Past TEDx event

TEDxInnovation Drive

Innovation

Took placeSeptember 30, 2026
LocationFairfield, Connecticut, United States
FormatStandard
Featured speakers Dr. Michael Winter Chief Scientist at RTX, the largest Aerospace and defense company, (merger of Raytheon Company and United Technologies Corporation) What 45 years taught me about doing it wrong Dr. Winter makes the case that the most common failure in innovation isn’t bad science or lack of resources. It’s smart people asking questions that are too small. He shows why the breakthrough is never the end of the story, and why the question that separates great innovators from brilliant failures is not “did we solve it?” but “did we solve the right thing? Simon Hill CEO & Founder of Wazoku, a hybrid collective intelligence company building the ecosystems that help the world innovate better. The surprising Way to Solve Hard Problems When an organization can't solve a hard problem, it usually calls in more experts. But what happens when it opens the problem up to anyone, anywhere? For more than twenty years, Simon Hill has helped organizations do exactly that, posting their toughest challenges to a global network of millions of problem-solvers and solution providers. Seven times out of ten, the winning solution came from someone outside the field the problem belonged to. In this talk, Simon explains why, and how the way we frame a problem decides not just who gets the chance to solve it, but whether it gets solved at all. Warren Berger Questionologist Every Breakthrough starts with a question How powerful questions actually lead to innovation. Einstein: “Give me an hour to solve a problem and I will spend 50 minutes framing the right question and a few minutes solving it.” Moshe Bar, Ph.D. Cognitive neuroscience professor at Bar-Ilan University and Massachusetts General Hospital Why Smart People Stop Having Original Ideas Our ability to be creative is not lost, but it is often hidden by our cognitive habits. By explaining the flow of new ideas in the brain and in the mind, as well as what hinders it, this talk will show what it takes to rediscover our inherent capacity for innovation. Dr. Wizdom Powell Founder and CEO of Unified Youth, a national initiative reframing creativity, curiosity, and wonder as essential infrastructure for youth readiness and wellbeing Curiosity Is a Readiness Skill We’ve built national infrastructure for academic readiness: standards, assessments, curricula, and testing. But we’ve built almost nothing for creative readiness, and that gap isn’t just a public health concern; it’s a national innovation failure. Curiosity, imagination, play, and wonder are not extras; they are how future innovators begin. When we crowd them out of childhood, we lose something later: the people who might have imagined a better product, solved a harder problem, or built what comes next. Jessica Sager Co-Founder and CEO of All Our Kin What K-12 Education Can Learn From Child Care For decades, we’ve tried to make childcare more like school, but what if we’ve had it exactly backwards? As AI reshapes our world, success will depend less on what students know than on how they learn, drawing on the creativity, resilience, adaptability, empathy, and curiosity that early childhood educators nurture every day. To truly prepare children for the future, it’s time to make school more like childcare. Musicians A trumpeter's story of encouragement and perseverance What does it take to turn a four-year-old who can’t get a sound out of his trumpet into a world class musician? Music teacher Jim and his student Kevin take us through their twenty year journey, from those first silent 90 days to the trumpeter Kevin is today, and Kevin plays for us along the way. Their story shows how encouragement and perseverance carry us through every setback, and that sometimes all it takes is one person who sees what’s possible in us and tells us to keep going. Kevin Tzanetis Kevin Tzanetis is an accomplished jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader known for his dynamic sound, versatility, and distinctive artistic voice. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, he earned both his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Jazz Performance while studying for six years with internationally acclaimed trumpeter Sean Jones. Jim Buchta Public School Educator | Musician | Conversation Facilitator Since 1989, Jim Buchta has led over 40,000 individual, small group, and large group music rehearsals. A graduate of Western Connecticut State University and the University of Bridgeport, he recently completed a two year term as the Connecticut Music Educators Association Western Region Director, guiding 250 music teachers through eight festivals. .

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

  • Dr. Michael Winter

    Chief Scientist at RTX, shaping technology strategy and innovation

    Chief Scientist at RTX, the largest Aerospace and defense company, (merger of Raytheon and United Technologies) where he shapes the company’s cross-enterprise technology strategy and accelerates innovation across aerospace and defense. With 45 years of experience, Dr. Winter work has enabled major commercial and military aircraft platforms with technologies spanning fuel cells, lasers, combustion, and propulsion systems. The inventor on more than 50 patents and over 50 technical articles, a fellow of AIAA and the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science & Engineering. He is widely respected for his deep technical insight and his ability to demystify complex aerospace challenges and is known for combining a “lab-rat” curiosity with a strategic, enterprise-wide perspective. He holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Philosophy, as well as a Master of Science from Yale University, and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Drexel University.

