Robotics as a Catalyst for Joyful Learning | Tom Lauwers
Tom Lauwers never set out to revolutionize education. Born in Belgium and raised between European sensibilities and Silicon Valley innovation, his path seemed destined for traditional tech entrepreneurship. Instead, he found himself in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, transforming how children—and adults—learn through what he calls "joyful, deep learning experiences."
Today, as founder and CTO of BirdBrain Technologies, Lauwers has created educational robotics tools used in classrooms across the country. But his story isn't just about building better robots. It's about carrying creativity across cultures, listening to teachers, and rediscovering the power of childlike wonder in our increasingly distracted world.
A Journey Across Continents and Disciplines
Lauwers' multicultural upbringing shaped his approach to innovation. Growing up in Belgium until the age of eight, and then moving to Cupertino, California, where his elementary school sat right next to Apple's world headquarters, he absorbed both European artistry and Silicon Valley's tech-forward thinking. "I've carried parts of each of those places with me," he reflects.
At 18, drawn to robotics, he chose Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, "basically the world's best place to do robotics." More than two decades later, he's still there, but his focus has shifted from building robots for their own sake to creating tools that unlock human creativity.
This multicultural perspective proved crucial when he began working at Carnegie Mellon's CREATE Lab. His first project was a canary—not the bird, but an air quality sensor. When the lab needed names for programmable robots, Lauwers suggested continuing the bird theme. "Let's go with Finch," he proposed, followed by Hummingbird. The aesthetic direction was set, and eventually, so was the company name: BirdBrain Technologies.
"It's a little self-deprecating," Lauwers admits about the name, "but it's memorable." More importantly, it captures something essential about his philosophy: birds are small but mighty, just like the creativity he believes everyone possesses.
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MAGICademy Podcast (00:00)
Children are the most creative of all of us, right? They're the least inhibited. They're the least ⁓ conditioned by kind of the world around us. And so that sense of childlike wonder is ultimately the root of creativity and the root of invention. It's very important to try to keep it going as much as possible. To figure out solutions to our problem, appreciate the world as it is. Innovation, it's almost where...
Creativity meets practicality. You need the creative process because without creativity you can't really conceptualize new things. And then you need the kind of practical skills-based mindset to just to not to turn an idea into a practice, into a thing, into something that somebody else might be able to use. And then you need the people skills to ⁓ figure out I get a lot of good ideas.
When I've turned off music and sound and podcasts, ironically, when I am not listening to anything and I'm walking around or taking a shower or whatever, like in those moments where my mind is kind of floating between different ideas, that's where I tend to have ⁓ actual ideas. I feel like distraction is the enemy of wonder to some extent, because when you're distracted, you can't wonder.
Jiani (01:32)
He's still moving his head. I can't I'm just like looking at does he have a
Tom Lauwers (01:35)
Yeah, I've got like a
this one's costume is clearly Harry Potter, but the overall robot is we call them LBs. They're like little bots. They're just pan tilt heads and they're pretty
Jiani (01:40)
⁓ Harry Potter.
Tom Lauwers (01:47)
it's an example of a project that you might make with a hummingbird kit. And a hummingbird kit is a kit of parts, servos, LEDs, sensors,
a controller, and the kids combine that with arts and crafts materials. And that is kind of came out of that creative robotics and arts and crafts and robotics research strand. And again, I mean, at this point, it's four generations, four hardware generations away from what we were using in 2009.
core mission of
you know, catalyzing joyful deep learning experiences that hasn't changed. That's still the
for example, here's a Finch robot. And this is sort of that research strand around developing a robot for computer science education. This is the end result of that, or at least the current result of that. This is three or four hardware generations removed from what we were developing back in 2008, 2009.
But it's just a little robot that can be programmed to avoid obstacles, follow lines, light up. So I don't know how visible that'll be, but you might see some lights. Yeah, yeah, a little emoji, like, yeah, a little grid of LEDs. And so this is really what this is for is for allowing kids to kind of see their code in action, see it in the physical world.
Jiani (02:52)
⁓ yeah, I see light, green light. yeah, and there's like letters on the board.
