Interview with Dean Kamen: “How to boost creativity and innovation”

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Welcome to the EnlightED Podcasts, the worldwide conference that focuses on the challenges of education in the new world. Driven by Fundación Telefónica, IE University and South Summit, it gathers leading experts in education, technology and innovation.

How to bring passion and enthusiasm into the classroom? Could we turn science into something as exciting as sport? The renowned inventor, Dean Kamen, has his own recipe for how to boost creativity, which he shares with us in this inspirational talk with Carmen Morenés, Director General of Fundación Telefónica.

Carmen Morenés (0:52)

Today we have the enormous privilege of having Dean Kamen with us in EnlightED. For me, it's an enormous challenge to summarize in a few words all the accomplishments of a person that has contributed so much through all your life. Dean Kamen, as all you know, is an inventor, but he's also an entrepreneur, and he's a talent advocate for science and technology. He's very well known for his invention of the Segway that we can see in the picture behind him, and I bought, as well as founding, the non-profit organization FIRST that is really a very important project for him. Kamen also holds over 1,000 patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of healthcare over the world. Kamen has received many awards for his efforts in his life, like the National Medal of Technology in 2000, as well as other many national and international awards.

One of Dean's proudest accomplishments is Founding FIRST, that stands for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. This organization is dedicated to motivate the next generations to understand and enjoy science and technology.

Thank you very much, Dean, for being with us today. It's an enormous opportunity for all our audience to have a chat with you. Hello.

Dean Kamen (2:21)

Thank you for the opportunity to participate in a conference that is focusing on an issue as important as the future of education worldwide.

Carmen Morenés (2:33)

We all know that you are one of the most prominent inventors and innovators, not only in the US, but also worldwide.

How was your professional and personal journey to get to be this? I mean, what inspired you when you was a child? Did this come with you from the beginning or something outside or someone was important in inspiring you to get to be such an inventive person?

Dean Kamen (3:02)

Well, in some ways, I don't think I can be more different than my father. He is an artist.

He has no background or education in mathematics or physics or engineering, but he's a brilliant, creative artist. So in some ways, in many ways, as I was growing up in my career, early asked who inspired me, I wouldn't have said my father because we're so different in what we do. But I've come to learn, as I've seen how many people approach their careers and their lives differently than I have, not in fact the strongest influence and the strongest inspiration that gave me a pathway is my father. Because in one way, we're very, very similar. My father never had a job in his life. He is an independent artist and he would do work for people and he'd get up every day and hope that he would make something that people would want enough that they would pay him to do it. And when I was a young kid, I remember as I watched my father work, asking him how he chose that.

And my father said to me, and he's not a man of a lot of advice, he said, Dean, find something you love to do that you will, because you love it, get so good at it, you can make your career doing something you love and then you'll never work again in your life. I have no artistic talent. I could not grow up to do what my father does, but as I did grow up, I learned that the power of mathematics and engineering and physics could give me tools that I could use to be creative, the same way my father was creative. His tools are a pen and a canvas, my tools are machines and electronics, but we both have now come to realize, do the same thing. We get up every day and try to create something new that was never there before. And I focus on trying to create new things that will improve the quality of life of people, which is why almost every invention I've worked on is medically related, insulin pumps for delivering medication to kids with diabetes, other kinds of medical inhibition pumps, dialysis with you, our balancing iBot that can help a disabled person that can't stand up or walk, be at eye level and climb stairs and balance like people take for granted. In fact, it was making that medical device, the iBot, the balance that gave me the idea to make a fun version of the iBot, but a non-medical product, one of the few, the Segway. But to this day, everybody thinks first I made a Segway and then the medical version with the seed out of the iBot, but that's not so. I make many, many different kinds of medical products, including the iBot, then we made the Segway.