This article was written by Ashley Brown, Team Lead for Customer Success at OpenSesame.
This April, I had the incredible opportunity to attend TED2024, TED’s annual conference that brings thought leaders and innovators from around the world together to share new ideas on a variety of relevant topics. For anyone who is not familiar with TED, the organization’s mission is to discover and champion the ideas that will shape tomorrow. TED believes powerful ideas, powerfully presented, can move us to feel something, to think differently, to take action and create a brighter future. Attending TED2024 not only expanded my horizon but also provided actionable insights that can directly enhance how we approach learning and development in the workplace.
A brief event summary
The theme for TED2024 was “The Brave and the Brilliant,” and this resonated through every aspect of the event. Each day, speakers were grouped into cohorts based on their session topic that included Mind-Expanders, System Changers, Bridge-Builders, Connectors and more. During the event’s opening session, TED unveiled its new tagline: “Ideas change everything.” The tagline became a thread that ran through every talk and breakout, as speakers pushed boundaries, encouraged critical thinking and called attendees to action. The range of topics included AI, robotics, sustainability, democracy and peace activism. Not to mention, quantum computing, which remains partly a mystery—to my relief not only to me, but also a large part of the audience.
The conference included both virtual and in-person attendees. The in-person experience was completely immersive, and in a world where so many things have moved to hybrid or remote, it was so invigorating to gather in a group to tackle topics like artificial intelligence, climate change, better ways of giving, conflict resolution, and so much more.
Event takeaways
While the electric atmosphere of TED2024 might seem a world away from the day-to-day operations of most workplaces, the ideas and innovations shared there have practical applications that can transform our professional environments.
At OpenSesame, we believe that TED’s mission—which inspires curiosity, openness, and critical thinking—can be a powerful driver of organizational culture. By exploring TED@Work courses that resonate with themes such as ‘mind-expanders’ or ‘system changers,’ you can begin to unlock new levels of creativity and collaboration among your teams.
Let’s dive into how you can leverage these resources from TED to not only inspire your workforce but also drive meaningful change.
Harness the power of AI in your workplace
AI is already changing the landscape of L&D. Industry professionals are using AI for content creation, language localization, and more. Although AI certainly won’t replace human expertise, even the smallest teams (in some cases, especially the smallest teams!) can leverage its capabilities to design immersive, multilingual learning experiences to support a global workforce.
I must admit, I was relieved to find that I wasn’t the only person still wrapping my head around all that AI encompasses and what it can do. If you, or anyone on your team is in this boat, TED has a wide variety of courses to help improve your foundational understanding of AI and how you can embrace it in your workplace. Here are a few:
- What is an AI anyway? | Mustafa Suleyman (new in June 2024!)
- How to get empowered, not overpowered, by AI | Max Tegmark
- How AI will step off the screen and into the real world | Daniela Rus (new in June 2024!)
- Leadership in the age of AI | Paul Hudson and Lindsay Levin
Connect your company’s mission and impact to the day-to-day
Encourage your organization to think critically about its mission and impact on the community, and how this shows up in your team’s daily work. A cornerstone of TED’s mission is to move people to feel, to think, and to take action. This showed up in every aspect of the event, and left me and many others thinking about our work, and how to tie our daily activities directly back to our mission and impact on our surrounding community.
If you’d like to reinvigorate your own team by taking a fresh look at the why behind your work, how you can maximize your impact (and maybe reduce your footprint in the process), here are some resources to help you start:
- What nature can teach us about sustainable business | Erin Meezan
- How business can improve the world, not just the bottom line | Esha Chhabra (new in June 2024!)
- The power of purpose in business | Ashley M. Grice
- The case for letting business solve social problems | Michael Porter
Cultivate a safe space for difficult conversations and collaborative growth
If there was one thing that stood out the most to me during TED2024, it was the way TED created a space where everyone embraced curiosity and respect. Speakers were able to share provocative, or even controversial ideas, and as an audience, we were able to appreciate the speaker’s perspective, even if we did not agree with it.
It’s arguably easier to listen with an open mind at an event where you’re removed from the daily stress of your workplace, and one where you’ve arrived knowing you’re going to hear from groundbreaking individuals who have the goal of changing your perspective. However, I think we could all benefit from more “respectful curiosity” in our personal and professional lives. Any of the talks below can help bring some of that spirit into your workplace:
- Why being respectful to your coworkers is good for business | Christine Porath
- How to speak so that people want to listen | Julian Treasure
- How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott (new in June 2024!)
- 4 things all great listeners know | TED-Ed (new in June 2024!)
Bringing TED2024 home
A few repeat conference attendees shared the concept of a “TED-ache”—a headache that results from digesting so many incredible, powerful ideas in such a short period of time. As I recovered from my own TED-ache, one of my key takeaways is that the path to innovation and transformative change is through continuous learning and openness to new perspectives.
At OpenSesame, we are excited to bridge the gap between these global insights and your daily professional challenges. By integrating TED’s inspired learning into your workplace, you not only enhance the skill sets within your team but also foster an environment ripe for innovation and impactful change. My hope is that the curated TED courses linked here (and so many others available through our catalog) can help inspire and share your organization’s future and create spaces that value curiosity, encourage critical thinking, and embrace the transformative power of ideas.