The Two Million Minutes Blog

How important is innovation?

Few entrepreneurs, scientists or engineers are more passionately engaged, or more personally involved, in motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology.

 

Inventor Dean Kamen he holds more than 440 patents. Best know as the inventor of the Segway, he also pioneered products ranging from insulin pumps, to dialysis treatments, to therapies for treating T-Cell lymphoma.

As importantly, Kamen has been a tireless advocate for science and technology education. In 1989, he founded FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

Through hands-on application -- building robots that compete in complex tournaments - kids learn that science and engineering can be exciting, fun and rewarding. Today, FIRST serves over 250,000 young people in more than 50 countries.

NY Times Columnist Tom Friedman on America's Innovation Imperative

Tom Friedman talks about why America must educate its young people to be innovators. This video is one of 63 video interviews in the new book Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

Harvard's Wagner on Raising & Teaching the Innovative Child

Harvard researcher Dr. Tony Wagner and filmmaker Bob Compton have teamed up to produce a new book - Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World.

Wagner provides a powerful rationale for preparing kids for an innovation-driven economy. He identifies a pattern in the lives of young innovators — a childhood of creative play leads to deep-seated interests, which in adolescence and adulthood blossom into a deeper purpose for career and life goals. Play, passion, and purpose: these are the forces that drive young innovators.

More than a book about innovation, Creating Innovators pioneers an entirely new reading experience. Noted filmmaker Bob Compton, who teamed up with Tony to make the movie "The Finland Phenomenon," has produced more than 60 original videos that expand on key ideas and passages in the book through interviews with young innovators, their parents, teachers and mentors.