"Building a Tech Empire"
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Co-founders, Google

Google co-founder Larry Page's uncanny knack for innovation began early in life; at only age six, he began toying with technology, and while still a kid, he used LEGO bricks to build a working inkjet printer.   While a grad student at Stanford University, Page and friend Sergey Brin hit on the idea for a comprehensive search engine for the Internet at Stanford University.   The two men built their initial server equipment from spare hardware parts left over from previous research projects, as well as an external disk drive casing made of LEGO bricks in bright primary colors.  

Says Page, "I attribute a great deal of my understanding and ability with mechanical devices to LEGO and similar construction toys."  

Today, Page and Brin still look to LEGO bricks for inspiration.   Recently, Google sponsored an international coding contest that awarded the winner $10,000 and a trophy fashioned from LEGO bricks, an homage to the company's humble origins.

Today, Google is the Internet's most widely used search engine.

*compiled from public record

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"A Creative Builder of Today Raising a Builder of Tomorrow"
Matthew Broderick Actor and Dad

Matthew Broderick is a two-time Tony award-winning stage actor and instantly recognizable film presence. A New York native, Broderick made his professional stage debut opposite his father, James Broderick, at age 17 in the production of "On Valentine's Day"   Broderick won his first Tony Award for Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs," and starred in the play's sequel "Biloxi Blues." He won his second Tony for his role as J. Pierrepont Finch, in the Broadway revival of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Broderick starred in Mel Brooks's stage version of "The Producers," which opened in 2001, and currently stars as Felix Unger in Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" on Broadway. He also continues to make feature films, including the 2005 adaptation of "The Producers." Encouraging his 3 ½ year old son to be creative is important to him.  

He said, "I try to make time with him, you know, unstructured time, as much as I can. I think it's nice to let him decide what to use the time for. I think more and more time with children is getting structured, so, I want him to have as much [free time] as he can. You know, time where it's OK if he just wants to lie and stare at the ceiling and hum for awhile... I don't really know what's best for him, and it's good to let him control it. I keep remembering when I was a kid we would play stickball or baseball and there was no coaching. But what was kind of good about that was you know, there was no umpire, so any argument had to be resolved with children, and you have to figure out how to make six people play nine positions on a team, or whatever it is there. And now, it's, you know, now it's 40 parents, 30 kids, full uniforms, padding, you know. I guess there's some good in all that, but it also seems like we have a lot of more free time where you have to make up the rules more yourself. So, I try to give him those opportunities."

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"Building a Business "
EILEEN FISHER, owner and CEO, Eileen Fisher Inc.

Mother, clothing designer and business woman, Eileen Fisher didn't start out as a clothing designer - she began her work life as an interior designer. But getting dressed for work each day took so much effort. She thought about the uniform she had worn throughout high school - and it became the seed of a vision.  

"The company really started when I began seeing all these little pictures in my mind, these garments, and how they all would go together. It was a vision of simplicity."

In 1984, she introduced four basic designs at a show in New York City, where she received $3,000 in orders. She expanded the line to eight pieces for her second show and brought in $40,000 in orders.   Eileen Fisher Inc. was born.

Eileen likens her original concept - high-quality, simple, comfortable women's clothing that works as a "wardrobing concept" to LEGO building: the power of their simplicity and ability to put things together in different ways to make them your own. That concept still defines the line sold in 33 Eileen Fisher stores and in department and specialty stores in the US and Canada.

In her home, Fisher has a LEGO room where she draws inspiration through play with her son.   Recently, her 12-year old daughter and her friends spent time in the LEGO room and they "totally got into it."  

"LEGO is the best, it's a great way for my kids to interact and connect with (pun intended!) other children," she says. "They can physically construct something that's going on in their mind and express things they're thinking about, making it possible to share that story with other people."

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"Encouraging Mom to Have it All"

Mary Goulet and Heather Reider are no strangers to juggling work and family. Goulet, mom to two daughters, and Reider, mom to three sons, are co-CEOs of MomsTown, Inc. and co-hosts of MomsTown Reality Radio, a popular Internet talk radio show, they also are authors of the e-book, "The Big Break," as well as, "The MomsTown Guide to Getting It All" and appear as regular parenting experts on "Dr. Phil."

