UCLA’s Anderson Partners With TED

UCLA’s Anderson School of Management yesterday (Feb. 13) became the first business school to launch a major partnership with TED, the well-known convener of inspiring talks on thought leadership.

“The Anderson community looks to engage in the big issues of the day as a forum for discussion, and as a source of solutions,” says Judy Olian, dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management, in a statement.  “TED does that, attracting the best minds and creative ideas as part of the dialogue.  This partnership represents a tremendous opportunity to add our faculty and students to that discussion.”

In recent years, the organizers behind the TED conference have been extending their brand and have reached out to several business schools to do so. Last March, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business arranged for a select group of its students and staff to participate in a direct simulcast from the major TED conference. A live stream from the conference was fed into the Knight Management Center and each of the 12 sessions had room for 25 Stanford participants. The Said and the Judge business schools at Oxford and Cambridge universities last year collaborated with TED and will do so again this year as TEDxOxbridge.

The UCLA partnership, which appears much broader and deeper, will begin Feb. 27, 2012, with a four-day campus event labeled “TED Takeover,” designed to immerse the UCLA Anderson community in the TED experience, inviting faculty and students to hear some of the world’s most innovative thought leaders, encouraging them to engage in dialogue, share and exchange ideas.  To facilitate that process, monitors around the school will live stream the TED conference in its entirety.

The school said “an idea incubation lounge” will be set up in the center of the UCLA Anderson complex. In the lounge, students will be able to watch an uninterrupted simulcast of the TED conference and contribute to the discussion in real time via social media, or “the old fashioned way, such as on the back of paper napkins that will be shipped to TED,” said UCLA.

Six panel discussions will occur at Anderson, concurrent with the TED events, to stimulate dialogue among students, faculty, alumni and selected TED speakers, such as Chairman of BP Capital Management T. Boone Pickens, UCLA Anderson Adjunct Professor of Marketing and former Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble Jim Stengel, Oscar-winning Director Andrew Stanton, and Greylock Partner and Linked In Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman.  Each panel at Anderson will view a TED speaker and afterwards discuss ways to advance the ideas that emerge. The discussions will be sponsored by one of UCLA Anderson student clubs that include, High-Tech Business Association (HTBA), Entrepreneur Association (EA), Net Impact/Energy Management Group (NI/EMG), Marketing Association (MA), and Design for America (DFA).

The TED Takeover week will culminate in a TED inspired campfire where the school’s students, faculty and alumni gather to participate in their own version of the idea-generating talks.

After the conference, UCLA Anderson students will remain engaged with TED, contributing to the post-conference dialogue on how to bring ideas to life.  The TED partnership will extend into the classroom, providing students an in-class opportunity to consult with TED on its larger brand and mission.

TED’s connection with UCLA Anderson extends to the geographic locations that these entities share.  Both TED and Anderson are committed to advancing thought leadership and sharing ideas in Southern California’s vibrant economy, known for its technological innovation, entrepreneurship, venture capital availability and new product introduction.