CREATING INNOVATORS

A call to arms: Wagner advocates transforming school culture to place more emphasis on 21st century values of curiosity, creativity, collaboration and management--the skills business leaders say are most needed.

From a prominent educator, founder of Harvard's Change Leadership Group, and bestselling author with an impeccable platform comes a timely examination of how to foster innovation: the essential tool for today's students and the key to future economic and global competitiveness.

Today’s young people are more independent, in-touch, tech-savvy, and entrepreneurial than previous generations, and less motivated by old-school rewards of grades and money. They want to create more than to consume, to be actors, not spectators, and, above all, to change the world in a positive, lasting way. At the same time, the global economy has shifted and our economic future depends on our ability to compete with the increasingly nimble and entrepreneurial workforces of countries such as India and China. The next generation has the potential to compete--if we can give them the innovation skills to realize it. In this groundbreaking book, education expert Tony Wagner examines why innovation is imperative to our global competitiveness and profiles today’s most compelling young innovators. He reveals how they found their way because of parents, teachers, and mentors whose unconventional methods nurtured and developed curiosity, imagination, creativity, and initiative. In their experiences, Wagner discovered a surprisingly consistent pattern of play, passion, and purpose: a childhood of unstructured play led to finding their passions—often as adolescents, and the pursuit of those passions evolved into a deeper and more mature sense of purpose. It is this combination of play, passion, and purpose that is key to developing young people’s innovative capacity.
Wagner then looks more widely at the education system—especially colleges—and how we can better parent, teach, mentor, and manage young people to pick up where that system has failed. He takes readers into the most innovative and cutting-edge schools and workplaces in the country, those that have been the most successful in fostering the skills needed for innovation: collaboration, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, and dynamic problem-solving. Throughout, he emphasizes ways that play, passion, and purpose can be incorporated into the culture of home, school, and work. The result is a timely and optimistic manifesto that will change how we look at innovation and the next generation’s potential to be changemakers.