Meet the 2010 TED Fellows

I am a fan of TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. I have never attended any conference, but I regularly view their presentations online and sometimes post some of them on this blog.

Two years ago, TED decided to create a fellowship program to bring amazing paradigm-shifters into the TED community. Every year, they nominate 25 eclectic, heterogeneous young thinkers and doers from the fields of technology, entertainment, design, the sciences, engineering, humanities, the arts, economics, business, journalism, entrepreneurship and NGOs.

Meet the 2010 TED Fellows, always an inspiring bunch!

Only 5 business ideas…

I have been lucky to be associated to an amazing innovation incubator. Le Laboratoire de Paris and its founder, David Edwards, are a remarkable source of inspiration and innovation to anybody interested in the creative process.  Here are just five of the many projects that they helped move forward in the past two years…

Le Whif

A new delicious approach to eating by breathing.  With Le Whif, we inhale food, like chocolate, into our mouths and taste it, without chewing, an experience of flavor without a single calorie.

Andrea Air Purifier

ANDREA: Plant-based Air Purifier won  2008 Invention Award from Popular Science Magazine.

Lebone Battery

Lebone‘s bacteria-charged battery was selected among the 10 most brilliant 2009 innovations by Popular Mechanics Magazine.

sOccket - Energy Ball

Using the African continent’s love of soccer to provide power to those without. SOccket is a fun, portable energy-harvesting power source in the form of a soccer ball.

Musetrek

Musetrek is your multimedia guide of the world’s cultural hotspots.

Amazingly enough, this is just a small part of the projects coming out of this cultural center. If you ever go to Paris, go and visit it!

The power of innovation

For the past two years, we have been associated with an amazing adventure: the creation of Le Laboratoire de Paris, a cultural Center located in the heart of Paris, next to the Louvre.

By arranging the encounter of an artist and a scientist on a specific scientific problem, the Center acts as a catalyst to generate genuine breakthroughs in science. We call this process artscience innovation.

The result of this encounter always ends with an exhibit opened to the public. The past two years have seen exhibits on subjects as varied as molecular cuisine, stem cell reproduction, the fight against tuberculosis in third world countries…

The project is privately funded and aims at demonstrating that a new economical model is possible for cultural organizations: artscience experiments sometimes lead to the creation of intellectual property, by patenting and commercializing this innovation, a cultural organization could reach a break-even point and even become profitable.

Le Laboratoire has already applied this process to two major innovations that are being commercialized online and in selected stores around the world:
- Andrea, a plant-based air purifier which was exposed at MoMA in New York and won the Popular Science Innovation of the Year Award
- Le Whif, the revolutionary chocolate as light as air

The adventure of Le Laboratoire is stimulating and heart-lifting. It shows the unstoppable power of vision, creativity, perseverance and risk-taking.

Next time you are in Paris, please visit Le Laboratoire and the remarkable design of the adjoining Laboshop.