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Citi @ TED2013

March 01, 2013
Debby Hopkins, Chief Innovation Officer, Citi Ventures

Chief Innovation Officer, Debby Hopkins, is spending this week at the annual TED (Technology-Entertainment-Design] conference in Long Beach, California. She shares her thoughts on the wide-ranging impact of this gathering, as well as the benefits to Citi of participation in the event and TED community.

At Citi, we've been talking for some time about how the big trends of globalization, urbanization and digitization are changing how people and organizations thrive. We know that this hyper-connected, speed-of-life world is redefining how our clients and customers live and work and, at the same time, it is requiring us to look closely at how we redesign our business to address their ever-changing needs.

There's no better place than TED to learn about a variety of viewpoints on the world and to deeply understand the challenges of this new age. Being here makes one recognize the personal contribution that each of us must make to tackle the huge issues facing humanity.

TED started more than 20 years ago as an annual conference, and it's evolved to become much, much more. It's a cross-disciplinary community -- of technologists, business leaders, designers, government officials, artists, scientists, philanthropists and more -- all passionately intent on making the world a better place. It's also a repository of some of the most interesting and inspirational perspectives on the world's most pressing concerns.

Here are a few our favorite "TED Talks"; I encourage Citi people to check out these and others at www.ted.com/talks. Warning: They are addictive!

This year Citi is pleased to be a TED sponsor for the first time. We are sponsoring an outdoor area dedicated to examining the big issues related to the accelerating growth of urban areas, and we are engaging the TED community in conversation about how we create the great cities of the future.

More than half the world's population now lives in cities, with 75% of us projected to be urban dwellers by 2040. Increasingly, cities are where innovation, capital and people come together to establish prosperous, healthy living environments. They are where people raise families, build businesses and drive positive change.

To harness the power of the TED community, we used our Citi Ideas platform to create a crowd-sourced challenge around how to solve issues in housing, healthcare, transportation, education and arts & culture. We also hosted a dinner for an eclectic group of TEDsters to explore these concerns... and the vigorous conversation went on into the early hours.

Participation at TED has huge benefits for Citi. First, it provides a direct link to a vibrant community of the world's most passionate expert-activists. It builds our presence as an innovator and a smart, responsible provider of financial services. And importantly, it enables us to bring the best thinking and ideas from the outside-in -- to help us better understand how to be wildly relevant to our institutional, commercial and consumer clients everywhere. We hope to deepen our connection with TED in the coming year and beyond.

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