As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights.

A 4.37-lightyear starshot. Humanity has sent people to the moon and rovers to Mars. It might be about time we embark on interstellar travel. Russian philanthropist Yuri Milner, along with board member Stephen Hawking, unveiled a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of iPhone-sized robots to our closest star, Alpha Centauri. Led by Pete Worden, a former director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, this bold initiative will take 20 years to get off the ground and another 20, roughly, to make the 4.37-lightyear journey. If completed, Hawking says, it will propel humans further into what we’re made for: “Today we commit to the next great leap in the cosmos, because we are human and our nature is to fly.” (Watch Stephen’s TED Talk)

A chemistry-driven 3D printer you can buy. At TED2015, Joseph DeSimone introduced a radical new 3D printing technology prototype that creates objects out of a puddle of liquid (inspired, DeSimone admits, by Terminator 2). Through Continuous Liquid Interface Production, the chemical interplay between light and oxygen is harnessed to print objects 25-100 faster than standard 3D printing. This month DeSimone’s company, Carbon3D, debuted the M1, its first commercially available printer. (Watch Joseph’s TED Talk)

Health that zips through the sky. Drones — ominous, unmanned vehicles in the sky with the power to destroy, or, alternatively, bring hope and health to thousands worldwide. The latter is Keller Rinaudo and his company Zipline’s mission. Working with governments of developing countries, “Zipline plans to use its drone fleet to deliver medications to rural clinics all over the developing world,” says Olga Khazan in The Atlantic. Their first flights will begin this July in Rwanda. (Watch Keller’s TED Talk)

The surprising paradox of an elephant’s brain.  What about the human brain gives us greater cognitive abilities than other animals?  Suzane Herculano-Houzel believes the answer lies in the absolute number of neurons contained in an animal’s brain rather than the brain’s mass. But the African elephant poses an interesting, and enlightening, paradox to her research. She discovered that the African elephant’s brain–more than 3 times heavier than our brain–contained more neurons, but the location of those neurons plays a pivotal role in the difference between our cognitive ability and the elephant’s. (Watch Suzane’s TED Talk)

Stories from home. StoryCorps, which recently celebrated its own anniversary, announced a partnership with Fun Home to celebrate the Tony-winning musical’s one-year anniversary on Broadway. Stories will be available from Fun Home’s cast and creative team, and fans are encouraged to record their own stories using the StoryCorps app. The collaboration was born at the 2015 StoryCorps gala, which celebrated OutLoud, StoryCorp’s multi-year project to capture LGBT stories from around the country. (Watch Dave’s TED Talk and read his stories on TED’s Ideas blog)

Remembering the Bosnian War. Janine Di Giovanni, with radio in hand, listened to a Bosnian Muslim commander’s plea for help in 1993: “In the name of God, do something…We are dying here.” In a new Newsweek piece, she remembers what it was like reporting on the Bosnian War and the pain afflicted by President Radovan Karadžić, who in March was found guilty of 10 war crimes, including genocide, by a UN tribunal at The Hague. (Watch Janine’s TED Talk)

Oil fields ablaze. “Twenty-five years ago, as the United States–led coalition started driving out Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Saddam Hussein’s troops responded by setting ablaze hundreds of oil wells, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in recent memory,” recalls photojournalist Sebastião Salgado in The New York Times. He describes his admiration for the oil-well firefighters and the difficulty of photographing in such an extreme environment: “the heat warped one of my lenses and my jaws ached from the sheer tension of being exposed for hours to scalding temperatures.” In his signature black-and-white, Salgado captures the drama of the burning landscape–the giant clouds of smoke and flame spilling into the air, the firefighters covered in oil–with this reminder, “We must remember that in the brutality of battle another such apocalypse is always just around the corner.” (Watch Sebastiao’s TED Talk)

A blend of theater and journalism.  Playwright Anna Deavere Smith is famous for her bold mix of theater and journalism, capturing the experiences of her subjects in interviews and translating them, verbatim, onto the stage.  On April 5, she received the 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship. The award will fund her latest project, Notes from the Field: Doing Time in Education, which explores the school-to-prison pipeline. (Watch Anna’s TED Talk)

(Several other 2016 Guggenheim grantees have great TED Talks too, including poet Stephen Burt, musicologist Ge Wang, photographer Hasan Elahi, and neuroscientist Rajesh Rao. And watch soon for a talk from choreographer and TED Fellow Camille A. Brown.)