⁓
Tom Lauwers (03:13)
because that's what robotics does. It provides a conduit for computer code for things that people create to push into the real world and also to get sensor information from the real world.
not like there's a specific set of these are the three robots that you build with this kit. It's anything that you can imagine that you can put together.
Jiani (03:26)
Mm.
So we've talked about the founding studies, how everything got started in Tom's lab he's in Carnegie Mellon University and his first few bird theme based robotics and then that
turns into the bird brand and how we focus on birds are one of the smallest mammals. They're so small, however, they're mighty because they have everything that they need to function. Just like how we have our creativity and then we package our mighty creativity into a tangible hand -hold robotics that you can bring home or put on your desk.
and be with you as you go about your day. And we'll also talk about the importance of inclusion, diversity, and collaboration. And Tom has this vision and dream of not only popularize or not only bringing robotics into after school program, but also make robotics as part of the cross -disciplinary learning practices for future kids and even adults too.
And we also explore the magic of childlike wonder, ways that we can potentially activate that. And usually in a space of an empty space, a white space, a focused space where we get to observe the nature or where we get to stay within ourselves
Welcome to MAGICademy podcast. Today with us is Tom, the founder and CEO of Birdbrain, a national science foundation funded company that focuses on bringing in creativity, innovation, and inclusivity with technologies and tool making and design. And it's actually a spin off from Tom's PhD research over two decades ago. So
It's a long, long journey. Welcome to our podcast, Tom.
Tom Lauwers (05:40)
Thank you.
Yeah, so we go all the way back. I was actually born in Belgium. I grew up there until I was eight years old and then moved all the way to Cupertino, California. And in fact, my elementary school was right next to Apple's World headquarters at the time. And then when I was 18, I was already interested in robotics. And so I had the opportunity to go to Carnegie Mellon University, which is
basically the world's best place to do robotics. And that's here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I've been here ever since. So I have been to quite a few places and sort of have carried parts of each of those places with me. So, yeah.
Jiani (06:25)
I love that, from the intuitive design, the artsy, the sciencey, so it's like an integration of multiple dimensions and perspectives and disciplines. That's beautiful.
Why bird brain? What's unique about the brain of a bird?
Tom Lauwers (06:40)
Yeah, that's a good question.
Honestly, the first thing I worked on at the Create Lab was called a canary. It didn't become a product, but it was an air quality sensor. And then the next thing we needed a name for the programmable robots. So I said, well, let's go with bird names, cute small bird names, you know.
Let's go with Finch and that'll give us sort of a design and like an aesthetic design direction also and then you know, then we thought okay Well, the next thing we'll call hummingbird and then only then that I need to find a name for the company But I already had a couple of bird product names. So I like okay. How about bird brain? It's a little self -deprecating but it's You know, it's memorable. So it should be good
Jiani (07:17)
all the birds.
You
Yeah, and I like it. Like birds are small but mighty. Like a small bird has everything just like how we package our imagination and joy and creativity into any sort of robots that you can can feel. It's small but it's mighty. It's more than just a robot. Love that.
Tom Lauwers (07:33)
Mm -hmm.
And they're cute and friendly
Jiani (07:57)
bet adults play this too. Do people use this as like a team building, creativity, leadership development?
Tom Lauwers (08:04)
That's a good question.
We've seen a little bit of that, but mostly we see people using these in classrooms. And now the Finch does get used at some colleges at like the freshman level for computer science education. And we've seen both of them used in pre -service programs. So programs where they're teaching pre -service teachers, so people studying to be teachers.
how to be creative almost, like how to do these kinds of projects in the classroom. So that's really exciting when that kind of program is using one of our products because they're teaching kind of the next generation of teachers.
Jiani (08:47)
Yeah, and I can definitely see a possibility of like a team building in the workplace where when we talk about creativity, so how do we practice creativity? We can do painting, yeah, but hey, we can build a robotics. It's like, why not? So definitely a possible, that's great.
Tom Lauwers (08:57)
Thank you.
Yeah.
