Heroes, Lifelong Learning & Inventor Dean Kamen

Here’s the thing: education matters. That’s no zinger. Who doesn’t agree on that? But what do you do after tiring from nodding hypnotically to politicians’ pandering platitudes of “improving our schools”. I fell upon a shrine of serendipity—“randomness” and “optionality”, the twin pillars supporting the lectern of luck. And I met Jacob Mnookin. Jacob was starting the first ever charter school in Coney Island, Brooklyn—where I was raised and my family resides. We teamed up (I became Chairman), got chartered and open this August after a three-times oversubscribed lottery filled our founding 5th grade class. 80 incoming 5th grade students won the lottery. But most of the community has lost the proverbial ‘ovarian lottery’: born into poverty, out of wedlock and onto a uneven playing field they’re ill equipped for. Our mission is to right this.

I believe the two most important things that kids (especially inner-city kids) require for a successful education are (1) picking the right heroes and (2) developing a deep desire to learn. The first fosters the second. As a society, culturally we get what we celebrate. Celebrate celebrities, kids will seek to be socialites. Celebrate sports stars, kids will be aspirant “persperants”. Weekly gossip rags display celebrities riding bikes and eating ice cream, declaring “they’re just like us”. No. If we want to inspire greatness, it is not likeness, but distinction and achievement we should display. Besides: most great entrepreneurs that mint a fortune inventing the future don’t even know what they’re worth. The fellow who does things that count, doesn't usually stop to count them. One such fellow, similarly espousing the importance of education and doing a lot about it, is Dean Kamen.

Dean Kamen is an inventor, entrepreneur, and a tireless advocate for science and technology. As founder of DEKA Research & Development Corporation, he develops internally generated inventions and provides research and development for major corporate clients. Dean holds over 440 U.S. and foreign patents for innovative devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. Some of his notable inventions include the first wearable insulin pump for diabetics, the HomeChoice™ portable peritoneal dialysis machine, the INDEPENDENCE® IBOT® Mobility System, and the Segway® Human Transporter. Among Dean’s proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use, and enjoy science and technology. Mr. Kamen was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000, the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002, is a member of the National Academy of Engineers and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May 2005.

WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO BECOME AN INVENTOR?
The alternative seemed so grim! I couldn’t imagine ever working for anybody, and I knew nobody was going to pay me to sit around and think of big ideas, so I decided to develop the skills to produce things that people would want. That way, people might be willing to part with their hard earned cash to let me do the things I really enjoy doing, like solving problems.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST INVENTION THAT CAUSED PEOPLE TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOU?
I built audiovisual systems in the early days of power electronics. At the time, these new power devices were revolutionary, allowing for thousands of times more power than you could get out of a little single transistor. I realized that I could take these high power devices and apply them in relatively simple engineered systems to quickly create things like light shows or control systems for big audiovisual displays. The new technologies allowed for very reliable, high performance shows, without the need for an enormous amount of equipment. I started building these when I was in high school and turned it into a whole business.
I personally think the entire horrible age of disco is a result of the achievements of the power semiconductor industry. An unintended, but very real consequence!

HOW DID YOU LEARN TO BECOME AN INVENTOR? WERE YOU SELF-TRAINED?
I was always fascinated by math and physics. I liked the pure idea of looking at the world around you and trying to figure out the rules that make it comprehensible. We take the properties of our natural world for granted in many ways, but it is so repeatable and so consistent! Where do those properties come from? As a kid, I used to think about these things all the time.
Frankly, going to school and answering some trivial question in a textbook didn’t seem like learning or knowledge to me. So I spent a lot of time on my own trying to understand the laws of physics in the world around me. I learned that from the laws of physics, societies have developed the rules of engineering, and as long as those rules don’t violate those laws, you can achieve some pretty powerful results. That’s when I became fascinated with engineering, and I determined I would develop a skill set to become capable of producing things that everybody wants.

BRING ANY FAMOUS INVENTORS BACK TO LIFE – WHO WOULD YOU SPEND THE DAY WITH?
That’s an easy question. Archimedes and Galileo. Archimedes lived almost 2300 years ago, yet he had a better insight into the beautifully intricate and self-consistent rules of nature than most people do to this day. He was able to literally do what we now call calculus - figuring out the volume of solids like cylinders, cones, and spheres – without any prior knowledge. It took about 1,500 years for another great mind like his to come along in Galileo of Galilei. You look at what Galileo was able to do through just pure logic in understanding essentially the laws of motion, acoustics, mechanics, and optics- it is nothing less than astounding!
It’s almost inconceivable to me that these guys were able to have the clarity of thought and expression that they had, without the benefit of standing on the shoulders of giants that we take for granted today.

View my complete interview with Dean Kamen at Forbes.com.