What makes TED obnoxious is that they market it so heavily (all those videos) but exclude most people. It's fine to have private conferences, and fine to promote conferences, but it is nasty to do both.
I wouldn't read too much into it. My experience of the corporate world so far suggests that any group whose name explicitly mentions innovation doesn't actually do anything.
He was lucky though. Broadcast.com was the most bogus of all Bubble acquisitions. Cuban got the highest payoff per dollar of value created in the history of start-ups.
The fact that he worked hard for 20 years before that doesn't mean he didn't get lucky. Randomness strikes everyone equally.
This is like one of those arbitrage opportunities that disappear as soon as they become public knowledge. Now that the owners think of the building as a "kingmaker," they'll demand such an exorbitant price (in stock) from startups that want to rent it that only a desperate one would take the deal. So paradoxically the one thing you can be sure of is that the next Google won't be coming out of this building.
The stock illustration of the guy in the tie and the rah rah marketing tone of the site don't lead us to expect metaphors. You gotta warn us before throwing us a curve like that.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2009-09-18/tech/30013788...