Venture capitalist, author, avid blogger, and former Chief Evangelist at Apple, Guy Kawasaki gave the final presentation at TEDx HarkerSchool: Fostering Youth Entrepreneurship, held in the Nichols Hall Auditorium on October 22.

TEDx is a branch of the global TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conferences, where “x” means that it is an independently organized TED event. Student curators Neeraj Baid (11) and Neel Bhoopalam (11) put together a suite of five entrepreneurs, closing the event with Kawasaki’s address.

Kawasaki’s talk, his first for a TED event, outlined the 12 lessons he learned while working with the late Steve Jobs, regarded by many as the greatest entrepreneur of his generation. Among these lessons were “Experts are clueless” and “A players hire A+ players.”

“Learn to ignore experts. Experts define things within established limits, and I think you should break those limits,” Kawasaki said.

Other lessons he addressed included “Customers cannot tell you what they need,” “Jump to the next curve,” “Biggest challenges beget the best work,” “Design counts,” “Use big graphics and big fonts,” “Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence,” “‘Value’ ≠ ‘Price’,” “Real CEOs demo,” “Real entrepreneurs ship,” and “Marketing = unique value.”

Kawasaki emphasized, however, that when defying experts, jumping curves, and focusing on unique value, these efforts only come to fruition if people believe in them.

“Usually, you hear that something needs to be seen to be believed. Really in life, if you want to change the world, you have to believe in things before you see them,” he said.

When asked in an interview with the Winged Post about the importance of youth entrepreneurship, Kawasaki said, “That’s how progress is made, not being content with the status quo, and fundamentally that’s what entrepreneurs do. That’s how things get better.”

This conference was Kawasaki’s second appearance at this school, the last being in 2002 to give the commencement speech for the first graduating class.