One of the, I mean,
one of the most rewarding things is like when you do a professional development session, so workshop and you allow the teachers to bring their children. Because if they've got kids who are eight to 15 years old, it's appropriate. And then they can work together and then seeing like the parents working with the kids. And in those cases, you know, those teachers often have no background in robotics, no background in coding.
It can be a little bit scary at first, a little bit intimidating, and then seeing that transform over half day is really rewarding.
Jiani (09:45)
So only half day it will take someone with no computing or programming background to build a functional robot in half day. That's amazing.
Tom Lauwers (09:55)
Yeah, yeah, half day seems about right, yeah, for
their first one.
Jiani (09:59)
That makes me want to try something. in our initial conversation, we were talking about this future culture of creativity, inclusion, diversity, collaboration, deep joy.
Tom Lauwers (10:01)
Yeah.
Jiani (10:16)
and you see you kind of envision a world where this
qualities are common and Everybody is able to connect with their deep joy Everybody even though previously they may think they're they have nothing to do with creativity They're able to see their inner creativity. They're able to own up to to that and bring that into lives through robotics and AI so can you share with us a little bit more about Why why this vision why this mission?
and wire robotics.
Tom Lauwers (10:54)
Yeah, I mean, robotics is just a tool, right? So it is not something like where this mission, where my mission is necessarily to make a whole generation of future roboticists. That's not really the point. It's really that robotics is a good tool for this kind of thing because it's naturally interdisciplinary. It naturally kind of involves teamwork. It involves building and creating and coding, which
Jiani (11:06)
you
Tom Lauwers (11:21)
These are skills that society definitely values. So you can make the kind of workforce argument, although it's not an argument that I'm, it's not my favorite argument, I guess. My favorite argument is more that I believe that students need to have space in classrooms to be creative, to see that
learning isn't something that is siloed. Most of school, the message you get is you learn math, and then you learn English, and then you learn science, and then you learn social studies. And these are the things that are important. And it's just this, this, this, and this. And this is the curriculum. But
That's not really how it works in the real world. And when you give students like a robotics project where they may have to pull information from science class and maybe from English class to present it or to write about it and maybe from math class to figure out something about ratios, when you're pulling all of that together, that's sort of the power of these robotics projects is to pull all of that together and to make it interdisciplinary and to show students that
learning is interdisciplinary and then to also give them that space to be creative, to maybe show a creative side to their teachers that maybe their teachers weren't aware of. So it also allows the teachers to see the students in a different light.
Mostly when we work in the real world, we're working with other people. And so it's important to practice that as a skill also. So when I think about like creativity and teamwork, I really do think of those things as skills. And I think it's important to practice those skills in school. And so I think of our tools as primarily just ways to do that, ways to practice those skills, ways to provide space for it.
And to do it in a way that's definitely engaging to many students. So that's another part. That's the joyful part, right? It's
get, yeah.
Jiani (13:38)
and have you,
I bet you probably ran many, many kind of workshops and you probably see how people transition between, I can't, you know, I just, I can't do this, hey, look, look, this is something that I've built. What was the pivoting point? Like usually how, like how...
How do people change from like in a place of resistance all the way to, I'm able to connect into this joyful space and I would like to collaborate with everyone.
Tom Lauwers (14:12)
Yeah.
I mean, first of all, like with students, with middle school students or elementary school students, you rarely see that. Usually they're like all in pretty much from the beginning. With teachers who, you know, maybe they don't feel like they're particularly computer literate, they've certainly never done anything robotics, they've maybe never written any code before.
you know, we do kind of a scaffolded introduction, right? So we spend an hour, two hours teaching them about different components, showing them how to hook things up, showing them how to write some code to control things. And it's block -based code. So it looks more like puzzle blocks that you're connecting together. And then, you know, they all find that, I have something that's working and it's only been a couple hours and, you know,
That's not a huge amount of time. What if I spent 10 or 20 hours on this? I'd probably get a lot farther, right? So they start seeing that possibility. And once they see that they can animate things, that's when it gets exciting. And what I've noticed in workshops is that art teachers especially, they'll almost be the ones that switch the most. They may be the most...
