Inspiration Innovation and Motivation for the CTO

July 23, 2008 By BobGourley

Looking for a little inspiration and motivation to drive your innovation? Take a short break from the daily grind and watch the top ten TED talks of all time:

http://www.ted.com/talks/top10

From the TED site:

“With speakers like neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor and global health expert Hans Rosling, the list proves one of the compelling ideas behind TEDTalks: that an unknown speaker with a powerful idea can reach — and move — a global audience through the power of quality web video.”

My favorite, for some reason, is the incredible undersea videos of David Gallo (see Underwater Astonishments). I’ve already written a bit about another favorite, the Photosynth demos of Blaise Aguera y Arcas (see “Jaw-dropping Photosynth demo“).

As for TED, it stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. TED holds an annual conference where the world’s greatest thinkers come together to exchange thoughts. These talks are made available to the public. So you don’t have to be invited to the conference to benefit from the knowledge exchanged there.

After watching the top ten talks, you may want to consider signing up on the TED site. Membership is free (but joining the site doesn’t mean you can attend the conference! read more about that on their site).