I first became enamored with the field of innovation and design thinking when I began working at The Nueva School in the fall of 2009. Nueva is a progressive school based in the Silicon Valley with a strong emphasis on project-based learning, entrepreneurship, innovation and design thinking. Many of the parents at the school are innovators and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area and choose the school because of the focus on creativity and design.

Nueva school built an "iLab" (short for Innovation Lab) which opened in 2007. The school also introduced design thinking to the children and faculty, and systematically went about preparing teachers and students to be more innovative, creative, empathic, and solution focused. During my time at the school, I fell in love with the design thinking process and saw what a transformational effect an innovation space, coupled with a design thinking mindset, could have on children.

Stepping into the world of design thinking can feel perplexing at first. Suddenly terms and names like design thinking, iteration, David Kelly, Tim Brown, prototyping, iterate, d.school, IDEO are used, and this can leave people feeling puzzled and paralyzed.

Once you dive into the five stages of design thinking, empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, you quickly realize the power and application for school leaders. Using the stages of design thinking has helped me discover ways to solve problems collaboratively and allowed the faculty to see problems from multiple viewpoints. Design thinking also steers people from looking for the one "right answer" and allows for prototyping and iterating in a vast number of domains.

I would highly recommend you read Tim Brown's article, "Design Thinking," published in Harvard Business Review in June 2008. This article brought the concept of design thinking to a broader audience. It was also the precursor of Tim Brown's incredible book Change by Design.