Caine's Arcade 2: Are We Creating Innovators?

In case you’re not familiar with Caine’s Arcade I’ll give you a little background.  A couple months ago a film maker in LA stopped by a used car parts store to pick something up.  When he arrived he discovered the owner’s son Caine had commandeered the front of the shop and transformed it into and arcade full of simple cardboard games (you know the ones you used to make when you were a kid).

Inspired by Caine’s ingenuity and entrepreneurship the film maker coordinated with friends, Caine’s dad, and social media to mob Caine’s Arcade with customers…and of course as a film maker he made a film (click here to view) from it that went viral and has been seen all over the world.

Since then, the Caine’s Arcade group has come up with a follow up film and used the money and inspiration raised by the first film to create the Imagination Foundation, a organization designed to spur entrepreneurship and innovation in kids.

You’re better off watching the video then listening to me explain it.

Watching the new film got me thinking about whether we doing enough to push kids to innovate?  I’d like to think yes, but it might be more helpful and truthful if we try to identify the truly innovative things we’ve seen our students do.  Can you do that?  Hopefully?

Although I’m sure there is some innovative stuff going on at our schools (just off the top of my head I can think of IS Bangkok’s Invention Center), I fear that many of our students are simply on their predestined path to university and they’ve been given few opportunities to innovate.  In other words with a mixture of money, high preforming students, and rigorous academic work we’ve gotten really good at getting kids to university, but so are many schools in our home countries.  With those ingredients shouldn’t we push for more?  We’ve master university entrance, let’s start challenging our students and teachers to do think beyond this goal.

Do you agree or disagree?  Then prove it and tell us about it in the comments section!