“Animal” shouldn’t be an insult. Humans have friends, but animals have “affiliation partners”; humans have sex, but animals have “breeding behavior.” But as primatologist Frans de Waal points out, humans laugh … and animals do too. In The New York Times, de Waal looks at the dangers of the linguistic pedestals we have erected over the animal kingdom, and suggests that humbling ourselves to recognize the true capabilities of animals is a mark of progress. Our human brilliance and the animal in us are not mutually exclusive: “There is nothing wrong with the recognition that we are apes — smart ones perhaps, but apes nonetheless… The more we succeed, the more we will realize that we are not the only intelligent life on earth.” (Watch Fran’s TED Talk)

Why safety should affect college rankings.  As college acceptance season hits its climax with students preparing to make a decision by May 1, Michael Kimmel puts forward a provocative idea on how to make college campuses safer. In Time, he suggests incorporating campus safety data into the Princeton Review’s college rankings. While current crime data for the rankings is self-reported, most ranking information comes from an annual survey of 100,000 students, “the real experts,” and Kimmel believes that this survey should include student opinions on safety and sexual violence. By incorporating this information into the ranking system, it “would help students make informed choices — and help hold schools accountable.” (Watch Michael’s TED Talk)

Have a news item to share? Write us at [email protected] and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.

Abandoned school turned maker space. Theaster Gates turns Chicago’s abandoned buildings into thriving hubs for art and education. His next project? Turning an old elementary school into a maker space. Gates heads Place Lab, a think tank that fuses the brainpower of urban planners, architects, artists and other diverse professionals to create “culture-led neighborhood transformation”. Gates and his Place Lab team will soon turn this school into a collaborative space for job training, education and design fabrication, as well a place for youth to explore culture and identity. (Watch Theaster’s TED Talk)

“Be yourself” is bad advice. An alternative: Before taking the TED stage for the first time, Adam Grant – nervous and eager to impress — asked his colleagues and friends for advice and they all said the same thing: be yourself. Turns out, Grant says, that was lousy advice. Our world is obsessed with authenticity, but as Grant outlines in The New York Times, those who take their behavioral cues from the outside environment go further in their careers, are more likely to try again after failure, and more likely to be of service to others. Ultimately, Grant suggests, sincerity in striving to be the best version of yourself, regardless of what’s on the inside, has a higher payoff: “As an introvert, I started my career terrified of public speaking so my authentic self wouldn’t have been giving a TED Talk in the first place. But being passionate about sharing knowledge…I decided to be the person I claimed to be, one who is comfortable in the spotlight.” (Watch Adam’s TED Talk)

New action on gun control. Awareness alone is not enough — action is what makes change. Over 2,2000 supporters of The Brady Campaign, Dan Gross’ organization to reduce gun deaths and injuries, called the office of Senator Chuck Schumer, asking him to introduce Brady Bill 2.0. Spurred by the calls, Senator Schumer introduced the bill mere hours later on May 16.  A followup to previous legislation, Brady Bill 2.0 will expand universal background checks on gun sales. This mobilizing achievement is the latest of The Brady Campaign’s tremendous effort, read more here. (Watch Dan’s TED Talk)

An advocate for North Korean women. Hyenseo Lee’s dream to work with the UN or an NGO on human rights issues for North Korean refugees is set to become reality with a slight twist: the NGO is her own. Lee is in the process of setting up North Korean Women, an NGO that aims to help North Korean women living in North Korea, South Korea, China, and around the world.“Life as a North Korean defector is really painful. Women are sold as sex slaves to human traffickers or Chinese men. They are being tortured, are suffering, with no payment, but the sad thing is that even a 20- or 30-year-old North Korean woman being a sex slave or being sold as human merchandise to an old Chinese farmer prefers that situation to being repatriated to North Korea. It’s another hell to live in North Korea,” says Lee. (Watch Hyeonseo’s TED Talk)

