TED is essentially five days of a hundred or so lectures, mostly eighteen minutes long, covering "ideas worth spreading": the latest thinking on topics as diverse as medicine, physics, conservation, renewable energy, film, architecture, games, law, education, technology, art, music, and dance. Speakers this year included Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, famous technologist/philanthropist Bill Gates, musical icons Sheryl Crowe, Natalie Merchant, and David Byrne and celebrity chefs Dan Barber and Jamie Oliver. But equally impressive are less well known presenters who are doing such awe-inspiring things that they bring the audience to its feet or move them to tears. And it's well-understood that the conference attendees include a wonderful mix of similarly extraordinary innovators, inventors, change agents and optimists who also happen to be mostly CEOs. This makes every meal, break, and party an opportunity to share ideas and compare thoughts with like-minded kindred spirits and is the reason why TED is the only conference for which I sacrifice sleep and completely unplug. I just don't want to miss having a potentially life-changing conversation while responding to an e-mail or getting to bed at a reasonable hour.
So how exactly is TED like Sales 2.0? Here are some of the similarities:
1. TED like Sales 2.0 requires flexibility and openness to new ideas.
2. TED like Sales 2.0 is interdisciplinary and a combination of art and science, right brain and left brain.
3. TED like Sales 2.0 encourages collaboration and idea-sharing.
4. TED participants like Sales 2.0 professionals seek to improve on the status quo rather than settle for the way things are.
5. At TED and in Sales 2.0 traditional, self-serving sales pitches are not done.
6. At TED and in Sales 2.0, technology is a key component but not the only one.
7. Both TED and Sales 2.0 take one out of one's comfort zone.
8. TED's ideas worth spreading and Sales 2.0's improved business results are what the world needs now!
Check out www.ted.com and see what I mean. Notice any other parallels between TED and Sales 2.0? Which TED Talks do you find inspiring?
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