2010 Tom Chatfield on 7 ways games reward the brain

Games reward brains by 1) experience bars (real-time, not post-hoc measures of progress), 2) multiple short- and long-term aims (gets interest unsustainable by a single goal) 3) rewards for effort (even for trying) 4) feedback (to clearly link action with consequences) 5) an element of uncertainty (possibility of unknown rewards besides known ones) 6) windows of enhanced attention( that increase retention & risk appetite) and 7) collaboration opportunites.

2010 R A Mashelkar on breakthrough designs for ultra-low-cost products

'Gandhian Engineering' combines innovation, compassion and passion to 'get more from less for more' to generate not just value for money, but value for many, and is exemplified by ultra-low-cost products like the $2000 Tata Nano (cheaper than the $19700 Model T) and $28 Jaipur foot (usable on rougher terrain than $20000 prosthetic limbs!).

2010 Tim Jackson's economic reality check

To respond to the dilemma of 'trash-the-system-or-crash-the-planet', we must replace the current economy's obsession with consumption-driven growth (forcing us to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about), with a system that harnesses our altruism and innovation through enterprises with ecological and social goals like Ecosia.

2010 Steven Johnson on where good ideas come from

More breakthroughs happen at conference tables and weekly lab meetings than while poring over a microscope, and don't always arrive in a flash but are the result of slow hunches with people patiently allowing ideas to 'fade into view' unhindered by deadlines and hence it is advisable for organizations to adopt 'hunch cultivating mechanisms' like Google's 20% innovation time.

2010 Nicholas Christakis on how social networks predict epidemics

Instead of blanket vaccination, targeted vaccination of people in the central nodes of a social network (found by a survey asking members to nominate other members with more friends than them) is more effective in achieving herd immunity and besides control of epidemics, availability of such data from social networks heralds the beginning of Computational Social Science as a valid discipline.

2010 Chris Anderson on how web video powers global innovation

Astonishingly rapid cycles of improvement in fields as diverse as experimental microbiology and unicycling  are now being driven by people watching web videos, which provide unprecedented visibility, a means to quickly spot-light top-performers and overcome the limitations of the written word by instead harnessing humankind's evolutionarily fine-tuned specialty of face-to-face conversation .

2010 Ben Cameron on the true power of the performing arts

The Internet has democratized the means of artistic production and distribution in an unprecedented way, causing the emergence of new species of artists like 'pro-ams' (amateurs performing at a professional level) and 'professional hybrid artists' (voluntary performers for charitable causes) whose work is redefining the role of traditional cultural institutions as profoundly as the Reformation did the Church.

2010 Sugata Mitra on the child-driven education

Drawing on the successes of the Hole-in-the-Wall experiments, an illustration of which is the astonishing performance of a group of 26 twelve-year old Tamil-speaking students in a biotechnology class in English, Self Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs) offer a promising solution to our need of educating 1 billion children, with an investment of 180 billion dollars over 10 years.

2010 Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

The looming Latin American food crisis which served as an impetus for large-scale adoption of zero-till mulch-farming (which both quadruples yield and sequesters carbon), is an example of a planetary risk driving transformative change of a kind that is necessary to keep unchecked human activity from tipping the biosphere off its stable Holocene state which made civilization possible.

2010 Nic Marks on the Happy Planet Index

Instead of minute-by-minute Dow Jones updates that supposedly monitor the heath of the economy, society may benefit more from daily updates of, say, America's energy usage, in a manner that is not alarmist but actionable, serving as a progress ticker for the collective goal of getting the most 'happy life years' (happiness-adjusted life expectancy) with the least 'ecological footprint' (resource use).

2010 Jim Toomey on learning from Sherman the Shark

If we went by geography books alone, then the oceans are just a big puddle of blue paint, while in reality they teem with wondrous life-forms putting comic-book superheroes to shame, like the sea-cucumber (a web-spinning underwater Spiderman) and blowfish(the Incredible Hulk), and comic strips featuring them are a potent means to aid conservation efforts against marine-dumping and shark-finning.

2010 David McCandless on the beauty of data visualization

Elegant solutions to today's information problems of overload and lack of transparency, lie in visualization, which affords both compression and contextual awareness, like the 'Billion Dollar-o-gram' which shows that if budgets were squares on your monitor, then the combined African debt would be a tiny postage stamp, while the global cost of the recent financial crisis would cover the whole monitor!

2010 Jason Clay on how big brands can help save biodiversity

Considering that just 100 companies control as much as 25% of the trade of the top 15 commodities with the maximum environmental footprint, sustainability has become a 'pre-competitive issue' on which these companies must co-operate to evolve and enforce best-practices and standards, thereby pushing producers to adopt more sustainable practices faster than consumers and NGOs alone can.

2010 Sheryl WuDunn on our century's greatest injustice

The stark statistic of today's cross-border sex-slavery being tenfold that of the slavery of the 1780s, highlights gender inequity as our century's greatest moral challenge and recent success stories show that investment in girls' education in the developing world can lead to smaller families with wiser spending habits, offering donors return-on-investment in the form of a world less prone to violence.

2010 Laurie Santos on a monkey economy as irrational as ours

Human decision-making in market settings is beset by psychological biases of relativity and loss-aversion, which are also demonstrated in experiments with capuchin monkeys, suggesting that the error-proneness of humans is evolutionarily inherited rather than an unintended consequence of complex technological design.

