Matthew Syed: Black Box Thinking

He makes the case for acknowledging failure and confronting our mistakes, a notion he refers to as “Black Box Thinking”. Matthew Syed was the British table tennis number one for almost a decade, three-time Commonwealth Champion, and twice competed for Great Britain in the Olympic Games (in Barcelona in 1992 and Sydney in 2000). A columnist for The Times, he has also gone on to publish numerous bestselling books; Bounce, published in April 2010, has been described as “one of the most intelligent and thought-provoking books about sport ever written”, and Black Box Thinking, published in 2015, which has been globally acknowledged and translated into multiple languages. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at