Calculations which affect just about everything sped up a billion times
The issues are enormous, the implications profound. What we’re being told is incredibly exciting. But some really important questions seem to have been left unaanswered
Stop! Too much solar power!
Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic explosion. The grid can’t take it.
Tomorrow’s digital licensing: what are the issues?
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
Disruption contained: preventing self-inflicted innovation wounds
You’ve got a revolutionary product and a choice of innovation strategies: trying to do everything you do ‘in the spirit of innovation’ or to run an otherwise traditional business, limiting additional risk: are both options misguided?
Charisma failure = innovator failure?
Problem: many brilliant innovators wouldn’t recognise their own shortcomings in the charm department even if … (insert painfully humiliating scenario) Solution? Get ready for the Science (or Zen?) of Charisma
The restaurant at the beginning of the universe
Welcome to the birthplace of investment in the online world. It’s the relaxed watering hole where the big stuff happens in Silicon Valley. The regulars constitute a “who’s who” of movers and shakers behind what’s going on right now.
Who is Mr Prediction in Tech?
This year was expected to be so full of unprecedented upheavals that getting it right would be tougher than ever.
Priceless video: father and son grappling with the past, present and future of design
Alex Bogusky, legendary poster boy for the ad business, rashly decides to interview his dad online. The outcome reveals what looks like a stormy relationship between a ‘designer parent’ and a ‘designer child’
Why does ‘formal transparency’ often still seem so opaque?
Many public organisations have been ‘formally transparent’ for centuries, yet the more detail they publish about their proceedings, the less we seem to understand about what they do. Are there new ways to fix this broken process?
Competing with Apple: what’s it like being Nokia?
Apple may have reinvented themselves as a phone company, but that doesn’t mean that Nokia can’t try to reinvent themselves too, so the question is this: what do they want to become?
Gave content away free, raised live show seat price 50% to $6,000: still sold out
TED risked everything by putting their precious content online for nothing, but it paid off, they are now bigger than ever: the future is live
Either crack the Dilbert paradox, or get innovation you can’t believe in
As much as organisations tell us they want to attract fresh, innovative talent, their culture often just says no. John Hagel thinks that there’s a move coming from social networks toward ‘joint creation’ that’ll address this
Education, prepare to meet thy maker
If you’d kept an eye on this man over the years, you’d have had an inside track on many things, long before they became important. Now he’s turning his mind to the future of education
What does it take to be a leadership guru?
Hidden away in an old ‘speaking showreel’ on YouTube: a showcase of the exceptional talents of René Carayol
Beyond incubation: the competence centre
Is this the answer to investor worries about incubator failure?
Customers as community: dangerous yet necessary
Necessary because it’s something which will happen anyway: dangerous because some of your business instincts will get you into trouble, communities are not a safe place for the inexperienced to innovate
Innovation cocktail recipe: insurance plus poverty
It’s got a market of four billion people: other ingredients include creativity, technology and an appetite for change: it’s called microinsurance
Turning university science breakthroughs into businesses
A superb panel video from Princeton covers just about everything: Angels, Venture Capital, Intellectual Property as well as the academic, engineering and technology licensing perspectives
What is “pull” education and why does it matter?
Compulsory curriculum teaching (“push”) only works for those who don’t need to be pushed very hard: for the remaining billions on the planet, it’s often just too expensive to push
So you think you’re innovative enough: meet the new boss
Same as the old boss: I don’t think so; if you can’t demonstrate to her that you can truly innovate, don’t even bother applying for the job
Everything we thought we knew about privacy needs rethinking
Could health authorities force us to publish every detail of our daily activities by insisting we all carry smartphones with monitoring apps revealing not just how long we slept, but where?
Watch influencers offer predictions on major tech acquisitions
The second half of 2010 is looking better than last year, a surge is expected, heralding a very hectic end of year M&A traffic jam
Dell’s datacenter vanishing trick: all is revealed
Watch them explain how they take something that consumes the same amount of electrical power as over 8,000 staff and just make it disappear
Rocket scientist, games patriarch, same guy
Carmack never ceases to amaze, but the infamous pony tail is probably gone forever
The quango as heroic green knight?
Private equity hesitancy contrasted with prompt public funding of green innovation
Someone please tell me I’m not the only one!
This video about replacing yourself with a robot seriously creeps me out. But I still want to try it.
The valley’s angel scene is going crazy
It’s unrecognisable from just a few years ago: lots more angels, much bigger sums, many more investments
Secretive leading biotech dealmakers caught talking unguardedly on video
MIT somehow managed to make this happen in New York recently (warning: contains disturbingly graphic images of a ‘banker guy’ talking candidly about pharma deals)
Are some things just too personal to share?
Your most private functions may soon not be quite so private
What’s wrong with the way we think about education?
The old educational model of ‘compulsory knowledge consumption’ is still here, but becoming shockingly irrelevant
Urgent briefing requirement: Stem cells and regenerative medicine
These issues are constantly in the news: the media never gives you enough background, but this video does that job and a great deal more
Who is todays greatest innovation visionary?
In the 60s and 70s, the title ‘Oracle of the electric age’ was given to one man
What is this thing called Transmedia?
And what really happened at 8pm on the 17th of November 1978?
Haunted by the price of commercial success: using up the planet’s resources
Who you gonna call? These guys aren’t Ghostbusters, but they do believe they’ve discovered how to banish the spectre of industrial wastefulness
Put the kettle on – the nanotech teabag has arrived
Safe drinking water is still an issue in many parts of the world. Will the nanotech teabag provide a solution to this problem?
Fertiliser firm steps up into vertical farming
US fertilser firm Converted Organics has bought vertical farming specialist TerraSphere and entered the pharmaceuticals market
High hopes for high-rise horticulture
Vertical farmers offer their vision of the future in a video
How relevant are ‘parenting issues’ to today’s innovation investment?
Checking out these news stories may help you decide
A tale of two planes
Different dreams, startlingly brought to reality, but still mostly futuristic dreams for most of us
Getting old, dying and other endangered ideas
A long-awaited documentary examines human mortality. The controversy is more about separating science from pseudo-science than about longevity
iij secrets on display?
Ok, we confess: we wish we could say that TED videos were made by us
Can a budget airline out-innovate the full price squadron?
Will spoilt holidays and disrupted travel become a thing of the past? easyJet hopes its new technology will allow travellers to keep on flying, despite eruptions like the one earlier this year
What on earth is an Anthropreneur?
Need to attack poverty, environmental and language issues simultaneously? Then maybe you need one of these: as far as inspiring videos go, I haven’t seen anything much better than this
Underwhelmed by interfaces? Want to see what’s coming next?
Spielberg’s ‘Minority Report Interface’ guru tells us all what he’s been working on
Cameron on innovation and power
Watch the new UK premier explaining his ideas about innovation, before he got the job
How green are the valleys?
Is Wales about to become a hotspot for sustainable tech?
New health data ideas suddenly go viral in government
Have political types trying to look cool unleashed a medical monster?
Carbon negative products – what are they?
Are they as positive as they sound?
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Martyn Poliakoff: green chemist, big hair, YouTube god?
Even his much more famous brother is probably not as famous online