TED致勝秘辛：舊酒裝新瓶
摘錄自：天下雜誌 經濟學人電子報 2014/3/28
2014-03-18 Web
only 作者：經濟學人
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| 圖片來源：flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/ |
1984年的第一次TED大會實在太失敗，讓組織者在接下來6年裡都沒有再次舉辦大會。今日，TED已經是理念產業的巨人。TED在TED.com建立了擁有超過1,700場演講的電子倉庫，這些影片全都可以免費觀看，總觀賞次數接近20億次。
成功無可避免地引來反彈；批評者認為TED是知性生活中的星巴克。科技專家莫洛索夫（Evgeny Morozov）表示，TED已經變成某種荒唐又帶點邪惡氣味的事物；社會學家布拉頓（Benjamin Bratton）更進一步，認為TED實際上是符合中產階級口味的大型資訊娛樂教會。
這些批評當然有其合理之處，但TED的成就亦不可忽視。它發掘了數百個不為人知的才智之士；TED將重大理念縮減為易於入口的小點，但也證明重大理念確實擁有巨大的市場。
TED是破壞性創新的絕佳例證。BBC推掉了早期的TED演講，理由是內容太過知性，但TED重寫了規則。現在，企業雇用TED舉行內部演講，出版商也搶著簽下TED講者。
這場破壞性創新的核心人物即為安德森（Chris Anderson）。安德森從記者轉型為企業家，靠出版電腦和商業雜誌致富；他在2001年買下TED後，打算結合擅於說故事的新聞產業，以及充滿破壞性變革的高科技產業，將此另類大會轉化為多媒體現象。
TED持續改善現有產品並擴增產品類別；它大舉投資於攝影團隊和劇場技術，實驗了更短的「三分鐘TED」，甚至還在挑選演說者時引入「美國偶像」的元素。TED已然成為數位世界的理念大會龍頭，更為各種問題提出科技解決方案：其演說通常會讓人覺得，筆電和網路連線就能解決世界上的所有問題。
但TED仍舊有些傳統之處。從講者的救贖承諾到不吝掌聲的會眾，都讓TED大會帶了點復古氣味。有時，TED講者就像是現代版的卡內基（Dale Carnege）；大量TED演講都在告訴你，只要努力工作並追隨自己的熱情，你就能擁有一切、就能擁有美好的職涯和完滿的生活。TED成功的終極秘密並非致力於破壞性革新，而是在數位時代重新包裝舊時信仰的能力。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist
Newspaper Limited 2014
The Economist
Schumpeter
Ideas
reinvenTED
By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: March 18, 2014
Mar 15th 2014 |
From the print edition
TED has
revolutionised the ideas industry, in part by putting old wine in new bottles.
THE first TED
conference in 1984 was such a damp squib that the organisers did not hold a
second one for six years. Today TED (which for the uninitiated stands for Technology,
Education, Design) is the Goliath of the ideas industry. The heart of the
enterprise is TED's twice-yearly conference at which big ideas are presented in
short, punchy talks. On March 17th-21st around 1,200 TEDsters will gather in
Vancouver to listen to the likes of Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte
celebrating TED's 30th birthday and thinking great thoughts. The conference has
also spawned an array of businesses, albeit not-for-profit ones.
The organisation
has built an electronic warehouse of more than 1,700 previous talks, at
TED.com. These are free to view and, so far, they have been watched nearly 2
billion times. It has generated a mass movement: volunteers have put on more
than 9,000 TED-like events called TEDx in 150 or so countries since 2009. It
has established a TED prize (worth $1m), a TED fellowship programme and a line
of TED e-books. And it has become a central part of the world's star-making
machinery: an invitation to speak at TED can turn an obscure academic into a
superstar guru and a struggling journalist into a celebrated writer.
