TED TALKS: Stretching the Imagination of Leaders

In this week’s Time magazine, Harvard professor, medical doctor, and chronic disease specialist Dr. Paul Farmer discusses efforts to relieve poverty and chronic disease in Haiti.  Farmer declares that our efforts to eradicate poverty, hunger, and chronic disease have not failed because of lack of knowledge or technology; rather he asserts, the failure is due to a lack of imagination (2013, p. 60).  In the Smithsonian Museum of American History, an entire exhibit is devoted to the American spirit of creativity and innovation.  Commenting on the importance of these attributes to the development of America, the exhibit notes, “From science and technology to the arts, a dynamic interaction of ideas, traditions, and talents has fueled new achievements and influenced the national experience.”

More recently, however, significant criticism has been leveled against the American education system for its overemphasis on standardized testing and a general apathy toward encouraging creativity and innovation (Robinson, 2011).  From this lens, in 1984 the first TED TALK emerged as an effort to cultivate creative thinking about our future in a variety of disciplines.  An annual conference began in 1990 and since then each year the TED Talk conference provides about thought leaders from across the globe a twenty-minute forum to share compelling ideas about improving humanity.  A non-profit organization, TED (technology, entertainment and design) provides free web access to these twenty-minute conversations as a “clearinghouse [of] free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers” (TED mission statement, n.d.).  The effort yielded a strong community of followers that began gathering annually to exchange ideas.  These ideas were recorded and placed on the internet for use by people around the world.  In November of 2012, TED Talks reached their billionth view validating the importance of using the internet as a medium for addressing and solving major global problems (TED reaches billionth viewer, 2012).  Arguably, accessing creative thinking through the internet confirms Friedman’s notion that technology enhances opportunity and access to the world’s thought leaders (2007).  Just this week, TED talks conducted its first television broadcast further introducing to the world its provocative, challenging, and compelling ideas for global consumption. 

In the university setting, faculty members rely on TED talks to promote classroom discussion of innovation, risk-taking, and change. TED Talks can be embedded within power points, videos, online learning modules, or other presentations.  Further, the brevity of the TED talks contributes to their effectiveness.  Students stay engaged in the discussion and the potential for blogging with millions of other viewers fosters collaborative interchange as well as potential networking connections. 

Leaders may use TED Talks to stay abreast of emerging trends related to their particular industry or discipline.  For example, during our university strategic planning discussions, we used several TED talks to facilitate small group conversations on such diverse issues as healthcare developments or new teaching/learning strategies (TED, 2013). 

Moreover, one important attribute of a leader is staying attune of emerging trends.  TED Talks provide a mechanism for leaders in all industries to continually stretch their thinking and connect with more diverse, global perspectives.  The following link provides access to several of the most popular TED talks. http://www.ted.com/playlists/77/new_to_ted.html

 

The TED Talks have diversified to include various focus areas:  women (TED WOMEN); global issues (TEDx); and local issues (TED).  Perhaps, a drawback of TED Talks is that they do not go into significant detail.  Typically, the talks provide a brief introduction to an emerging trend without specifying the details.  Some may argue that this limits the effectiveness of the tool.  Further, many of the ideas presented are philosophical constructs and fail to provide guidance on actual implementation strategies for the concepts. 

Other Technology Explorations and Their Impact in Higher Education

Higher education benefits from the inclusion of numerous digital technologies.  The online teaching faculty at our institution rely on Google docs and other cloud hosting technologies to exchange material and to collaborate on the development of lesson plans, learning projects and service learning efforts.  Furthermore, given my personal struggle with bookmarking content on the web, I investigated the Diigo web tool (www.diigo.com).  This tool enables the user to add virtual highlights, sticky notes, and bookmarks of important web content as well as save pictures of websites, take screen shots and cut and paste graphs and other important content for future use.  The user can then categorize and classify it for organizational purposes.  It is a relatively easy and free tool; however, some of the functions are not compatible with the IPAD. 

Overall, technology tools enable leaders to better leverage important knowledge on the web and use such knowledge in productive and efficient ways to improve the workplace and more importantly to stimulate the imagination to become creative problem solvers. 

 

Friedman, T.L.   The world is flat.  New York, NY:  Picador

Robinson, K. (2011).  Out of our minds.  Westford, MA:  Capstone.

TED:  Inspiring Ideas.  Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/

TED reaches its billionth video view. Ted Blog.  Retrieved from http://blog.ted.com/2012/11/13/ted-reaches-its-billionth-video-view/

 Ten Questions. Time Magazine, May 13, 2013, 60. 

Treasures of American History. National Museum of American History.  Retrieved from http://americanhistory.si.edu/treasures/creativity-and-innovation

www.diigo.com