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Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to just ignore the ordinary stuff.

Shirky, a prescient voice on the Internetʼs effects, argues that emerging technologies enabling loose collaboration will change the way our society works. While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

Malcolm Gladwell searches for the counterintuitive in what we all take to be the mundane: cookies, sneakers, pasta sauce. Sparkling with curiosity, undaunted by difficult research, his work uncovers truths hidden in strange data. Gladwell has written two books. The Tipping Point, which applies the principles of epidemiology to crime (and sneaker sales), while Blink examines the unconscious processes that allow the mind to "thin slice" reality -- and make decisions in the blink of an eye.

Seth Godin argues the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so.

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and blogger who thinks about the marketing of ideas in the digital age.

Fantastic video on the progression of information technology. Did you know?...If My Space was a country it would be the 5th largest in the world...there are 31 billion searches a month into google... It too 38 years to reach 50 million users via radio and now only takes 2 years through Facebook. This clip challenges us all to stay innovative and be progressive.

Since 1979, Benjamin Zander has been the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. He is known around the world as both a guest conductor and a speaker on leadership -- and he's been known to do both in a single performance. He uses music to help people open their minds and create joyful harmonies that bring out the best in themselves and their colleagues. In this TED Talk video, Benjamin Zander does his magic yet again -- he talks about classical music, life, and throws in some Chopin for good measure.

Elizabeth Gilbert's book was so successful that everyone worried if she'd ever be able to repeat that creative performance. That concern led her to investigate how past cultures and societies handled creative strokes of genius and she discovers a rather curious insight from ancient Greek and Roman cultures -- people aren't genius, but rather they have a genius. Funny, personal and surprisingly moving, this TED talk received a full standing ovation from an audience of people who generally don't give in to beliefs about muses, fairies and god forces!