Actually, I wouldn't say they're the most hesitant because they're often pretty happy to experiment, but by the end, they're creating the most creative projects. And that may be their background in art, but that's just something I've noticed. They're really making some very interesting and beautiful things. So yeah, it just becomes another paintbrush, right? That's fundamentally what I'm...
trying to do is that the robotics isn't about the robotics. It's about being a tool for creativity, another outlet or option.
Jiani (15:56)
that.
I love that. I love the pen brush analogy. That's fantastic. What role and also you were talking about like adaptability, innovative thinking. And I think the word kind of innovation has been used and overused in the current world. How do you define innovation according to your background and how does that differ from creativity? And then how does
Birdbrain or the process of leveraging robotics as a pen brush helped us to enhance that quality that everybody has in our system.
Tom Lauwers (16:45)
Yeah, I think innovation, it's almost where creativity meets practicality. So for something to be an innovation, it's usually something that is useful to other people. Like we don't usually call an artwork an innovation, though we might call a new art form an innovation. So.
innovation seems to be about being almost like externally focused. Like this is something new in the world that other people can use.
And so you need the creative process to get there. You need the creative process because without creativity, you can't really conceptualize new things. And then you need the kind of practical, you know, skills -based mindset to just, to not, to turn an idea into a practice, into a thing, into something that somebody else might be able to use. And then you need the people skills maybe to,
figure out if this thing is truly useful and if so how to like scale it up how to bring it to other people how to maybe persuade other people that it's useful all of that kind of is on the back end So in terms of you know, what our products are helping students They're certainly practicing that creativity piece, but then with like a hummingbird kit They might be going through an engineering design process. They might be doing some prototyping and that's
that kind of first additional part of execution of, you know, creating something that maybe one day could be useful for others. And so one of the things that teachers like to assign for Hummingbird is to create, you know, to ask students to create a prototype of something, some system that might help them or their community or some big problem in the world. And it doesn't have to be functional. It's just a prototype.
But it is that first step towards being innovative. I think prototyping creates ideation and then prototyping I'd say are those first steps.
Jiani (18:57)
I love that.
So it's like
a design thinking, lean startup style kind of that. And what among all the creations that you witnessed, what were some really innovative, interesting, impactful creations that people have created just within like a day of workshop?
Tom Lauwers (19:06)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I would say less about like the student creations and more about the teacher, the things teachers have come up with or the programs they've built to use the, you know, use the Hummingbird kit. So we're definitely focusing on Hummingbird here, but when it comes to like, you know, when I was a graduate student and we...
were first testing these with teachers and we were asking them what kinds of lesson plans might you make with this? We were still kind of in that lean startup stage of like trying to figure out how to focus the technology and how to use it. And this teacher created a robot poetry project and it was really cool and it was really outside of the box, especially outside of the box of what was being done with robotics at that time.
And the idea was, you know, have the students read a 19th century poem and then create sort of an animatronic display that follows the imagery. And also a recording of them reading the poem is playing at the same time. So it might like they might say a couple of lines in the recording and then the imagery would flip to show kind of what was being said in the poem. And it was very, very cool. And they
implemented that in a, you know, in a middle school classroom and it worked really well. Like there were 10 projects that were, you know, 10 different 19th century poems. And she said like that the students had a much better understanding of those poems than they usually do in that poetry unit because frankly seventh graders, eighth graders in poetry, it's not something that a lot of them are really into. And so it
Jiani (21:16)
you
Tom Lauwers (21:19)
it gave them a better understanding of the core material, but then they also had this sort of engineering design and creativity and coding and all of these other skills that they developed as well, or in addition to that. So that's an example of the kinds of things I've seen teachers do. And those are the kinds of, like, those are what goes up on my radar, I guess, in terms of just innovative
things that people are doing with the kit.
Jiani (21:53)
Yeah, because when you're thinking about like learning about poetry, it's just reading and thinking and reflecting. That's kind of the typical way for us to digest and simulate. But adding robotics to that process, you are bringing that engineering, programming, coding, science, problem solving approach and dimension into
a more kind of emotional, emotionally embedded or fused moment. That's amazing. And you're bringing hands into that as well. It's like very practical. It's like tactile and they're not just learning but they're doing.
