Today, we begin to write a whole new chapter for the TED Prize. There are three key shifts:

+ Historically, the TED Prize was awarded to individuals who then made a wish. Starting in 2013, it will be awarded to individuals with a big wish already in mind.

+ Individuals can self-nominate or nominate someone else; every self-nomination will include a proposal for a world-changing and achievable wish. Anyone can be nominated, including existing members of the TED community (TED Fellows, TEDx organizers, etc.).

+ And finally, we have raised the cash award to $1 million to provide powerful seed funding for the wish.

Put these three pieces together, and we believe the new format will spur the nomination of remarkable projects. We invite extraordinary individuals, likely backed by an existing organization, to submit imaginative ideas for a collaborative project that extends their own work. With $1 million in seed funding, and the TED community’s support, the winner will have the capacity to launch something truly paradigm-shifting.

The TED community has grown and evolved since we launched it in 2005. Many of the most recent TED Prize wishes have involved an open-source project, or a wish that needed the support of a global community to execute. The TED team has been giving these issues much thought over the past few months. We’ve realized that the TED Prize can evolve and respond more directly to the needs of the TED conference community as well as the global TEDx community.

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

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