Such success has
inevitably produced a backlash. Critics dismiss TED as the Starbucks of
intellectual life (though YO! Sushi may be a better comparison). Evgeny
Morozov, a technology pundit, says it has become "something ludicrous, and
a little sinister". Benjamin Bratton, a sociologist, goes further and
suggests that TED is a recipe for "civilisational disaster". In his
view TED really stands for "middlebrow, megachurch infotainment". The
Onion, a satirical website, has produced a series of "Onion talks"
including "A future where all robots have penises".
There is certainly
some truth in these criticisms: any organisation that invites Sting to its 30th
birthday party is in danger of jumping the shark. But criticism must be
tempered by admiration for what TED has achieved. It does indeed have a
weakness for celebrities. But it has also discovered hundreds of lights hidden
under bushels: the most viewed TED video, with 25m downloads, features Ken Robinson,
a once-obscure British educationalist. It is true that TED shrinks big ideas
into bite-like chunks. But it has also demonstrated that there is a huge market
for big ideas.
TED is the perfect
example of the power of disruptive innovation. The ideas business was already
overcrowded when it began to flex its muscles. The BBC rejected an early TED
talk on the ground that it was too intellectual. But TED has rewritten the
rules. Conference regulars compare the corporate pabulum that they are served
at Davos with the intellectual sustenance they receive at TED. Businesses now
hire it to run their in-house conferences. Publishers compete to sign up its
speakers. TED has done more to advance the art of lecturing in a decade than
Oxford University has done in a thousand years.
The man at the
heart of this disruption is Chris Anderson, a journalist turned entrepreneur
who calls himself TED's curator. (He is unrelated to the namesake who used to
edit Wired and before that wrote for The Economist.) Mr Anderson made his money
publishing computer and business magazines. He bought TED in 2001 and set about
turning a cult conference into a multimedia phenomenon, by bringing together
the two worlds that he knew best: the journalistic one of storytelling and the
high-tech world of disruptive change. And he provided TED with both a powerful
business model and a pipeline of polished output.
TED uses a shrewd
combination of paid-for and free products, the purpose of the latter being to
generate buzz. Tickets to its five-day conferences cost at least $6,000. It
sells an ever-growing array of TED-branded products. But it has also been
generous with its intellectual capital—not only giving away videos on the
internet but also granting licences to enthusiasts to stage TEDx events. To
ensure quality it sends all speakers a stone tablet engraved with the "TED
Commandments", starting with: "Thou shalt not simply trot out thy
usual schtick". Talks must last for just 18 minutes—"Long enough to
be serious and short enough to hold people's attention", as Mr Anderson
puts it. Potential speakers are carefully auditioned and extensively
trained—and subtly reminded that only successful talks will be put online.
TED is constantly
striving to improve its products and expand its pipeline. It has invested
heavily in camera crews and stagecraft. It has experimented with shorter
formats such as "TED in three minutes". It has even introduced an
"American Idol" element: about half of the speakers at each
conference are chosen by competitive auditions that take place all over the
world and are theoretically open to anyone.
Modern-day
missionaries
TED has become the
leading ideas festival of the digital world. It draws much of its audience as
well as many of its star speakers from the technocracy. It champions tech
solutions to problems: its talks tend to give the impression that there is no
ill in the world that cannot be solved with a laptop and an internet
connection.
But there is also
something old-fashioned about it. TED meetings have a revivalist feel, from the
preacher's promises of salvation to the happy-clappy congregation. It is
revealing that Mr Anderson is the son of missionaries, and, in rather Victorian
fashion, grew up in India before going to Oxford. TEDsters can also sound like
modern versions of Dale Carnegie, the author of "The Art of Public
Speaking" (1915) and "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
(1936). A striking number of TED talks preach that you can have it all, a great
career and a fulfilled life, if only you work hard and follow your passion. The
ultimate secret of TED's success is not its commitment to disruptive innovation
but its ability to repackage old-time religion for the digital age.
©The Economist
Newspaper Limited 2014
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