Chapter 2

Chapter two of the book takes the specific example of Kirk Phelps, a 29 year old who works at SunRun, a company that is trying to change the way people buy and use energy in the US. Phelps dropped out of both high school (Exeter) and college (Stanford), to work on the first IPhone for Apple. Wagner (author of the book) interviewed his parents to see how this "perfect" innovator was raised, trying to determine if that had an impact on how he turned out. What Wagner found out was that they had much less extracurricular structure. Instead of always shipped away to some soccer practice or other structured activity. They believed that in order to come up with interesting things to do, kids first had to be bored. They also made sure that their kids were surrounded by tons of books, they even enforced an hour long reading period everyday.

Both of these things, along with many of the other things that Phelps' parents mentioned about the way they raised him, reminded me a lot of how I was raised. Although I didn't attend elite private schools, or move my family around the country in order for me to get the fanciest education, I was encouraged to go outside and come up with things to do. My brother and I were also always surrounded by books. Although I didn't read very much in school, I was always encouraged to read on my own. I think that where I went for primary school (Mission Hill) was a great environment for innovation. Creativity was always encouraged, and although we did not have as many resources as Exeter, I was able to learn all of the basic things I needed to get good grades in high school while also learning how to use my mind for more than algebra.

Thanks for reading,
Zank