An exciting new chapter for TED

Head of TED Chris Anderson at the TED conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada. (Photo: Ryan Lash / TED)

It’s time for TED to embark on an exciting new chapter

I’ve had the great good fortune to have overseen TED for the last 25 years. It’s been exhilarating, and I feel great pride in what TED has become. As the organization moves into its fifth decade and I approach (gulp) 70, I believe the time has come for someone new to take the reins.

So today, with the support of dear friends and colleagues, I am issuing an open invitation to anyone who believes they might have the resources and the ideas to oversee TED for its next 25 years (and beyond!) to step forward. We’d like to carefully pass over control of the entire organization and all its component parts to the best new steward.

To be clear, I am not seeking to gain financially from this process. TED is a non-profit (I have never been paid a salary), and any money that comes in will go not to me but directly toward supporting the future growth of TED. The only goal is to let TED go to whoever has the best vision for its next era — and the resources to execute that vision.

Letting go is an idea whose power I’ve been astonished by time and time again. After all, it was when we started giving away our content online in 2006 that TED Talks became a global phenomenon, shared widely and translated into more than 100 languages. And it was when we started giving away our brand in the form of free TEDx licenses that local organizers responded by volunteering incredible efforts of their own, carrying our way of sharing ideas to communities all over the world.

So as I’ve dreamed of the best possible future for TED, it’s natural that we should continue to be guided by this principle, and take the ultimate step of letting go of its stewardship to someone else. Rather than commence a multitude of private conversations, I think it’s fairer, and better, and more in the spirit of TED to open up this process to our global community. Everyone who works at TED, everyone who’s ever come to a TED conference, every TED partner and donor, every one of our global volunteer force of translators and TEDxers, every TED Member, indeed everyone who’s ever given or been informed or inspired by a TED Talk … you all have a stake in this, and your collective wisdom is going to help us arrive at a better answer than anything I can come up with individually.

Here are some of the elements whose oversight we would like to pass along:

• TED: The business unit that runs all our operations, a super talented team of around 220 employees who collectively make extraordinary things happen daily. TED’s dynamic leadership team, headed by CEO Jay Herratti, is fully on board with this transition
• TED Foundation: This is the non-profit that currently owns TED and of which I am currently the sole director. Taking over TED will include control of the $25 million in reserve funds used to sustain the org in uneven times
• TED events: These include our main annual conference, attended by 1,500 of the world’s most influential people; our newer conference, TEDNext; and our role in the climate collaboration, TED Countdown. We also recently launched an innovative new event format with a single topic focus and regularly host other one-off salons and events with partners
• TEDx: We currently offer free licenses to more than 3,000 TEDx events worldwide which in turn stage and publish nearly 20,000 talks annually
• TED’s digital library: TED’s digital output is far more than talks, but our archive includes more than 4,000 TED Talks, 250,000 TEDx talks, 1,700 TED-Ed animations (and counting)
• TED Media: TED distributes TED and TEDx Talks from our events and publishes original content in the form of interviews, animations, newsletters, social media posts and shorts across all major platforms, with some 180 million subscribers and billions of views per year
• TED Podcasts: Our highly rated, award-winning audio collective publishes original podcasts along with specialist series based on our talk archive. Collectively, annual downloads exceed 178 million
• TED-Ed: Our award-winning animated lessons, interactive learning platform, and engaging student programs have some 5 billion views, more than a million registered educators, and 6,000 active student groups. TED-Ed is accessed by millions of teachers and students daily, both inside and outside of the classroom
• TED Members: We currently have more than 15,000 paid online TED members, who support our mission and get access to virtual programming
• TED Partners: We collaborate with a robust portfolio of companies to craft compelling partnerships across events, media platforms and custom opportunities. These programs are a unique opportunity to work with industry-leading brands — and a key source of operating revenue and monetization
• TED Translators: A global community of more than 50,000 volunteer translators who enable TED content to be subtitled into 115 languages, plus reliable AI-adapted voice-cloned dubbing and localization of TED platforms
• TED Fellows: Through this program, we provide transformational support to a global community of more than 500 remarkable individuals who collaborate across disciplines to spark change around the world
• TED TV: Building on the Ideas Search model we’ve been honing for years, we’re expanding into longer-form non-fiction documentary programming built for streamers
• TED@Work: Our newest offering brings the spirit of TED ideas to workplace learning, along with speaker training 
• TED Games: A nascent initiative with growing traction in the online gaming space. Our focus is on smart games that are both entertaining and ideas-based
• TED NYC: 47,500 square feet of office space in downtown New York City, including our unique world theater, which we’ve used to host events and record talks since 2017

Even more exciting are the new initiatives currently underway. TED’s brand stands for new possibilities, and TED’s leadership has strategies in place to produce new events, invest in new content formats, and build new ventures in learning and education. With new capital, these and other initiatives can extend TED’s impact to the next 25 years.