Tom Lauwers (22:37)
Yeah, that's actually, I think, another important
piece of building and making just generally in classrooms is it changes the dynamic of the classroom in important ways. Students get up, they walk around, they're building, they're standing. They're much more engaged in part because of that. I think we've underrated the importance of allowing kids to kind of move around.
Sixth graders aren't really designed for sitting in place for seven hours a day, but just not. Yeah, humans in general, yeah, it's true.
Jiani (23:10)
same with humans.
great. And how does the role like inclusion and diversity play? Like have you witnessed some sort of like transition or collaboration that really brings in or enhance or extend the diversities within the group?
Tom Lauwers (23:45)
Yeah,
I mean the early research for the Hummingbird kit, the very first focus groups that we did, the very first workshops were with groups of middle school girls. And so we were thinking about things in kind of a, I would say a narrow way in terms of like, hey, we have this problem in middle school with girls at the end of middle school sometimes showing
less interest in STEM than boys, how do we help solve that? And I, that was sort of, and I'll say like why that was narrow thinking in a minute, but what we took out of that experience is kind of a realization that if you design something to be interesting to all, accessible to all, and to provide kind of an alternative
path, so to be complementary. So when I say like the Lego robotics competitions, the after school robotics competitions were sort of the only way you could do robotics back then, back in the late 2000s. You know, the problem with that wasn't necessarily that those competitions were boy dominated, though they were. It's that they attracted a certain personality type. You almost had to be into competition.
and into a view of robotics that was very focused on being fast and speedy and doing things faster than your opponent and better. And that's not the only way to teach engineering design. It's not the only way to teach coding. It's not the only way to be creative. And so providing an alternative that is arts and crafts based.
Jiani (25:19)
better, faster.
Tom Lauwers (25:35)
Yes, it does seem to have the effect that maybe it's more gender balanced or gender neutral and that it appeals to a broader range, but it appeals more importantly to kind of a different set of personalities more than anything else. You know, it's it's just providing another entry point, another way in. And so I'm not against robotics competitions. I'm just saying it's not the if it's the only thing, then you're only attracting a certain type of
person into engineering fields, really.
Jiani (26:07)
Yeah, and I think if we make science and robotics more interesting, fun, collaborative, it will definitely have a wider appeal across gender, across ethnicity, across backgrounds, because it's just fun and we're connecting people through a common human language, which is creativity, collaboration, joy, innovation, and...
Tom Lauwers (26:34)
Yeah.
And then the other piece is, you know, we really focused on making things work in the classroom. Because if it was a project that you have to do as part of your regular classroom experience, then you're involving all students almost by default. Whereas if it's an after school program, you know, I'm not again, not opposed to after school programs, but my eventual goal
Jiani (26:36)
Yeah, that's beautiful.
Tom Lauwers (27:03)
Even at a school district where we might be helping with after school programs, where our tools are used in after school, the eventual goal, I hope, is to use them eventually with all students in school. That way everybody gets kind of exposure and gets the experience and then they can decide if they like it or not, you know?
Jiani (27:25)
At least they have all presented it as an opportunity. So, equalize the play field.
Tom Lauwers (27:28)
Mm -hmm.
Jiani (27:30)
Since you've talked about the future, looking into far away into the future, what would be the best possible future that you can ever imagine with all the technology devices like artificial intelligence, maybe we'll reach AGI at that moment in time and extended realities and brand machine connections, neural links and all sorts of technologies. How would you?
What would the future look like? The better version.
Tom Lauwers (28:03)
So that's a great,
yeah, it's a good question, right? Where do we want to end up? I have this...
Jiani (28:10)
Mm.
