TED Talks for startups

TED talks can be a goldmine of knowledge, ideas and motivation for startups. Entrepreneurs can benefit from the experiences of some of the world’s most innovative and influential speakers and thought leaders.

We’ve trawled through thousands of resources to pick out the top eight best TED talks for new business leaders, featuring concrete tips and just a little inspiration.

Bill Gross: The single biggest reason why startups succeed

Bill Gross is co-founder of Pacific Investment Management, and has monitored the growth of over 1000 other startups. Curious about why some succeeded and others failed, he gathered data from hundreds of companies and ranked each on five key factors. One factor stands out from the rest, accounting for 42% of the difference between success and failure—and it surprised even him.

Nigel Marsh: How to Make Work-Life Balance Work

Making it in business can take a heavy toll on your personal life. If anyone knows that well, it’s Nigel Marsh, co-founder of Earth Hour and author of Overworked and Underlaid. Here, he lays out an ideal balance between personal time and productivity, and offers some stirring encouragement on how to make it happen.

Linda Hill: How to manage for collective creativity

What’s the secret to unlocking the creativity hidden inside your daily work, and giving every great idea a chance? Harvard professor Linda Hill shares the innovative tactics and techniques used by some of the world’s most creative companies, including Pixar, to boost innovation.

Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do

What is your motive for action? What is it that drives you in your life today? Tony Robbins is one of the most influential self improvement coaches. His ideas help people become better at what they do, and help companies flourish. In this talk, he explores the surprising truth about what motivates us.

Seth Godin: How to get your ideas to spread

Did you know, for the first fifteen years since its invention, nobody took notice of sliced bread’. It took a brand communicating its benefits efficiently to actually turn it into a revolutionary product. In an amusing graphic-packed talk, Godin sheds light on why, when it comes to getting our attention, novel, bizarre or even bad ideas are more successful than boring ones.

Carol Dweck: The power of believing that you can improve

Dweck researches “growth mindset”—the idea that we can grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems. In this talk, she describes two ways to approach a problem that seems too hard to solve. Are you not smart enough to solve it … or are you just ‘not yet?’

Itay Talgam: Lead like the great conductors

Talgam outlines what business leaders can learn from conductors, namely that rather than simply telling your team members what to do, you create the conditions that allow the team to lead itself. In this unconventional talk, discover what it takes to enable your employees to really shine.

Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity maker

Great thing happen when you connect with people whose strengths complement yours, so that together, you create something big. Opportunity-makers, says Anderson, are “not affronted by differences, they’re fascinated by them, and that is a huge shift in mindset, and once you feel it, you want it to happen a lot more. This world is calling out for us to have a collective mindset.”