TED Business

Robin Chase: Excuse me, may I rent your car?

A decade ago, Robin Chase founded Zipcar in the US, now the largest car-sharing company in the world. Now she's exploring the next level of car-sharing: Buzzcar, a French startup that lets people rent their own cars to others. The details are fascinating (how does insurance work, exactly?), and the…

19 Dec 2012 12 min

Jeff Smith: Lessons in business … from prison

Jeff Smith spent a year in prison. But what he discovered inside wasn’t what he expected -- he saw in his fellow inmates boundless ingenuity and business savvy. He asks: Why don't we tap this entrepreneurial potential to help ex-prisoners contribute to society once they're back outside?

6 Dec 2012 5 min

Ludwick Marishane: A bath without water

If you had to walk a mile for a jug of water every day, as millions of people do, it's unlikely you'd use that precious water to bathe. Young entrepreneur Ludwick Marishane tells the amazing, funny story of how he invented a cheap, clean and convenient solution: DryBath, the world’s…

5 Dec 2012 5 min

Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

When most well-intentioned aid workers hear of a problem they think they can fix, they go to work. This, Ernesto Sirolli suggests, is naïve. In this funny and impassioned talk, he proposes that the first step is to listen to the people you're trying to help, and tap into their…

29 Nov 2012 17 min

Pankaj Ghemawat: Actually, the world isn't flat

It may seem that we're living in a borderless world where ideas, goods and people flow freely from nation to nation. We're not even close, says Pankaj Ghemawat. With great data (and an eye-opening survey), he argues that there's a delta between perception and reality in a world that's maybe…

23 Oct 2012 17 min

Eddie Obeng: Smart failure for a fast-changing world

The world is changing much more rapidly than most people realize, says business educator Eddie Obeng -- and creative output cannot keep up. In this spirited talk, he highlights three important changes we should understand for better productivity, and calls for a stronger culture of “smart failure."

17 Oct 2012 12 min

Tim Leberecht: 3 ways to (usefully) lose control of your brand

The days are past (if they ever existed) when a person, company or brand could tightly control their reputation -- online chatter and spin mean that if you're relevant, there's a constant, free-form conversation happening about you that you have no control over. Tim Leberecht offers three big ideas about…

9 Oct 2012 6 min

Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even…

2 Oct 2012 21 min

Rachel Botsman: The currency of the new economy is trust

There's been an explosion of collaborative consumption -- web-powered sharing of cars, apartments, skills. Rachel Botsman explores the currency that makes systems like Airbnb and Taskrabbit work: trust, influence, and what she calls "reputation capital."

25 Sep 2012 19 min

Andrew Blum: What is the Internet, really?

When a squirrel chewed through a cable and knocked him offline, journalist Andrew Blum started wondering what the Internet was really made of. So he set out to go see it -- the underwater cables, secret switches and other physical bits that make up the net.

21 Sep 2012 11 min

Robert Neuwirth: The power of the informal economy

Robert Neuwirth spent four years among the chaotic stalls of street markets, talking to pushcart hawkers and gray marketers, to study the remarkable "System D," the world's unlicensed economic network. Responsible for some 1.8 billion jobs, it's an economy of underappreciated power and scope.

7 Sep 2012 12 min

Margaret Heffernan: Dare to disagree

Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers -- and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.

7 Aug 2012 12 min

Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world

The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four core principles that show how this open world can be…

1 Jun 2012 17 min

Baba Shiv: Sometimes it's good to give up the driver's seat

Over the years, research has shown a counterintuitive fact about human nature: That sometimes, having too much choice makes us less happy. This may even be true when it comes to medical treatment. Baba Shiv shares a fascinating study that measures why choice opens the door to doubt, and suggests…

1 May 2012 9 min

Nirmalya Kumar: India's invisible innovation

Can India become a global hub for innovation? Nirmalya Kumar thinks it already has. He details four types of "invisible innovation" currently coming out of India and explains why companies that used to just outsource manufacturing jobs are starting to move top management positions overseas, too. (Filmed at TEDxLondonBusinessSchool.)

1 Apr 2012 15 min

Rob Reid: The $8 billion iPod

Comic author Rob Reid unveils Copyright Math (TM), a remarkable new field of study based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists.

1 Mar 2012 5 min

Drew Curtis: How I beat a patent troll

Drew Curtis, the founder of fark.com, tells the story of how he fought a lawsuit from a company that had a patent, "...for the creation and distribution of news releases via email." Along the way he shares some nutty statistics about the growing legal problem of frivolous patents.

1 Feb 2012 6 min

José Bowen: Beethoven the businessman

The revolution that made music more marketable, more personal and easier to pirate began ... at the dawn of the nineteenth-century. At TEDxSMU, José Bowen outlines how new printing technology and an improved piano gave rise to the first music industry and influenced a generation of composers.

1 Dec 2011 13 min

Shlomo Benartzi: Saving for tomorrow, tomorrow

It's easy to imagine saving money next week, but how about right now? Generally, we want to spend it. Economist Shlomo Benartzi says this is one of the biggest obstacles to saving enough for retirement, and asks: How do we turn this behavioral challenge into a behavioral solution?

1 Nov 2011 17 min

Michael Norton: How to buy happiness

At TEDxCambridge, Michael Norton shares fascinating research on how money can, indeed buy happiness -- when you don't spend it on yourself. Listen for surprising data on the many ways pro-social spending can benefit you, your work, and (of course) other people.

1 Nov 2011 12 min