This week in Vancouver, British Columbia, a conference called TED is taking place. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design. The nonprofit began with its first conference in 1984 to cover science, business and global issues in ways that expand our thinking of what’s possible in our own lifetimes. Speakers share their newest inventions in technology and thought in hopes that the audience can apply those inventions to problems unique to our communities and us.

The TED conference this year featured talks on gun violence and equality, data and behavioral manipulation, and CO2 extraction and the genetic architecture of cyanobacterium. Here are two of my favorite TED talks from years past:

>> Astro Teller, captain of moonshots at X, on “The Unexpected Benefit of Celebrating Failure”

Teller says, “Great dreams are coupled with strategies for making them real.” Just because we can’t conceive it ourselves doesn’t mean it’s not possible. As captain of moonshots at X, formerly known as Google[x], he is charged with leading a team of innovators to launch inventions that help to solve problems affecting millions of people. Teller says the secret to the Moonshot Factory is to tackle the hardest parts of the problem first, trying to kill the project in that process. Those that survive make it into the hands of consumers.

In his talk, Teller talks about failed and ongoing projects at X. Calcifer is a lighter-than-air cargo ship invented to address the cost of building infrastructure to import goods and the time it takes transport goods, and the impact shipping has on our environment. So why did it fail? The cost to build and design their first model, and get their first data point would cost close to $200 million. Teller says, “If there’s an Achilles’ heel we want to know that now, not $200 million down the road.”

Teller ends his talk with, “The only way to get people to work on big messy things, audacious ideas … is if you make that the path of least resistance. We work hard at X to make it safe to fail. … Enthusiastic skepticism is not the enemy of boundless optimism. It’s optimism’s perfect partner.”

>> Joi Ito, “Want to Innovate? Become a ‘Now-ist’”

Joi Ito is director of MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s laboratory for disruptive innovation. Ito starts by looking back to one of his final meetings at MIT before becoming its Media Lab director. That same night, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Japan. His wife and family were still living about 200 miles from its epicenter. He worried his family was in danger, and couldn’t glean enough information from the news to know whether they were safe. Online he found a handful of people with the same fear. Together they used available data to measure radiation and the internet to share it with the world. They called themselves Safecast. Three years later Safecast was home to 16 million data points and the world’s largest open data set for radiation.

Ito asked himself how a band of concerned citizens could do what others in government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) couldn’t. Ito argues that the internet pushed innovation out of larger institutions and into the dorm rooms and garages of people with passion. He found that innovation is moving from M.B.A.-driven models into the hands of designers and engineers, where learning happens by trying, failing and trying again. In his talk he mentions four principles and he calls this one “Compass over Maps.” He explains that having a strong compass or vision of where you’re headed is more important than knowing the exact steps you’ll take to get there, because you’ll learn and iterate along the way.

With Earth Day approaching April 22, we can apply these principles of “enthusiastic skepticism,” “boundless optimism” and building compasses to bridge the gap between humanity and nature. We can start the conversation around questions like what will it take to power our islands by 100 percent clean energy and how can we move around our islands without hurting the air quality for future generations. Blue Planet Foundation is gathering the community for its Blue Line Project on April 21 to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change, and Elemental Excelerator is livestreaming its Earth Day Energy Summit on Friday on its Facebook page. Both Teller and Ito will be speaking to a room of business leaders, policymakers and entrepreneurs to help us think beyond what we believe to be possible.

Lauren Tonokawa is head of the communications team at the Energy Excelerator. She’s a graduate of the University of Hawaii. Reach her at laurentonokawa@gmail.com.