This essay focuses on the process of conceiving new ideas. Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “A first-rate soup

the process of conceiving new ideas

Innovators are creative problem solvers, those who produce new and useful ideas, methods, or products that are valuable and useful to those who implement them. While creativity is the process of conceiving new ideas, innovators put them into practice. Creative problem solvers can sense challenges, define problems, propose and evaluate solutions, and create a plan to implement them. Innovation takes place in all fields of endeavor.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.”4 In this sense, all of us are potential innovators, and so are our students.  organizations focus on WHAT they do (for example, “We make widgets”) and HOW they do it (“We make widgets with many features that are better than the rest”), but they

don’t know WHY they do it (“We believe widgets can change the world”). Have We Lost Our WHY? Many schools today are focus on WHAT they “produce.” . This is either a holdover from the old industrial factory model of education. This or a misguide adaptation of incentive-drive business models. Sir Ken Robinson compares these schools to fast-food restaurants. Each meal is standardized to meet rigid quality control standards in order to turn out exactly like every other meal. The problem is that the products, while uniform, are not really of very high quality in a world where Michelin stars define quality.7 Michelin restaurants, not fast food, represent the globally competitive world that our students will live and w