TED Talk: The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet

Tanya Menon: The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet | TED Talk

I would like to introduce one episode from a TED Talk that was presented by Tanya Menon. The title is “The secret to great opportunities? The person you haven’t met yet”. In this presentation, she suggested to audiences to meet people who they don’t know. At first, she showed her teaching experience to describe how it is difficult for general people to do make new connection. Normally, we met the same people everyday and it is a risk for someone who needs get a new idea or a new job. For example, think about your friends. Typically friends are the same nationality, of the same gender, the same race, have the same look, the same hair style, and same texture of body.

After that introduction, she gave the audience three ways about how to meet new people to get a new social network. First of all, use a more imperfect social search engine. Second, be courageous in traveling your social universe. Third, reach out to people as partners rather than resources.

In conclusion, she talked about metaphor of life. Most common one is that life is journey and which means life looks like train ride and you’re a passenger. However, she showed audiences another one that is think of yourself as an atom. We are bumping up each other like atoms. Sometime transferring energy to someone and creating something new.

In my opinion, I totally agree with her suggestions because recently I went to some meetup to create my new social network. Especially, if I want to make a new product, to cooperate each other is stronger way than to do something by myself.