Creating Innovators

In Creating Innovators, education scholar Tony Wagner investigates what actually produces young people who can generate novel ideas and bring them to fruition. Drawing on interviews with roughly two dozen young innovators and their parents, plus figures such as the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (discussed through the recollections of those who knew him), Wagner argues that innovation is cultivated rather than innate. The book opens with a section on the "innovator's DNA," or the traits and experiences common among these young people, and pairs it with interviews with prominent figures like Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull and Apple's Steve Wozniak. The central framework divides the developmental roots of innovation into three domains: play, passion, and purpose. Wagner describes how childhood play, especially unstructured and exploratory activity, gives way in adolescence to a driving passion, which in adulthood matures into a sense of purpose about improving the world. He profiles several young innovators, including a medical device designer, a robotics entrepreneur, and a social-enterprise founder, tracing how parents and mentors nurtured curiosity across these stages. A large portion examines higher education, contrasting traditional lecture-based instruction with hands-on, interdisciplinary programs such as Olin College of Engineering and the MIT Media Lab, where students learn by building and iterating on real projects. Wagner argues that most schools and workplaces reward individual achievement and compliance rather than the collaborative, risk-tolerant, failure-embracing problem solving that innovation requires. He urges parents, teachers, and employers to create environments that let young people pursue intrinsic motivation, work in teams, and wrestle with meaningful problems, offering a critique of standardized testing and conventional pedagogy along the way.