A funny way to fight racism. Instead of just diversity panels and awkward trust falls, maybe comedy is the key to fighting racism. Negin Farsad, an Iranian-American Muslim comedian and filmmaker (and TED Fellow), wants to create tolerance through laughter. In fact, she’s been doing this for years, as shown in her documentary The Muslims Are Coming!. Last month, Farsad released a memoir, How to Make White People Laugh, chronicling her experience as an Iranian-American Muslim post-9/11 with blunt honesty and unabashed humor.

Diets: a losing battle. “If diets worked, we’d all be thin by now. Instead, we have enlisted hundreds of millions of people into a war we can’t win.” A frank, perhaps uncomfortable truth that Sandra Aamodt outlines in in her new book Why Diets Make Us Fat, coming out June 7. But with this knowledge comes hope for a better, more scientific approach to long term weight loss and an overall healthier lifestyle. (Watch Sandra’s TED Talk)

A better way to predict the future. We’ve all heard them, predictions about the future that are wildly off: hoverboards, an entire meal in a pill, and flying cars are just a few that come to mind. But in grappling with the future, Kevin Kelly’s The Inevitable (out June 7) takes a different tack, avoiding speculation about specific technologies that may emerge because “the specifics, the products, the particular institutions are completely unpredictable.” Instead, he breaks down the future of technology into 12 major trends, arguing that these trends are not only already happening, but that they will drive inevitable changes in the next 30 years. (Watch Kevin’s TED Talk)

The TED community has lots of news this week. Below, just a few highlights.

Motherhood without maternity leave. Imagine going back to work only 20 days after giving birth, using up all of your vacation days in lieu of paid or unpaid family leave. In a two-part series for The Atlantic, Jessica Shortall shares how a woman named Tara, after hearing her TED Talk, reached out to her on Facebook, opening up about her experiences. Tara later updated Jessica on the struggles of balancing work with regular nursing and the other demands of motherhood via text message conversations with Shortall, “Leaking thru shirt half way through a 3 hour meeting is pretty awkward. Wow. Glamorous.” Shortall makes not only the moral but also the economic case for paid family leave, as shown by findings of The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank: “Not only do household earnings rise when women go back to work following leave; the overall economy benefits as well.” (Watch Jessica’s TED Talk.)

The wisdom of our life’s work. We spend most of our waking hours working, but besides just making ends meet, is there wisdom to be found in the 9-5? In Time, Dave Isay, founder of StoryCorps, shares the ambitions, struggles and triumphs of working people, including recovering heroin addicts’ hope of opening a museum, a single fast-food-working mom turned forensic anthropologist, and a medical student who, after his father’s murder, became a teacher to help prevent disadvantaged youth from following a dangerous, criminal path. These and other stories are in Dave’s new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. (Watch Dave’s TED Talk)

A new “nude.” A nude color crayon or a cute pair of nude ballet flats — “nude” seems to mean “the color of white skin.” A new fashion-tech startup called Mia Pielle plans to challenge that, helping clients find clothes and accessories (like a great “nude” bra) to match their own shade. By analyzing 87 photographs of women all over the world by Angélica Daas, among other data sets, Mia Pielle settled on six skin tones from which a shopper can choose. It’s still in alpha, but this blend of art, fashion and tech should help finally eradicate the notion of one default skin tone. (Watch Angélica’s TED Talk)

The Pacific Northwest’s disaster forecast. On April 18, The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz took home the Pulitzer prize in Feature Writing for “The Really Big One.” In the piece, Schulz dives deep into the geology and history of the Cascadia subduction zone, a West Coast faultline overshadowed by its better known but less powerful cousin, the San Andreas, and its potential to unleash a devastating earthquake and tsunami on the Pacific Northwest. With humor and whimsical detail at odds with the piece’s gravity, Schulz reveals the shocking unpreparedness of the region to handle such a powerful quake, and ponders its significance  as a cautionary tale on our relationship to science and nature — and on our very relationship to time. (Watch Kathryn’s TED Talk)

