Be honest, what does/did your computer room look like at school? More often than not, they are uninspiring and in fact hinder creativity rather than promote it. I wanted to change this, so in early 2013, Thinkspace was born.

The reason so many young people don’t want to learn how to code in the 21st Century is because of ridiculous stereotypes (which certainly isn’t helped by Minecraft and Scratch etc). Boys and girls just simply (and quite rightly) don’t want to be labelled as being “nerds”, “geeks” or anything of that nature. So our task at Thinkspace was to make coding cool, for the very first time.

“James, please can you do this to my living room?”

Each Thinkspace must adhere to a strict “dress code” — plain walls, Thinkspace logos, minimalist furniture, bean bags or sofas, large TVs for communicating with other Thinkspaces around the world, and modern computers — essentially, a tiny Google Campus within a school. A lot of research went into designing Google’s campuses, and there’s a reason they’re laid out like they are. Outside of the confines a regular classroom, students are proven to be more engaged. We want to inspire and promote creativity, not hinder it.

We launched Thinkspace in Northern Ireland, last September, and I was lucky enough to present in the Parliament Buildings, Stormont. We received praise and advice from a number of politicians and professionals in both the IT and education industries (many of whom are were at BelTech today).

Our digital launch was huge. We received over 100,000 views on our website, 25,000+ views on the launch video and over 400 emails from schools in virtually every country across the world. Tens of thousands were inspired to ‘go out there’ and start their own project or business. We must have reached 15 million people (at the very least) through all our backers, plus articles going out on BBC News, Virgin, Microsoft, The Verge, WIRED, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Next Web and dozens of other publications. Here are some of the tweets that went out:

“It’s one of the smartest, simplest yet potentially powerful ideas that I’ve encountered in 20 years of being asked to look at the ‘Next Big Thing’. It could produce a generation of technically savvy young Britons that would really help our economy and our reputation for cutting-edge innovation.” — Stephen Fry, British Actor

We’re now encouraging students, like Jonathan Dunn in our flagship Thinkspace in Plymouth, to lead their own learning. He’s built up his own web and app design business, at the age of 14, called Dunn Rite! This is a picture of him practising his speech for Bett.

When you’re a 16-year-old launching your own organisation for the first time, you’re going to make mistakes — and that’s fine, because you can only go forward by making mistakes. As long as you learn from them, mistakes can be invaluable to your success.

And life is better when you learn to laugh at yourself and move on! This child had some school work, with a question that asked them “How would you solve this problem: You fell on the playground and scratched your knee.” They wrote “Get up and deal with it.” I love this because it shows that this kid clearly has a strong desire to succeed and is willing to pick themselves up when they have failed.

Is this an entrepreneur in the making?

Last year we had the pleasure of meeting one of our backers, Sir Richard Branson, in person, for breakfast at a Virgin event. He gave us lots of advice and we were even lucky enough to film an interview with him. However, this wasn’t a pre-organised meeting. We saw a tuft of blonde hair sticking up about twenty metres away from us, so to check it was Richard, I took out my camera and used the zoom lens to focus in on him. And it was indeed Richard, so we rushed over to see him, much to his PA’s dismay!

16 years ago — in 1997, when I was born — most 16-year-olds were still learning the difference between a verb and a noun. Today, in the 21st Century, the 16-year-olds are the ones innovating and pushing the Internet forwards. Here’s just some of the things that happened in 1997. None of these projects and ventures were worked on by 16-year-olds by the way!

• Go Daddy is founded
• Intel introduces the MMX chip
• Yahoo! introduces Yahoo Mail
• Netflix is established
• Microsoft begins working on Bing

And here are some of the greatest successes by young people in the last 16 years, since 1997:

• Summly acquired for ~$30m (founded at 17 y/o)
• Jamal Edwards launches SBTV (founded at 16 y/o)
• Sean Spooner launches Magnate (founded at 16 y/o)
• Daniel Ek launches Spotify (founded at 23 y/o)
• Drew Houston launches Dropbox (founded at 24 y/o)
• Alexis Ohanian launches Reddit (founded at 22 y/o)

I’m so confident this is only the start though, and soon — this list will be growing at such a ridiculously fast rate.

One of the biggest things I’ve learnt over the past year is that so many entrepreneurs and coders have a vision and they believe so much in that vision and only have one goal: simply to get to the end. Well, what do you do when you get to that point? The best part about building Thinkspace, until our launch, was certainly the journey; we’re still having a blast!

Oh, also, know when to break rules.

A Florida-bound flight is travelling at 560 miles per hour, when the pilot begins to notice smoke pouring into the cockpit. This is one of the most terrifying emergencies a pilot can face on a flight — they don’t know the cause of the smoke and they don’t know if it is contained or if it is going to spread out of control quickly. The pilot radioed in to air traffic control saying, “I need to descend immediately. I can’t maintain altitude.” However, there was a huge problem. Another flight, also heading to Florida on exactly the same path, was just 2,000 feet below. The FAA rules are simple: no two aircraft flying en route may pass each other any closer than 1,000 feet, above or below, or five miles around each other. The rules are there for a reason: it becomes extremely difficult to manoeuvre aircraft without creating a serious risk of collision. Despite all this, the air traffic controller responds, “KH209, turn fifteen degrees right and descend.”

The air traffic controller had just ordered the distressed aeroplane to enter restricted airspace and it would mean passing well within the five-mile buffer of the plane flying beneath him. However, this was a very experienced air traffic controller — he had thousands of hours worth of experience and knew all the rules inside out. He radioed the pilot of the plane below and said “There is an aircraft flying above you. He has declared an emergency and needs to descend through your altitude at approximately two miles off your right front.” This same message was repeated several times as the troubled aircraft began to descend.

On that clear day over Maryland, 126 lives were saved because a very experienced air traffic controller decided to break the rules. Keeping people alive was more important than maintaining boundaries.

Sometimes, it’s more of a risk not to take a risk.