to phones.' It became Beats. I said I'd be a part of it, I'd help consult, so they gave me a piece of the company. We live in this mobile world. But Jimmy was the one who wanted to optimise the experience with better-quality headphones, and to take advantage of the fact that somebody has dumbeddown the headphones that come with sophisticated hardware. "Something else: with the free internet and the internet of things, there's going to be so much crud out there you're not going to know the good shit from the worst.
Tomorrow, the wealth will be in information filters. The internet is now a haystack and there's a couple of needles there. Whether it's search, or wellness, you need filters."
Forget the consumer
"'Consumer' is a bad name to call people. Tomorrow the word looks more like 'champion'. People have to champion your brand, not just consume. They add value, making you relevant. Calling them consumers undermines their power. And they can also destroy you.
'Brand' is a bad word too. It's your company. Because brand is associated with branding. People aren't cattle."
Find an effective mentor
"I used to graffiti the classroom walls. One time I got busted for vandalising the school and was going to get expelled. And my teacher Miss Montez helped me stay in school: 'Don't expel him, I'll help him.' Miss Montez allowed me to do graffiti on her chalkboard and told me that she'd leave it up for a week. Miss Montez was really integral in keeping me focused and not going off course. She asked me, 'Why do you want to write up on the walls?'
'Because I want everyone to see my art.' She said, 'Well, what about art class?' 'But only art people see it. I want people who aren't in art to see it. Why do you think we do graffiti? We want people to know us.' And a lot of those people in our neighbourhood turned into ad-agency guys, like Shepard Fairey and Mr Brainwash.
Mr Wright was my sixth-grade teacher -- he was also was a big influence on my life. They were trying to give me Ritalin, and Mr Wright told my mum, 'Don't give that to your son. You should just encourage his creativity and he'll figure out a way to work with it.' So thankgod they didn't put me on that medication. But ADHD?
That's my middle name."
Success lies in your partnerships
"When I went to Atlanta, to iron out the EKOCYCLE concept with Coca-Cola, I made a [slide] deck and presented it to them. It was a programme that we could run together, with the 'C' to be substituted by different things like EKOCONCEPT, EKOCENTER, EKOCOMMUNITY, EKOCONSCIOUS -- just a bunch of EKO things. ['EKOC' is 'Coke' backwards.] I wanted Coca-Cola to realise that being a verb is the most important thing now. If you don't believe me, Google it. They have these EKOCENTERS now. The success is in the partners that you align yourself with to help make the concept work. We want to turn waste into a commodity in every city. How do we create a sustainable society where people start demanding that things be made out of sustainable materials? The whole concept is to partner with other companies such as Levi's and the NBA and lend its ideas to help them execute their own sustainability efforts.
The power is in the partners."
Hold a search party
"When I'm touring, after the show, I just Google shit. I have
'search parties' -- we geek out, search random things, figure out what's happening, what's not happening, see where a search takes us. Sometimes you find yourself in something obscure and pointless, sometimes in some conspiracy blog, sometimes in a world of... like wow, exciting. The [Black Eyed] Peas call me 'the GS' -- the Good Samaritan: everybody else wants to party, and I'll be talking about CERN. That's not a sexy conversation you want to have at a party. I change the party atmosphere and everybody's upset."
Learn to code
"In September I'm taking a computer-science course. I'll have a tutor, this guy DJ Keebz, who follows me on tour to teach me on my laptop. Because I don't want to be a wannabe. Why did I want to learn how to produce music myself? Because I was tired of telling my ideas to somebody rather than executing my ideas myself. With code, I just want to be able to go and do this, not just talk. I want to execute ideas. 'Cause I'm always going to have ideas.
Tomorrow, you're going to communicate with the world no matter what language they speak. And the language you use to do that is code. I want to be a part of that conversation. I want a conversation with technology."
Embrace the fourth screen
"Danny Cohen [director of BBC Television] advised me not to tweet any more during the live shows of The Voice. I'm like,
'Danny, listen, dude, you're saying that now because this is new.
If I were you I would let me tweet. The BBC has not yet adopted the four-screen concept -- you guys are just TV, but that's right now.
Don't worry what viewers think about me -- what about the people that aren't watching TV? It's those people you should be worried about, because they're going to determine what BBC means tomorrow.
To them, tweeting is keeping them abreast of what's happening in the world that they're not a part of. They want me to tweet, and even if it means people look at me as rude, I'll figure out a way to apologise.' Twitter is the world's news, and it's not going away because young kids, even though they're on Instagram, something else is going to come and take them off Instagram. It's Twitter. Especially when Jack [Dorsey] has the balls to couple Square and Twitter."
Ask questions and listen
"The first thing that I do, when I'm working with a music artist, is interview them. 'What's on your mind?' 'What do you mean?' 'If you weren't in the studio what would you be thinking about?' 'Oh, you know, my boyfriend, he's a dick.' 'Explain?' 'Well, because he doesn't trust me, he thinks I'm like...' 'Unfaithful?' 'Yeah.' 'What did you do last night?' 'We went to a club.' 'Did you meet anybody?
What reasons does he have for being insecure? Or is he doing things and blaming you because he's guilty?' So then she'll say: 'I think it's him...' 'All right, let's write a song about that. Let's call it "Well, Because". You don't trust him because what?' 'He's always suspicious.' 'Oh that's nice. [Sings] Because you're always suspicious of me...' But the same applies if you're making anything; you address the need, the person or the people, what they already have, what's going to come and that disrupts it. "If you weren't here right now, what would you be thinking about? [Laughs]"
Wired: All the deadlines I'm missing. "All the deadlines I'm missing. [Sings to the tune of the
'[i]Death March[/i]'] I'm going to marry three songs called
'Deadlines'; I'm going to marry the death song to the Death Star song [Sings '[i]Imperial March[/i]' from Star Wars]..." --
At midnight, after a five-hour interview incorporating a sushi dinner, will.i.am says he has to leave for work. "I've got to go to the studio after this," he says. "Write a song. Lady Gaga's there. I saw her yesterday walking down the hallway. She was, like, 'Hi, Will. What are you working on?' I'm like, 'You know, geek shit.' I sleep, like, four hours."
Wired: You're working seven days? "Seven? What parallel universe are you living in? I work 12 days a week."
David Rowan is the editor of Wired. He wrote about Ray Kurzweil and Singularity University in issue 05.13
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