COP21: Open for business.  In December 2015, after a lengthy and delayed process shepherded by Christiana Figueres, 195 countries adopted the first universal, legally-binding climate agreement in Paris. On April 22, not so coincidentally Earth Day, at the United Nations in New York, 130 countries are expected to sign the COP21 agreement, marking the beginning of a year-long period for signatures. At TED2016, Figueres spoke about the need for optimism to bring such a landmark agreement into being, an optimism she retains today, commenting that she believes the agreement is ahead of schedule and will come into effect by 2018 instead of 2020. (Watch Christiana’s TED Talk)

A city flag redesign. In his talk at TED2015, Roman Mars called out Pocatello, Idaho, for having the worst city flag in America. The talk stirred the small city (population 54,3500) into action: They’ve started a city flag design committee. Mars attended the first meeting on April 13 to offer encouragement and advice such as: “You’ll get asked, ‘Why does this matter? Aren’t there better things we could be doing? … Get an answer for that in your head early.” As it turns out, the current flag has only ever been flown outside of Pocatello’s wastewater treatment facility and was never authorized as the official city flag, but somehow ended up in that position anyway. (Watch Roman’s TED Talk)  

… and redrawing US borders.The traditional map of the US, with its familiar clear-cut and misshapen lines of 50 states, is geographically correct, but functionally outdated. In The New York Times, global strategist Parag Khanna literally re-imagines the map to reflect the metropolis centers where physical and digital architecture are interconnecting people and economies across state lines. “Economically and socially, the country is drifting toward looser metropolitan and regional formations, anchored by the great cities and urban archipelagos that already lead global economic circuits.” Out April 19, Parag Khanna’s new book, Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization, explores this idea in depth. (Watch Parag’s TED Talk)

Research gag laws in the UK. Researchers should have the right to speak up and warn about imminent dangers, such as the effects of climate change or an epidemic on the rise. But according to Robin McKie’s article in The Guardian, this may no longer be so in the UK. Astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, among others, weighs in on the dangers of a new decision made by the Cabinet Office of the UK that bans researchers who receive government grants from using their findings to lobby for changes to regulations or laws. “It would be far too damaging to allow this clause to proceed.” Due to this intense backlash, certain researchers are now exempt from this clause, including those in national academies. (Watch Martin’s TED Talk)

Can we design for happiness? When we think of design, it is easy to think of the book covers, technology and objects that surround us, but graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister proves that design’s principles can be applied to any aspect of our lives, even something as abstract as happiness. Seven years in the making and premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, his new documentary The Happy Film delves with gusto into an idea he has dabbled with before–designing happiness. Like a true designer, he systematically experiments with three methods of becoming a better, happier person. (Watch Stefan’s TED Talks “Happiness by design” and “7 rules for making more happiness”)

On the brink of change. In essays spanning 25 years and 7 continents, journalist Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, published on April 19, captures the stories of places in the throes of cataclysmic change. From his first-hand perch as a foreign correspondent, Solomon describes major events of the 20th and 21st centuries, including the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the end of the Soviet Union, and Qaddafi’s Libya. With characteristic insight and detail, he reflects on the shift in personal identity that occurs when the surrounding culture, politics, and spiritual beliefs change–and the profound role individuals can have in making those changes happen. (Watch Andrew’s TED Talk)

Have a news item to share? Write us at [email protected] and you may see it included in this weekly round-up.

Think of a story from your life that you can’t tell anyone. Not because it reflects badly on you — in fact, you’re proud of the lessons you learned — but because of its effects on someone you love. A new-mom story that you’d never want your kid to hear. A high-stakes mistake on the job that made you a wiser person — but left lingering sadness and regret behind. Or perhaps you have an insider’s take on an exclusive milieu that few can imagine — and no one can talk about.

As a pilot for a new audio show, TED producers June Cohen and Deron Triff are looking for those stories. “Sincerely, X” will be a place where the ideas inside stories can come forward … without revealing the identity of the storyteller.