Tom Lauwers (28:11)
Like, I forget the name of the philosopher who said this, but basically the idea is that utopia is a journey, not a destination, right? That people in the middle ages would see our world as utopia because everybody in the US, many people are well fed. Most people are housed from like the standards of a 14th century surf, like,
We
are, you know, most people have good medical care, not saying that all of the problems are solved, but by their standards, we would be in utopia. And so when I think about what does a utopia look like in the future, it is just continued improvement, mostly through technology, but in a way that is human focused, that is human and maybe life.
focused, right? So we're improving our planet. Maybe it isn't the same as the planet that we started with. Maybe we can make it better than what we started with, right? So maybe it becomes more of a garden, but we finally figure out how to maximize the amount of life on Earth in a way that where all life is flourishing, where and where people are flourishing. I think that's the most important thing is figuring out
how people can be, I don't want to use the word happy exactly, because happiness to me feels somewhat transitory, but where we can provide people with meaningful lives, where everybody feels that their life is meaningful, is worthwhile, and where the rest of society also places worth on every life.
So technology will have a role in that. It has to, because the problems that we have, poverty, climate change, even to some extent are human created problems like war. I think if you have technological solutions, you can improve over time all of those aspects.
If you figure out a new power source that makes it so that, you know, not only can we have renewable energy, but we could have a very cheaply, very easily. If we have, you know, 10 times as much electricity generation suddenly at the same cost, we can do things like, you know, maybe we can do things to reverse global warming, to put it into reverse, right? Like we could capture carbon, even though it seems expensive to us now, maybe in the future, it's something that we
figured out how to do cheaply. So as long as we're making progress towards those goals, I think that's, like I said, it's a journey.
but it's a journey where hopefully more people are flourishing.
Jiani (31:24)
What role do you think childlike wonder play in that future utopia as a journey space?
Tom Lauwers (31:30)
So yeah,
I mean, I think...
Wonder is very important because it's a way for you to, there's two aspects of it. One is just having kind of awe at the beauty of the world, right? Seeing like that kind of wonder where you just see a beautiful sunset and you're just amazed. Yeah, yeah.
Jiani (32:00)
beautiful bird
Tom Lauwers (32:03)
Or just like, yeah, how did something like that evolve that's so cool and like a hummingbird, an actual hummingbird. And then the other piece is, I wonder, I wonder how to do this or I wonder if the world could be different in this way. And that comes back to that creativity. And when children are the most creative of all of us, right, they're the least inhibited, they're the least.
Jiani (32:07)
Mm.
Mmm.
Tom Lauwers (32:30)
conditioned by kind of the world around us. And so that sense of childlike wonder is ultimately the root of creativity and the root of invention. And so it's very important to maintain it, I guess, to try to keep it going as much as possible to, you know, to be able to figure out solutions and solutions to our problems and also just to
be able for us to appreciate the world as it is. So it's kind of both sides.
Jiani (33:03)
Can adults develop or awaken or reactivate their child -like sense of wonder? Is that possible? Have you seen people activate that during the process of building fitch?
Tom Lauwers (33:25)
I think so,
yeah. I think it comes in a few different places, right? So when it comes to that sense of awe at the world, I feel like one way to reactivate that is to go out in nature and to do so in a way that's undistracted and to try to observe. Just observe things around you as much as you can. I tend to do it
most effectively on bike rides. And I will not say that I am an expert or a guru at this. I'm not. But I will say in my own personal experience, you know, that's like going somewhere that is just naturally beautiful or even going somewhere that isn't, but paying attention to little things is a way to reactivate that component. And then on the, like the kind of invention side,
It is similar actually in some ways. It's, I get a lot of good ideas when my, when I've turned off a kind of, you know, when I've turned off music and sound and podcasts, ironically, when I'm not listening to anything and I'm walking around or taking a shower or whatever, like in those moments where my mind is
Jiani (34:40)
Yeah.
Tom Lauwers (34:48)
kind of floating between different ideas, that's where I tend to have actual ideas, like actual brainstorms. And so again, it comes back to trying to be less distracted, I guess, just overall. I feel like distraction is the enemy of wonder to some extent, because when you're distracted, you can't wonder.
Jiani (35:13)
the ability to focus and even create kind of like a white space, not just visually, but like psychologically and attentionally.
nice. All right, great conversation. Before we move to the magic portion of our conversation, I wanted to give a brief recap for our audience.
Tom Lauwers (35:23)
Yeah.
