What TED’s told us about the power of ideas

Every competitive organisation knows that a stream of fresh ideas is the “secret sauce” to keep them out front, especially in a world where “disruption” has become the new normal.  

The problem is how to get them. While it’s an age-old question, focus on it has started to snowball in recent years.

Just look at how many employees today have “innovation” in their titles. Whole teams are now dedicated to “ideation”, offices have purpose-built “innovation zones”, and a web search of “how to get ideas from employees” serves up literally hundreds of blogs.

That’s not surprising: innovative thinking in businesses is hard to uncover. It can reside in the most unexpected places, and is often held by employees who don’t “do” innovation. It’s made tougher as most employees are relentlessly executing rather than thinking, and very few even know the right channels or champions to have their ideas heard.

The collision of these factors was a catalyst for the creation of the TED Institute.

TED, which started as a conference in 1984, launched the TED Institute in 2013 to partner with organisations to draw out employees with ideas worth spreading. The TED Institute puts the employees through the same regimen that prepares speakers for the TED main stage. Intensive one-on-one development with a curator and speaker coach helps refine their ideas into a compelling format and the process culminates in an event hosted by TED. The talks are then freely shared with a global audience via TED.com.

Today, we’re hosting our first ever Australian-based Institute with Westpac, our newest TED Institute partner. Fifteen speakers are taking to the stage, covering topics as diverse as how to root out slavery in the supply chain, to how to bring more Indigenous Australians into the technology field, to the case for talking more about death.

This diversity reflects our ethos that the ideas we help unlock must be worth sharing. We do not allow talks that simply promote a company or product. As a non-profit, our mission is grounded in spreading ideas, not commercial gain. Indeed, any money earned through our partnerships and conferences is poured back into TED to ensure TED Talks are available for free and support initiatives like the independent TEDx community, TEDEd, TEDFellows and TED Translator programs.