About Us — Why we created the Thinkster community?
I ask my daughters who are in College, High School and Middle school now only one question when we discuss why I started Thinskter and why people need to start companies or create innovative products or services.
How rich will your life be today if you did not have Netflix, iPhones, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Uber or any number of other products and services you use?
They always tell me that it would kind of suck to be in a world absent these.
I then tell them what it took the founders of these companies to do what they did.
From Steve Jobs to Reed Hastings, none of the founders were satisfied with the world that they inherited. They also did not want to live in the world as they found it, but wanted to make it a much better place for themselves and others.
In the process they decided to do something about it. They decided that they would rather do something fundamentally different and path breaking. Many of their ilk perhaps failed and we never heard about them. We only know about the ones who succeeded.
What does it take for anyone to not be content with the world as it stands today?
A throbbing desire for change and an insatiable hunger for making things better — way better!
But is it possible for anyone to do this?
Surely, “why not?” — you might ask.
You can. Everyone can. If only we all got trained in the way of thinking.
Thinking to create. Thinking to innovate. Thinking to transform.
How do we do this if we do not teach our kids to think? If we just merely teach them math and physics and language as routine, but not as tools that enables them to aspire and probe and poke — then is transformation possible?
Our hypothesis is that this is not possible without the ability to make our children want to think.
This is not an esoteric wish. This is very achievable.
We have Edison, Newton, Bell, Beethoven, DaVinci, Picasso, Darwin, and many others before us who taught us that the art of transforming our understanding of the world started with a deep probing of the science and philosophy of how things worked. This incisive quest for understanding the deeper aspects of life led these inventors, innovators, and artistes, to change the way we perceive things today.
It transformed our experiences of what we take for granted today — from the simple light bulb to the Uber we use to hail a taxi.
So, this blog and this community is for us to help our children get a deeper understanding of not only how things got transformed in the past, but to work independently and collectively to solve near-term, local, and emergent problems that need solutions — urgently!
It will cover articles that inspired action among our past innovators and creators and will also include interviews with our own modern day thinkers and tinkerers. Do you have a kid who did something nifty and created a hack to feed your dog when you are away from home? Do you have a teenager who created an app that will provide access to free food to those desperately in need of food — the homeless? We will not only cover these topics but most likely will share interviews with them.
We will interview thought leaders, teachers, firemen, doctors, writers and all others who have inspiring stories about what they did and why they did them.
This will be a place where Thinksters can come, collaborate, make friends, have fun, and will collectively leave the world a better place.
If you want to be a part of this journey, just drop us a line at Partners@ThinksterMath.com