Jiani (35:32)
So we've talked about the founding studies, how everything got started in Tom's lab he's in Carnegie Mellon University and his first few bird theme based robotics and then that
turns into the bird brand and how we focus on birds are one of the smallest mammals. They're so small, however, they're mighty because they have everything that they need to function. Just like how we have our creativity and then we package our mighty creativity into a tangible hand -hold robotics that you can bring home or put on your desk.
and be with you as you go about your day. And we'll also talk about the importance of inclusion, diversity, and collaboration. And Tom has this vision and dream of not only popularize or not only bringing robotics into after school program, but also make robotics as part of the cross -disciplinary learning practices for future kids and even adults too.
And we also explore the magic of childlike wonder, ways that we can potentially activate that. And usually in a space of an empty space, a white space, a focused space where we get to observe the nature or where we get to stay within ourselves
Beautiful. And so Tom, what did you enjoy creating so much when you were maybe 11 and then time just disappeared for you?
Tom Lauwers (37:14)
when I was 11, when I was that young, I mean, I was very into building with Legos. You know, I would build the kits, but then I would take them apart and just kind of build whatever. And that was definitely my quiet, like my parents would say, like, they could leave me alone for hours and I'd just come out like at dinner or something. And yeah, so.
Jiani (37:14)
Where was your magic zone?
Mm.
Tom Lauwers (37:41)
Definitely, I mean, it is very cliche, engineer who liked Legos. Yes, I understand. But it's truthful. It's where I was when I was.
Jiani (37:50)
for there any particular challenges you have to overcome to that shape who you are maybe there are many but one in particular
Tom Lauwers (38:01)
Yeah, I mean, when you're starting a business, there's lots of challenges, you know? I think fundamentally...
Yeah, there have been many challenges, but the way that I deal with them is sort of related to a concept from computational thinking, which is like decomposition. Turn your big problem into smaller problems. And so, you know, instead of getting, I think the biggest challenge in some ways in starting a business or any large project is that it looks so big and you get, you can get overwhelmed.
You can just say, my God, I can't do all of that. And if you break it down and say, OK, but what do I have to do today? What do I have to do this week? What do I have to do this month? Then it becomes manageable. And so that's sort of the biggest challenge in my view and also the way to overcome it. And it's also the same process applies. You know, we we had a big challenge in 2020 when schools shut down, right? We we sell to schools.
And so same thing, what do you do? You know, it's sort of like, how do you save the company? Big overwhelming problem. Okay, but what do we need to do this week, next week, this month in order to achieve our goals, I guess.
Jiani (39:28)
I appreciate how you speak in such a calming voice in terms of problem solving and saving the company and scaffold the problems into tangible Lego pieces. Beautiful. What do you think overall is your magic?
Tom Lauwers (39:43)
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah.
check.
That's a good question.
I think that I am definitely an engineer in that I like to develop things, but I'm an engineer that is focused on making things that are useful and trying as best as I can to listen to people so that the things that I make are useful. They're not just something that I think is cool. And so,
anytime that we're developing something, I'm trying to make sure that it is going to be useful, that I'm listening to people, that I'm improving it based on their feedback. And I think so, I think in some ways it's kind of this combination of being, you know, having that sort of technical skills to see where the technology could be, but then bringing that to people and saying, is this useful? Could we use this? What if we changed it?
What do you think? Like how would you change it? So kind of that combination of technical skills and maybe some creativity with listening.
Jiani (41:02)
I see. So it's like deep empathy, being able to hear, to turn your creativity into innovation through empathetic listening. Beautiful. It's such, it's such a great conversation, Tom, and I hope our audiences are having a great time, after this podcast, probably and find a white space moment for them as well.
Tom Lauwers (41:12)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jiani (41:29)
to tap into their creativity and for our folks in the community who are curious and want to learn more about Tom and Birdbrain and maybe try to build a robot for you and your team, your class. Definitely we encourage you to get connected and build more wonderful stories within this community and beyond.
you Tom very much.
Tom Lauwers (41:56)
Thank you. Thank
you so much.
