Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World

Tony Wagner’s groundbreaking bestseller—“a road map for parents who want to sculpt their children into innovative thinkers” (USA TODAY) and a guide for “an employer looking to have a pipeline of creative talent” (Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO).

Harvard education expert Tony Wagner explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. In profiling compelling young American innovators such as Kirk Phelps, product manager for Apple’s first iPhone, and Jodie Wu, who founded a company that builds bicycle-powered maize shellers in Tanzania, Wagner reveals how the adults in their lives nurtured their creativity and sparked their imaginations, while teaching them to learn from failures and persevere. Play, passion, and purpose: These are the forces that drive young innovators.

Wagner takes readers into the most forward-thinking schools, colleges, and workplaces in the country, where teachers and employers are developing cultures of innovation based on collaboration, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and intrinsic motivation. The result is a timely, provocative, and inspiring manifesto that offers crucial insight into creating the change makers of tomorrow.

• Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era
• The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need-and What We Can Do About It
• Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That's Transforming Education
• The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School
• Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry
• What School Could Be: Insights and Inspiration from Teachers across America
• Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology
• Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative
• Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student
• Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools