Ted Goes Corporate

The conference host and purveyor of ideas is providing more and more services to big companies. Clients crave TED’s elixir of innovation—but the strategy poses risks to the nonprofit’s brand.

- Laura Entis

IT ’S HARD TO ESCAPE TED these days. What began as an annual conference of ideas about technology, entertainment, and design (hence the acronym) is now the intellectual equivalent of kale: nutritious, oddly addictive, and part of the shared consciousness among a certain set. TED Talks have been viewed online 6.1 billion times—okay, that’s way more beloved than kale— and they’ve popularised ideas relating to everything from body language to the power of introverts.

Lately, though, the nonprofit has been expanding in a different realm: providing services to Fortune 500 companies. TED began creating co-branded conferences for the likes of IBM, Intel, Unilever, and UPS a few years ago. More recently, its corporate services have broadened to include on demand talks, in which TED brings in several of its speakers to address employees at company events,public-speaking classes taught by TED coaches, and residencies that allow companies to rent space at TED’s sleek New York City headquarters to get an up-close view of its creativity and vigour.

Mainstream corporations crave the aura of innovation that a TED Talk can impart. Some want to learn how to apply TED’s distinctive style to internal and external communications. For its part, TED is looking to boost its revenues to fund CEO Chris Anderson’s ambitious goals: to spread ideas around the globe. Still, the strategy presents risks. If TED comes to be seen as a marketing firm, it could erode the credibility that makes its brand valuable.

Anderson, an Oxford-educated media entrepreneur, has steadily expanded TED since he bought what was then a single conference in 2001. Today it’s a global brand with two annual conferences, a library of educational videos (TED-Ed), free online TED Talks, a network of independent TED-like events (TEDx), and a Fellows programme.