Goulet says creativity is something parents can easily infuse to daily routines: "Moms feel stressed. They have so many things to do...by the day's end. I engage my kids. They're younger, they're girls, but they want to sweep the floor, they want to help me prepare dinner. And to them, that's playtime.   That's fun. And it takes the pressure off of me, the guilt off of me, that I'm not playing with them when they are so excited, can I help chop something, can I help put things in the dish and stir it, or bake something. So, I think there are a lot of right-underneath-your-nose ways for parents and children to be creative in their everyday living."

Reider advocates free time to help kids be the best they can be. "In the schools right now there's this culture of test-takers. And they're all stressed...and it's because they're getting ready for the big tests.   [My son's] biggest complaint about going from kindergarten to the first grade was no free time.   Free time is so important for raising creative problem solvers...healthy kids...We do all kinds of things to keep kids inside the box, instead of trying to get them to think outside the box. They all play soccer, they have to do this, we're scheduling our kids because it's easier to schedule your kids, because you don't feel guilty about them just doing nothing. When really, just doing 'nothing' is probably the best thing for them."

Goulet and Reider offer 10 Tips for Bringing Creativity Home, found in the Campaign News section.

Visit www.momstown.com

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Michel Gondry, Director and Writer
When conceptualizing the video for Detroit punk duo The White Stripes’ hit song "Fell in Love With a Girl," Gondry decided the simplicity of LEGO bricks echoed the band’s raw sound and basic recipe of drum, guitar and vocals. Gondry was no stranger to big LEGO projects: A huge fan of the colorful bricks since his childhood, Gondry and a cousin once built a rudimentary Zoetrope cartoon viewer from their combined Lego collections.

Gondry shot footage of the band playing, then recreated each frame with LEGO bricks, an elaborate process that took 15 animators more than six weeks to complete. In 2002, "Fell in Love With a Girl," was nominated for four MTV Video awards, including Best Video of the Year, Breakthrough Video, Best Special Effects and Best Editing.

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"Building an Animated Web"
JONATHAN GAY, Inventor of Flash

Macromedia Flash began with a few bits of colored plastic.

As a child, Jonathan Gay grew up playing with LEGO bricks. He says those bits of colored plastic taught him the basics of engineering design, how to choose a design problem, and the process of iterative refinement. Even better, they helped him express his early passion for building things.

"[LEGO building]...taught me that it's best to choose a problem that inspires you and challenges you-and one that you can accomplish with your limited capabilities and resources," he says . "The human mind is much too limited to capture the entirety of a complex creation all at once. With LEGO, you can start with the vision and work out the details of the design as you progress."  

With patience and persistence, Gay followed what he calls the LEGO-based design process - more or less the same process ultimately used to develop Flash:

1. Choose a problem: Build a LEGO ship.  
2. Develop a vision: What sort of ship will it be? How big will it be? What will it carry?  
3. Build: Build the framework of the ship.
4. Fill in the details: Design and build the details of the ship, ramps, doors, etc.
5. Test: Drive the cars around the ship and sail the ship while exploring the house.  
6. Refine: Take parts of the ship apart and make them better.  
7. Learn: Take what you learned from building this ship and use it to build a better one next time.

Flash has become synonymous with animation on the Internet and is possibly the most widely distributed piece of software on the Internet.

*compiled from public record

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"Building a New Livelihood"
NATHAN SAWAYA, LEGO Certified Professional

Nurturing a love for building since the age of 5, Nathan Sawaya is a Manhattan lawyer who moonlights as a professional LEGO artist.  

It started on Christmas 1978 when Sawaya unwrapped his first set of LEGO bricks. It wasn't long before the family room was transformed into a LEGO city, complete with miniature boats, firehouses, restaurants, mansions, skyscrapers, train stations and lakes. There were even brick helicopters hanging from the ceiling.

Many years and millions of LEGO bricks later, Sawaya's creations are of a much grander scale. His art form takes shape primarily in 3-dimensional sculptures - like an amazing replica of a personal computer - and oversized mosaic portraits - like Alfred Hitchcock and Curious George.  

Sawaya won a national contest to become a LEGO Master Builder at LEGOLAND® California, where he spent several months building and maintaining models for the park. He continues to build daily for fun, but also builds models commissioned by individuals and corporations requesting works of art, prototype models and fun company events. And, he creates unique, eye-catching exhibits for trade shows and consumer expos, like the half-scale 10-foot, Chris Craft Speedster he built for the Seattle Boat Show.

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