. What makes a great designer? According to IDEO founder David Kelley, who gave the TED Talks “Human-centered design” and “How to build your creative confidence,” being an incredible designer isn’t necessarily about having a great aesthetic sensibility or coming up with out-of-the-box ideas. No,  Kelley says that the key characteristic is e...

What is your role in solving the world’s biggest problems? Climate change, global poverty, the AIDS/HIV crisis -- solving these problems will demand big thinking and unprecedented international cooperation. That’s where TEDxChange comes in. TEDxChange 2012 is a platform for sharing game-changing ideas -- and the world is invited to join t...

Now we move to the world of design, with a session co-curated by Chee Pearlman and David Rockwell featuring leading practitioners from architecture, graphic design, the art world and even that less well known discipline of "expertry." Illustrations by Maira Kalman are projected onto the stage set to reflect some of the themes the speakers wi...

TEDxChange, happening now, is being livestreamed all over the world on TED.com and TEDxChange.org (which links to Facebook). The livestream airs at 5:30pm CEST (Berlin time), which translates to 12:30am Tokyo time, 9pm Mumbai time, 3:30pm in Dakar, 12:30pm in Brasilia, 11:30am Eastern and 8:30am Pacific time. Speakers include Melinda Gate...

Radio host Julie Burstein has found the perfect analogy for creativity—raku pottery. A Japanese art form in which molded clay is heated for 15 minutes and then dropped in sawdust which bursts into flames, what makes this pottery so beautiful is its imperfections and cracks. Burstein interviewed hundred of artists, writers, musicians and fil...

TEDxChange, happening on April 5, is being livestreamed all over the world on TED.com and TEDxChange.org (which links to Facebook). April 5 is a Thursday, which means that you’re probably at work or school with a bunch of meetings to attend. Lucky for you, the program is only 90 minutes, and it’s worth it -- so reschedule your calls and take...

Cocktail party trivia: Brainstorming was invented in the 1930s as a practical idea-generation technique for regular use by “creatives” within the ad agency BBDO. That all changed in 1942, when Alex Osborn — the “O” in BBDO — released a book called How to Think Up and excited the imaginations of his fellow Mad Men. Since 1942, the idea-generat...

Design icon David Kelley shares 5 everyday objects he loves. IDEO and d.school founder David Kelley exudes warmth, empathy -- and the deep conviction that all people can uncover more creative potential and meaningful joy in their own lives. (TED Talk: How to build your creative confidence). To begin to unlock more of your own creative potenti...

Have you seen an Ad Worth Spreading? Our nomination teams want to know. As part of the Ads Worth Spreading initiative for 2012, TED picked six teams of two -- a TED speaker or Fellow teamed with one of the brightest thinkers in advertising -- to find and nominate ads that showed intelligence and ingenuity. Each team was charged with finding ...

What is a TEDx in a Box, you ask? It’s a suitcase stuffed with everything an economically marginalized community needs to host their very own TEDx event -- a projector, an iPod preloaded with subtitled TED Talks, a sound system, camcorders to capture fresh talks, and a how-to guide. TEDx in a Box was an idea that originated at TEDxKibera, a ...

Good design isn’t just about making a great-looking colander. Good design can actually improve our lives, both individually and collectively. In the new Autodesk Gallery exhibit “Public Interest Design: Products, Places & Processes,” curators Courtney E. Martin and John Cary showcase 12 projects that were designed with the common good...

Why would 80 designers, technologists and business strategists give up their holiday weekend to collaborate with strangers on a pro bono project? Mostly because of Bryan Stevenson’s inspirational TEDTalk. When longtime TEDsters Christopher Ireland, Mary Anne Masterson and Nathan Shedroff heard Bryan at TED2012 in Long Beach, they did more th...

“Your lifestyle is the future of marketing,” Bob Lord told a group of young New Yorkers at the TED Annex (our new spillover office) on Tuesday night. About 80 interns and young professionals from local marketing firms came together to eat pizza and hear Lord's advice on merging creativity and digital know-how, during a conversation with TED’s ...

By Sarah Schoengold Sugata Mitra has opened the doors of the world’s first School in the Cloud. Located inside George Stephenson High School in Killingworth, England, this one-room learning lab is a space where students can embark on their own learning adventures, exploring whatever questions most intrigue them. Students even designed ...