  • Dr. Wizdom Powell

    CEO of Unified Youth

    Founder and CEO of Unified Youth, a national initiative reframing creativity, curiosity, and wonder as essential infrastructure for youth readiness and wellbeing. A former White House Fellow appointed by President Obama to advise Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on military readiness, and former Chief Purpose Officer at Headspace, Dr. Powell has spent her career building the evidence base and institutional frameworks for ideas that transform how organizations and communities invest in human potential. An Aspen Institute Health Innovator Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, and Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Center Scholar, she brings both scientific rigor and visionary leadership to one of the most urgent innovation challenges of our time: building the conditions under which the next generation of creative thinkers can thrive.

  • Jessica Sager

    Co-Founder and CEO of All Our Kin, an advocate of childcare reform and supporter of childcare giver,

    Jessica Sager, Co-Founder and CEO of All Our Kin, is an unwavering advocate of childcare reform, focused on uplifting family childcare, which stands at the nexus of education and economic development. A graduate of Barnard College and Yale Law School, Jessica co-teaches a Yale University seminar on “Child Care, Society, and Public Policy.” She is the Vice-Chair of the Low Income Investment Fund and serves on the boards of Social Impact Partners of CT and the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund. Jessica is an Ashoka Fellow and Pahara-Aspen Fellow, a Heinz Award winner, and a #Care100 Most Influential Person in Care.

  • Jim Buchta

    Public School Educator | Musician | Conversation Facilitator

    Since 1989, Jim Buchta has led over 40,000 individual, small group, and large group music rehearsals. A graduate of Western Connecticut State University and the University of Bridgeport, he recently completed a two year term as the Connecticut Music Educators Association Western Region Director, guiding 250 music teachers through eight festivals. Jim believes great leadership is at the heart of every great school: teachers lead the classroom, parents lead the home, and everyone improves when the leader improves. His approach with students is simple, you are capable, learning is fun, keep going, and his rule for himself is great leaders give away the credit when things go well and take responsibility when they don’t.

  • Kevin Tzanetis

    Musician

    Kevin Tzanetis is an accomplished jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader known for his dynamic sound, versatility, and distinctive artistic voice. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University, he earned both his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in Jazz Performance while studying for six years with internationally acclaimed trumpeter Sean Jones. Kevin’s musical foundation began under the mentorship of Jim Buchta, whom he regards as his musical father, and later included studies with Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Nabaté Isles. His musicianship earned him an Honorable Mention at the Jack Rudin Jazz Championship, where he was recognized by Wynton Marsalis as a standout trumpet performer. Drawing inspiration from spirituality, nature, and the human experience, Kevin approaches jazz as a vehicle for expression, connection, and transcendence—honoring the tradition while forging a voice distinctly his own.

  • Moshe Bar, Ph.D.

    Cognitive Neuroscientist + Researcher + Author

    Moshe is a cognitive neuroscientist at Bar-Ilan University and Massachusetts Hospital. He was previously the head of the Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University and before that director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on various aspects of brain function, including memory, foresight, mental load, mind-wandering, mood, and creativity. He has published over 90 research articles, edited two scientific books and published the popular science book Mindwandering. His writing to the public has appeared in numerous platforms, including the New York Times and the WSJ.

  • Simon Hill

    CEO of Wazoku, a hybrid collective intelligence co., Author and Podcast Host

    Simon Hill is the founder of Wazoku, a hybrid collective intelligence company building the ecosystems that help the world innovate better. Wazoku owns Innocentive, the world's open innovation marketplace, with a global network of millions of problem-solvers and solution providers. Simon is a Visiting Professor at the University of East London, focusing on frontier research, IP and innovation. He is the author of the award-winning Expected Value (2025) and Mapping Value (2026). He is a UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence (APPG AI) Advisory Board member, a founding partner of the Institute of Innovation Management, and a Fellow of the RSA and of MIT's Innovation Lab.

  • Warren Berger

    Questionologist + Author + Speaker

    Innovation expert and questionologist Warren Berger has studied hundreds of the world’s foremost innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers to learn how they ask questions, generate original ideas, and solve problems. He is the author or co-author of more than 12 books on innovation, including the bestseller A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas and the internationally acclaimed GLIMMER, named one of Businessweek’s Best Innovation and Design Books of the Year. Berger’s next book, THE OUTSIDE-IN YEAR, is about taking challenging questions out for walks in nature as a way to spark ideas. His writing appears in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, and The New York Times. He lives in New York.

Organizing team