Given the potency — and complexity — of all this, who best to take over TED’s future stewardship? Who could best turbocharge it for even greater global impact? A university with a large endowment willing to do something radical for the world? Another non-profit organization with significant extra resources? A major philanthropist, or group of philanthropists, with a vision for sharing powerful ideas at global scale? A media company looking for new, trusted content? A social media platform looking to replace dangerous algorithms with crowd-curated wisdom? One of the big AI platforms? A major city that dreams of creating an annual festival of ideas? A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) made up of every passionate member of the TED community, including you? Or perhaps the best move forward is to keep TED inside its current foundation and simply appoint a group of visionary board members to oversee it?

I don’t know… yet. But with your help and input, I’m excited to find out.

Of course, this must be done wisely. TED is a unique offering in a complicated world, and I owe it to our community to ensure that TED continues to be animated by the values that have taken it this far. Any new leadership should have convincing plans on how they’ll approach TED both now and for the long term. Here are some of the questions that we’ll use to evaluate possible new stewards:

1. What’s your vision?

When I first took over TED all those years ago, we were at the dawn of a new era, as technological innovation and the web changed … everything. Now, with astonishing developments in AI arriving almost daily, it seems we’re on the cusp of another key moment. So what’s your vision to take TED into the future with clarity, confidence, and vigor?

2. How will you ensure continued editorial independence?

TED should continue to operate in service of the public good, never compromised by the commercial interests of any new owner. The engagement of sponsors, as we do at present, is fine, probably essential, and has helped TED immeasurably. But they and we know that we ultimately answer to the independent pursuit of truth, wisdom and hope.

3. Will you commit to maintaining an open tent?

In a divided world, it might be tempting to try and push TED to a comfortable spot on one or other side of the political divide. This cannot happen. TED must remain non-partisan and actually double down on efforts to embrace voices from a wide spectrum of viewpoints.

4. How will you expand TED’s global reach?

TED might have started in the US, but ideas know no borders. TED is for the world, and its journey toward a greater international footprint should continue. This should include ongoing support of our global community of TEDx organizers, TED Translators and TED-Ed educators, and our ambition to distribute TED content for free in multiple languages.

5. How will you preserve TED’s content for the long term?

TED is known for its TED Talks, which often reflect a lifetime of work from the speaker. In recent years, we’ve experimented with other formats too, and collectively the TED archive is a powerful catalog of human wisdom, expressed in that most ancient and powerful of communication forms: speech. Any future owner will need a plan to ensure these assets will be preserved in perpetuity.

6. Will you commit to continued free distribution now and long term?

Ideas are for everyone. TED should continue to offer free access to its core content to anyone in the world with an internet connection.

7. How large of a capital commitment can you make to TED’s future?

For TED to realize its full potential, it’ll need new funding for the future growth of new programs and products and to allow the smart leverage of new technologies such as AI. The willingness to commit significant capital for the long term will be an important deciding factor. (Again, 100% of this money will be for TED, not for me.)

What about me? Am I quitting TED? No! I love TED. It’s a huge part of me. I want to be connected to TED as long as I live, and I’m willing to continue to serve as adviser, cheerleader or co-host if the new leadership wishes. It’ll be their call. 

It’s going to take time to figure out who to pass TED on to. I know this period may be challenging for some, both on the TED team and in our community. I believe the outcome will be exciting, but of course the not-knowing will still need navigating. I want to thank you for your patience and trust.

So. What now? Well, you can join the conversation on X, Facebook or LinkedIn. Or write to me at chris@ted.com. And if you might be interested in throwing your hat into the ring – reach out to us at nextchapter@ted.com. We have retained LionTree Advisors to help us navigate our next steps, and will ensure we work together as a community as we enter this new chapter together.

Finally, just to be clear…

This. Will. Be. Great.

With excitement and gratitude,
Chris

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