Why TED talks DO work

I am sure that we have all watched this video where a TED speaker shares his thoughts on why the bright future promised on TED talks doesnt happen… and he does is at a TED Talk, no less.
While he is sharing a valid point of view, Ill give him that much, he is only right in as much as your expectations of TED are for it to be a platform guaranteeing change in the world through immediate execution of all ideas presented. In fact, I would argue that he makes the almost insulting assumption that that those who watch TED Talks believe that all the discussed changes have not only been made, but have had massive and profound impacts on the world as we know it. As much as TED Talks do inspire the hope that these positive changes can be made, in reality TED doesnt promise to change the world – it only promises to share «ideas worth spreading,» and to do this in bite-sized 20-minutes-or-less pieces. What we do with those ideas is entirely our responsibility. So to that end, I submit that TED is fulfilling its promise, and how! Here are a few of the reasons why TED WORKS: – Changing one mind is how important changes start. Or, as Mahatma Ghandi elegantly put it, You must be the change that you wish to see in the world. I am hard-pressed to believe that there has been a person who has not felt their perspective challenged and changed after having watched that ONE Talk, the one that likely got her hooked on TED forever. And let’s not ignore the fact that innumerable comments about this video talked about how people WERE changed from watching a talk, and yours truly can be added to the top of that list. – Not all change is tangible. Inspiration and motivation must not be discounted; what if all the change I needed was to feel inspired? Perhaps a TED Talk was that spark of motivation I needed to start a new venture. Is that really too small of a change to be worthy of being named as such? – The right people will execute the right insights. The guy in the video discounts Malcolm Gladwell and mentions how people like him present recycled insights. Lets be honest, how many completely new insights have you heard in your life? Insights that are actionable make so much sense that, as Seth Godin puts it, All good ideas are terrible, until people realize they are obvious. This speaker may not enjoy Mr. Gladwell’s highly digestible dissemination of thoughts, but someone as a person who has an interest in merchandising and consumer psychology, I happen to find him very insightful, and I have used his ideas in my own line of work. The same way Id expect someone in the technology or medical fields to execute ideas that are interesting but unreachable to me in my business, we can’t always gain direct impact from thoughts gleaned during a single talk. However, I argue that there is no shortage of good done by learning a thing of two about them, as disconnected as the industries may seem to be on the surface. It is very easy to discount something, claim it doesnt work, or even call it stupid. It is decidedly more difficult to actually initiate a major societal transformation. As someone who changed her views of feminism after watching a TED talk (and consequently her behaviour) I say: lets not discount the power of accruing small changes, and more importantly, lets not discount our ability to execute change after being inspired and enlightened by any gathering of the minds, whether it be a website, a conference, or a good ol’ TED Talk.