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.