Bill Moggridge, director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, has died. He was 69. Moggridge, who designed the first laptop computer and was the co-founder of the design firm IDEO, was an enormously influential figure in the worlds of design and technology, beloved by all who knew him. In fact, what’s most noticeabl...

In 2012, IDEO founder and longtime Stanford professor David Kelley took the TED stage in Long Beach and shared a deeply personal story. It was the tale of his own cancer diagnosis, of finding a lump in his neck and being told he had a 40% chance of survival. This was clearly a sobering moment, but he wasn't sharing the story to seek our sympathy...

No, “humble narcissism” is not an oxymoron; it’s a combination of qualities that the best leaders and companies have. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant explains why. Who would you rather work for: a narcissistic leader or a humble leader? The answer is more complicated than you think. In a Fortune 100 company, researchers studied whe...

But these 3 alternative solutions could be faster ways to achieve increased opportunity, prosperity and equality. Universal basic income (UBI) is a provocative idea that’s enjoying a huge surge of attention right now. The concept is simple: a government would provide unconditional payments (proposed amounts range from $10,000 to $25,000 a year)...

Juliette LaMontagne’s Breaker offers millennials a unique, hands-on alternative learning opportunity -- working on projects with serious social impact. Breaker teams take on such challenges as illiteracy and feeding the city, while gaining valuable real-world social entrepreneurship skills. Take us through the Breaker process -- how does it w...

Eddie Obeng runs Pentacle, an online business school where he teaches "new world management." He also has more energy than seems quite feasible in one human being. Soon after his arrival onstage, it's clear why he won the unofficial award in rehearsals for "most words per minute." Hold tight. This is quite a trip. Obeng starts off by givi...

“Early one morning last February, a man turned up on my doorstep who had travelled through the night to get there,” said Sugata Mitra, the education reformer who received the 2013 TED Prize. “This schoolteacher wanted to do something positive for his village, which had no electricity, health care or primary education … It was just the kind o...

A design competition to reimagine death. 100 percent of the human population will die, and yet, why don’t we design for this inevitable outcome? OpenIDEO, design and innovation firm IDEO’s online innovation platform, has launched a new public design challenge to “reimagine the end of life experience.” BJ Miller is an advisor on the project a...

What's that too-often quoted aphorism? "Good artists copy; great artists steal"? In this nuanced conversation, biologist and founder of Biomimicry 3.8 Janine Benyus speaks with Tim Brown, chief executive of IDEO, to discuss what's really interesting about borrowing. Tim Brown: As a creative person, I’ve always believed that I can’t be creativ...

Brainstorms can be painful and they're not always productive, but The Onion has perfected an approach that results in a higher number of good ideas. Writer and ex-Onion staffer Brian Janosch shares their process. This post is part of TED’s “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TE...

Invented here. There. And, well, everywhere. This year’s TEDWomen is dedicated to out-of-the-box thinking from women around the globe. TEDWomen 2013 will take place on December 4th through 6th in San Francisco -- but the whole world will be watching. There are 220 TEDxWomen events being held in 58 countries, each tuning into the webcast of the a...

The public education system in the US has been the same for over a century, with teachers talking at students and giving them tests. But at Iowa BIG, teens address their community's most pressing needs -- and the results are benefiting them and their town. In 2012, some members of the community in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, asked, “What should school ...

Today we’re debuting a new original video series on Facebook Watch called Small Thing Big Idea: Designs That Changed the World. Each 3- to 4-minute weekly episode takes a brief but delightful look at the lasting genius of one everyday object – a pencil, for example, or a hoodie – and explains how it is so perfectly designed that it’s actually...

Here are 8 insider tips to creating a great audition video for the TEDNYC Idea Search. 1. Distill your idea. In a 1-minute video, you have about 150 words to describe your proposed TED Talk. So you can't -- and you don't have to -- give every single detail of your idea. Instead, focus on the big question that your talk will answer, such a...

First, watch this wonderful new promo for TED’s mobile app -- a wander through five countries and communities, linked by a love for great ideas. TED's filmmakers asked the help of five TEDx organizers to make a video highlighting TED’s mobile app, the result became something much more: visual evidence that ideas bring people together. ...

You have an idea. A good one – one that will make people think. But giving a TED Talk on a stage in front of an audience? Well, that doesn’t quite feel like the right way to express it. If giving a traditional TED Talk isn’t your style, you may be excited to hear about The OpenTED Project — a new experimental initiative launching today to uncov...