2010 Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing

Being able to exercise independent choice from a multitude of options, which is considered non-negotiable in America is not accorded such priority in other cultures,and having to contend unaided with choices is not always desirable, especially in conditions where choice induces guilt or when differences between options are imperceptible.

2010 Rob Cook on the Singularity Delusion

The basic flaw in (long time TEDster Ray Kurzweil's) singularity is that it does not account for what we don't know about how we do what we do

Nikhil Bhojwani Carbon Footprint Offsets for Consumers

I'm trying to drum up support for this idea that's a finalist at a competition organized by Lexus at TED 2010. The basic idea is to let consumers pay for their carbon offsets if they choose to do so and to allow them to gain points/ status that they can use on their social networks. If you like the idea, please leave a comment on the youtube site. Thanks!

2010 Jamie Oliver

You fat slobs!

2010 Daniel Kahneman on experiencing happiness and remembering it

Happy in your life is different from happy about your life and memories are often based on how stories end and are remembered rather than the actual sum total experience

2010 William Li on angiogenesis balance as the cure-all

The act of eating is like chemotherapy 3 times a day and anti-angiogenic foods (Earl Grey tea, combinations of teas even better, berries, parsley, soy, dark chocolate, red grapes, red wine, tomatoes...) can help prevent cancer.

2010 David Cameron on enlightened government

The goal of society should be wellbeing and getting there requires the right political will enabled by technology /transparency as we move from the bureaucratic age (centralized power) into the post-bureacuratic age (people power).

2010 Esther Duflo on evidence based policy

You can take the guesswork out of policy decisions by applying randomized controlled experiments

2010 Omar Ahmad on how to influence your elected representative

Handwrite a letter, para 1 - appreciate something, para 2 - bluntly state the issue, para 3 - offer a way out, para 4 - offer help and send the original to the local office and a copy to DC.

2010 Margaret Stewart on progressive rights controls

Empowering sharing of digital information through rights clarification can be a win-win - basically an appeal to rights' holders to set permissive rules on their content in You Tube's content matching database

2010 Tom Wujec on the marshmallow challenge

Given a simple collaborative challenge, performance of different groups as follows:
new b-school students < average person < CEOs < kindergartners < CEOs+admins
(order of CEO vs. kindergartners may have been switched, but the point made is the same)

2010 Keith Ferrazzi on being your own glass ceiling

Understand your dreams, then identify the 5 people who matter the most to that dream and enlist them as partners

2010 Katie Stanton on technology and the government

Technology creates a new nervous system of information and monetary flows that empowers and enables government e.g. Haiti donations and help needed information via texting

2010 Doug Randall on crowdsourcing intelligence insights

Insight that comes from crowdsourcing is better than a data dump.

2010 Derek Sivers on the "first follower"

Leadership is over glorified - It's the first follower who turns the lone nut into a leader by the act of following and that's a heroic role to play.

2010 Jennifer McCrea on exponential fund raising

People do not give to the needs of your organization, they give to join you in achieving your vision.

2010 Kevin Surace

I saved a window manufacturing plant

2010 Suzie Katz on photography

Always look for the light...AND the shadow

2010 Robert Gupta on the powers of music

Music is transformative in a healing way and I've seen it in Nathaniel Anthony Ayers' eyes

2010 Janet Baker on the engineering inside our brains

Variety is the spice of life because novelty "excites" us as shown by brain responses over time to semantic stimuli

2010 Neil Izenberg on why babies are cute

Babies are cute because of the law of the survival of the cutest - true for design, true for animal right's groups

2010 Cindy Gallop on microactions to change the world

Turn good intentions into actions by changing the world microaction at a time (enabled by a social web tool)

2010 Phil Zimbardo on "heroes are us"

Villains and heroes are the exceptions, the vast majority of people do nothing of imagination: a new conception of heroism needs to be democratized (anyone), demystified (ordinary people, extraordinary acts), diffused (hero networks) and declared (public commitment to be a hero)

2010 Juliana Machado Ferreira on what happens after the good guys arrive

Saving trafficked animals does not end at the rescue - there needs to be a way to responsibly release the animals back into the wild rather than euthanize them.

2010 Jonathan Drori on pollen

Pollen is tiny, biologically active, engages in promiscuous sex, sticks onto things (leaves a forensic trail) and is generally really cool ;)

2010 Jessica Green on micro ecosystems

The crease between your arms is a tropical rain forest

2010 Jonathan Klein on images that change the world

When you are faced with a photograph that is difficult to look at you can make a choice to turn away or do something; we bring to each image our own values

2010 Frederik Balagadde on microdiagnostics

Similar technologies to those that allowed miniaturization of electronics are now allowing miniaturization of diagnostics - think of a micro fluid system analogous to a microchip.

2010 David Bolinsky says, "see your dermatologist"

Tanning kills

2010 Kevin R. Stone on bioware

Use biologic tissue to regrow damaged human tissue or replace it with human or animal donor tissue (primed with your stem cells) instead of doing artificial joint replacement and harness the benefits of 400 million years of evolution.

2010 Daniel Kraft races through a swathe of medic technologies

Exponentially more powerful and cheaper technology and data will transform the health care paradigm through targeted personalized interventions that will move us towards stage 0 medicine.

2010 Felix Kramer on throwing away his running shoes

Shoes do nothing to protect runners, in fact it's safer to run bare foot because you land better

2010 Catherine Mohr on sustainability choices

Often it's not where you expect that the sustainability benefit (or cost) lies

Michael Martin on reaction to recession same as to a Tornado

Stay positive, provide leadership, control your senses, stay safe, it will ultimately pass