Inventor Dean Kamen teams up with influencer Mark Rober to make cool robots

Hello and welcome to The modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and Chief Content Officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores leadership practices drawn from interviews with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages ofInc.again Fast company . If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to receive it every Monday morning. 

Dean Kamen created the Segway, and is listed as an inventor on more than 1,000 international and US patents, many of which are medical devices such as the portable insulin pump. He is also president of the research and engineering firm DEKA Research and Development, which has helped transform his hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire, from a struggling city into a technology hub.

But Kamen’s most lasting contribution to business and society may be FIRST (Promotion and Recognition of Science and Technology), a nonprofit robotics program that has worked with more than three million students worldwide, from pre-K to high school seniors, since then. founded the organization in 1989. (Disclosure: FIRST isFast companythe advertiser; (This newsletter was created outside of that relationship.)

FIRST to celebrate STEM

Kamen launched FIRST to encourage young people to get involved in science and technology. In the mid-1980s, politicians and corporate leaders felt that America was losing economic competitiveness and blamed schools for science and math that lagged behind students in rival countries such as Japan and Korea.

Kamen, whose mother was a teacher, felt that the problem was not the schools or the quality of education, but a culture that did not celebrate achievements and scientific works. “All the examples that the children saw were examples [in] the NBA, the NFL. They knew about the Super Bowl and the World Series,” said Kamen. “This country is still doing well in creating global entertainment, but our ability to produce enough scientists and engineers to keep us ahead has been in trouble.”

Fueled by the excitement and competitive spirit of sports, FIRST uses teams and competitions to teach and train students in the fundamentals of engineering, research, coding, and more. Kamen says FIRST gives students problem-solving and collaboration skills that will hold them in the workplace, whether they pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, or math. “We are creating a generation of children who know how to communicate, cooperate, work hard, and deal with frustration,” he said.

And while FIRST motivates students with awards and prizes, Kamen says the program emphasizes sportsmanship, or what he calls “kind professionalism.”

He says that in competitions students often help opposing teams in repairing broken robots even if it costs them points. In the FIRST competition, the international competition that covers the program’s robot competition season, “one or two robots will win, but all the children should win,” he said. Indeed, the most prestigious award in the competition goes to the team that is considered the best example to other teams and embodies the mission of the program.

A new era of models

Sports idolatry may have inspired the creation of FIRST, but a new group of characters have emerged that emulate the popularity of professional athletes. Some 57% of Gen Z respondents to a recent Morning Consult survey said they want to be influencers, or paid content creators. Kamen is enthusiastic about the role people like YouTuber Mark Rober can play in advancing FIRST’s mission.

“One of the things that technology does is lower the barrier for people to be able to use it and understand it,” he said. Rober, a former NASA engineer who has about 58 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, hosted the FIRST robotics team at his company, attended the FIRST competition earlier this year, and posted a video praising the program. “I think it’s the intersection of these promoters, creators, and the FIRST version. . . it is starting to have a very big impact on the future of the technology pipeline in this country,” said Kamen, noting that this program is in tens of thousands of schools with hundreds of thousands of teachers and volunteers.

Businesses have a lot to gain when students enjoy science. Independent research has found that after-school STEM programs improve student attendance and interest in college. A recent RAND survey found that educators would like to offer STEM programs outside of school, but many schools, especially those in rural or urban districts, lack the funds and partners to meet student demand.

Kamen thinks CEOs can help close the gap in these schools. “Ask them to look at their marketing budget. How much did they put into the Olympics? How many ads have they posted? [during] the Super Bowl and the World Series? You get the best of what you celebrate,” he said. “I tell these senior officials that . . . make sure the schools in your community have FIRST teams, just like they have football and basketball teams—and let your tech people be there in front of the kids, showing them how much fun their job really is.”

Are you building the workforce of tomorrow?

How does your company encourage students to pursue careers in your field? Did you participate in an after-school program or activity that taught you “kind work”? Share your experiences here—I’d love to compile a list of readers’ favorite shows for an upcoming edition of this newsletter.

Read more:

• How Mark Rober became the Willy Wonka of engineering
• OK Go helps kids create art in space
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