We had our 2017 Young Innovator ‘Think Tank’ this week. The purpose of this was to create buy in for the next stage of our Young Innovator Program which needs to include an entrepreneurial stream for our older students.
It started with a reminder of where we had been already and what the Young Innovator Program looked like now.
We then heard from Colin Kinner (Director of Spike Innovation), EmilyDeLa Pena (Coding Kids), myself on design thinking and Jon Nalder on his Future-u global collaboration. Whilst each of the speakers presented (6 mins), the audience jotted down the key points from each on post-it notes and ‘red-dotted’ each of the ideas as they were repeated.
Colin spoke about Australia’s global position in terms of economic complexity by displaying maps for different countries with Australia’s being vastly different to many others such as South Korea. Of note was the export focus on natural resources for Australia but on transmission, electronics and circuitry from others:
Colin also discussed the importance of getting started early with the entrepreneurial mindset and his willingness to support us as a school as we trialled such a program.
Emily addressed her own experiences in moving from the transport industry to eventually founding her own business – CodingKids and the importance of being resilient and thinking outside the box when finding your own path. She spoke passionately about her own experiences and the deficit of effective data collection and analysis skills in some fields in which she had worked.
Nicola spoke about design thinking and its emerging importance as a framework for creativity and innovation and how it was finding its place now away from industries such as advertising and areas such as the Arts to offer to organisations a way of identifying problems, moving forward and being creative with those solutions. With schools all over the nation working towards the implementation of the the Digital Technologies Curriculum, OakleighSS finds ourselves in an interesting place as a school because of the journey we are already on with Design Thinking to scaffold our thinking in many areas of strategy, curriculum and inquiry.
Jon Nalder spoke about Future-U and his work to support schools and organisations to prepare learners to work on the key building blocks supporting them to thrive in the world of tomorrow.
We then heard from Quinn and Rowan, both from our local Marist Brothers College in Ashgrove, to talk to us about their own entrepreneurial journey. The boys were quite amazing in their outlook and the way they were able to articulate many of the things we had been talking about during this presentation. It was very impressive to hear from two young boys who are on the entrepreneurial journey themselves – and it was quite clear to the audience that their skills, their outlook, their collaborative and strategic skills, and their developing business management skills were all ones that were going to benefit them as they moved forward through their schooling and beyond.
Additionally, I often think of the enormous importance and need for our young people to understand themselves and to be able to identify their own skills and attributes in terms of what they can contribute to a team – Quinn and Rowan are clearly doing this and ‘value-adding’ to their education they receive from school and their parents in a way that is quite significant.
At the end of our presentations, the groups then worked together to find patterns in their own post-its and to arrange them on their tables with ‘like’ ideas grouped together.
A very brief summary was given from each group at the end.
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Don’t fear change – it’s inevitable and we need to appreciate diverse strengths.
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Let’s develop entrepreneurial skills early
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It’s so important to learn in a ‘fail-safe’ environment
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This way of learning increases our empathy
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Growing as an individual should be a focus
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The process of design thinking is essential