As Cohen says: “We’re not just looking for corporate whistleblowers or other traditional anonymous insiders — we also want to hear the personal lessons of learning and growth, the hard stories that create our worldview and make us who we are. For example, imagine a mom who faced and came through severe postpartum depression. She has a story, an idea, that could help other people — but she never wants her kid to know about her darkest thoughts as a new mom. How do we share her ideas with the world?”

The format of the audio show is carefully tailored to allow identities to be disguised, while the power of the story comes through.

TED is now looking for great ideas and stories to kick off the pilot. if you have one, use this form to submit it. All information will be carefully handled, as you might expect.

By Alex Parkinson, Senior Researcher and Associate Director, Corporate Leadership, The Conference Board In the most complete annual analysis of corporate societal engagement, CECP, in association with The Conference Board, found in their annual Giving in Numbers survey that companies continue to recognize the connection between corporate social responsibility and building a strong business. Key findings […]

In this session, Jennifer Gardner, Senior Director Media, North America – Unilever lead a member roundtable discussion covering top media issues.

SponsorPitch shared a curated list of the biggest sponsorship and event marketing deals for the week of May 30th.

By Paul Gillin, Advisory Board Member, Society for New Communications Research of The Conference Board Shortly after my first book was published in 2007 I received a request to speak at a conference put on by a group called the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR). I had never heard of the organization, but any […]

The complexity of the world around us has increased considerably. All of us not only cope with the immense complexity around us every day, but we thrive in it. We have developed sophisticated internal mechanisms to enable us to do so. However, when it comes to dealing with complexity in business context, very often we find ourselves using methods and vocabulary from the past. In this blog, I will explain three strategies that are crucial for dealing with complex problems. But first off, for the sake of common understanding let’s define what complex problems are. Complex problems are characterized by a large number of interacting variables and a large number of unknowns, and we cannot convert them into determinate problems in a feasible time frame. The three strategies that help us design our way out of complex problems are as follows:

Framing
Old management textbooks tell us that the first step to solving a problem is to ‘define’ it. But as we see from its definition, we cannot actually ‘define’ a complex problem. Instead, we ‘frame’ a workable problem out of a complex situation. One notable difference between framing and defining is that, unlike defining, framing has a personal angle to it, which means a designer or a team frame a problem based on their worldview, and there is no absolute right or wrong. The below video underlines the importance of framing in dealing with complex problems.

Satisficing
If the problem we are dealing with is really a complex problem, then an optimal solution is unlikely. An optimal solution is unlikely because we cannot completely understand the system. No matter how much data we collect, there will still be information gaps. So in order to forge ahead with developing a solution, we use our hunches and make assumptions. As an outcome, we do not seek an optimal solution, but we seek a better solution than the existing solutions.

Learn and Pivot
The lean start-up movement made the term, ‘Learn and Pivot’, a buzzword in business circles. It is definitely the way to go when developing new offerings. Interestingly, it is also the way to go when dealing with complex problems. In the video below, Dave Snowden explains how the appropriate approach for dealing with complex problems is ‘Probe-Sense-Respond’, which basically is another way of saying, ‘Learn and Pivot’. What ‘learn and pivot’ means for companies, in the context of dealing with complex problems is that, they should look at their offerings as an experiment to further their understanding of evolving customer needs and changing competitive environment.

The above three strategies clearly underline the significance of human thinking in dealing with complex problems. No doubt our computers are becoming smarter by day, but in the end, they are only meant to assist us. Our future, as ever, is in our hands!

What is your take on dealing with complex problems? What do you think about the strategies that I have identified? I would love to know your views.

To stay tuned with me  Follow @nbhaskar888

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Global Press Institute was honored to receve a grant from The Case Foundation’s Social Citizen Be Fearless competition last month.

GPI met with members of The Case team and other nonprofit organizations at the Facebook Campus last month for a day-long dialogue sponsored by the foundation’s Social Citizen initiative. In the end, two organizations went home with a $5,000 grant after participants each presented their commitment to fearlessness in honor of the foundation’s new campaign to ignite a more fearless approach to changemaking.

Stay tuned for more blogs and videos about GPI’s commitment to fearless changemaking!