Dreaming Bigger: Annual TED Prize Raised to One Million Dollars

- In 2013, the TED Prize Will Go to One Visionary Leader with an Inspirational Wish

- Nominations Open Today for Individuals Who Can Inspire Collaborative Action

EDINBURGH, Scotland, June 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, today opened nominations for a TED Prize that calls on remarkable people to dream bigger. The annual prize, formerly $100,000, is now upped to one million dollars – giving an exceptional individual the chance to conceive and launch a high-impact project. The winner will have the support of the TED and TEDx community in executing their wish.

"This is a chance for someone to dream up a wish that inspires and engages people around the globe," said Chris Anderson, Curator of TED. "We invite extraordinary people, probably backed by an existing organization, to submit imaginative ideas for large-scale collaboration. With one million dollars in seed funding, and the TED community's support, the winner will have the capacity to launch something truly breath-taking." 

The TED Prize is a forward-looking prize awarded to individuals from any field who are able to inspire collaborative action.  Winners are likely to have already demonstrated significant achievement upon which the prize wish can build.

Previous recipients have used the TED Prize, and support of the TED community, to launch powerful projects. These include mass recruitment for a global campaign to fight poverty (Bono), one of the largest global participatory art projects (JR), inviting citizen scientists to help search for life on other planets (Jill Tarter), creating a movement to help protect the world's oceans (Sylvia Earle), and the sharing of citizen-driven projects to upgrade cities around the globe (the City 2.0).   

"Brilliant visionaries have a unique opportunity to dream of a world-changing wish that at one point may have seemed unreachable, but now – with one million dollars and the support of the TED community – can be done," said Lara Stein, Director of TEDx. "And with TEDx, we have a remarkable community that is eager to help make the TED Prize recipient's wish a reality. We are incredibly excited about this new phase of the TED Prize, and are ready to dream bigger."

Individuals can self-nominate or nominate someone else; every self-nomination should include a proposal for a world-changing and achievable wish. The combination of a higher prize amount, with the ability to include a wish with the nomination, is designed to encourage creative proposals from a wide range of individuals and organizations.

"The intention is that that the one million dollar award will allow the basics of a project to be funded and implemented quickly, making it easier to leverage support from numerous other individuals and organizations," Anderson added.

The deadline for nominations is August 31, 2012. The winner will be selected in the fall of 2012 by a jury drawn from leading members of the TED community, and will reveal his or her wish, at TED2013 in Long Beach, California on February 27, 2013.

For details on how to nominate, visit www.tedprize.org.

Learn more about the TED Prize and its history at www.tedprize.org.  

About the TED Prize

The first TED Prize was awarded in 2005, born out of the TED Conference and a vision by the world's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, and entertainers to change the world – one wish at a time.

The original prize: $100,000 and the TED community's range of talent and expertise. What began as an unparalleled experiment to leverage the resources of the TED community has evolved into an ambitious effort to spur global-scale change.

From Bono's the ONE Campaign ('05 recipient) to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution ('10 recipient) and JR's Inside Out Project ('11 recipient), the TED Prize has helped to combat poverty, take on religious intolerance, improve global health, tackle child obesity, advance education, and inspire art around the world.

In 2012, Lara Stein, who oversees the global network of independent TEDx events, assumed management of the TED Prize reflecting the fact that the thousands of TEDx communities around the world are among the most active parts of TED and are ideally positioned to add value to TED Prize wishes.

For Press Inquiries: Erin Allweiss +1-917-512-2118 or eallweiss@groupsjr.com