The Poetry Robot That Changed Everything
The pivotal moment in BirdBrain's evolution came from an unexpected source: a middle school teacher with a creative vision. During early testing phases, when Lauwers and his team were still figuring out how to focus their technology, this teacher proposed something revolutionary—a robot poetry project.
"We were asking teachers what kinds of lesson plans they might make," Lauwers recalls. The teacher's idea was elegantly simple yet profound: have students read 19th-century poems, then create animatronic displays that followed the imagery while recordings of student voices brought the words to life.
The project was a revelation. Students who typically struggled with poetry suddenly demonstrated deep understanding of complex literary works. "Seventh graders, eighth graders, and poetry—it's not something that a lot of them are really into," Lauwers notes. But by adding robotics to the mix, students engaged with the material on multiple levels: analytical, creative, technical, and kinesthetic.
This teacher had discovered something profound about learning that would reshape BirdBrain's entire approach. She had proven that robotics wasn't just about STEM education—it was about making all learning more engaging, interdisciplinary, and accessible.
Discovery through Non-Competitive Robot Making
The poetry robot project illuminated a crucial market insight: teachers didn't need more competition-focused robotics. They needed tools that could transform any subject into an engaging, hands-on embodied experience.
Traditional robotics education had been dominated by competitions—fast-paced, winner-take-all environments that attracted "a certain personality type," as Lauwers puts it. "You almost had to be into competition and into a view of robotics that was very focused on being fast and speedy and doing things faster than your opponent."
“Traditional robotics education had been dominated by competitions—fast-paced, winner-take-all environments that attracted a certain personality type...You almost had to be into competition and into a view of robotics that was very focused on being fast and speedy and doing things faster than your opponent.”
But that approach was limiting. It excluded students who weren't naturally competitive and missed the broader educational potential of robotics as a creative medium. Teachers needed something different: tools that could integrate into regular classroom experiences and appeal to diverse learning preferences.
BirdBrain's solution was to make robotics more like arts and crafts. Their Hummingbird kit combines servos, LEDs, sensors, and controllers with everyday creative materials. Students might build anything from animated book reports to environmental monitoring systems to artistic installations.
"It's not like there's a specific set of three robots that you build with this kit," Lauwers explains. "It's anything that you can imagine that you can put together."
This approach proved transformative. In workshops, Lauwers noticed that art teachers often created the most innovative projects. They approached robotics as "another paintbrush"—a new medium for expression rather than an end in itself.
The Power of Interdisciplinary Play
The success of projects like robot poetry revealed something fundamental about how minds work. Traditional schooling sends a clear message: "You learn math, and then you learn English, and then you learn science, and then you learn social studies." But real-world problems don't respect subject boundaries.
"When you give students a robotics project where they may have to pull information from science class and maybe from English class to present it or write about it and maybe from math class to figure out something about ratios," Lauwers explains, "that's sort of the power of these robotics projects—to pull all of that together."
This interdisciplinary approach engages different types of minds. Students who struggle in traditional academic settings often excel when they can move around, build with their hands, and see their ideas come to life. The physical nature of robotics changes classroom dynamics entirely.
"Sixth graders aren't designed for sitting in place for seven hours a day," Lauwers observes. " And not just sixth graders, humans in general."
The benefits extend beyond K-12 education. BirdBrain's tools are used in college computer science programs and teacher training initiatives. When teachers with no coding background spend half a day learning to animate simple robots, they discover capabilities they never knew they had. "Seeing that transformation over half a day is rewarding," Lauwers notes.
The Future of Joyful, Deep Exploratory Experiences
Lauwers envisions a future where creativity, collaboration, and interdisciplinary thinking are recognized as essential skills, not nice-to-have extras. In his view, robotics education isn't about creating more roboticists; it's about preparing people for a world where innovation happens at the intersection of disciplines.
“When I think about creativity and teamwork, I do think of those things as skills,” he says. “And I think it’s important to practice those skills ...”
This philosophy extends to his vision of technology's role in society. Rather than seeing AI and robotics as replacements for human creativity, Lauwers sees them as amplifiers—tools that can help more people express their ideas and solve complex problems.
The goal isn't technological sophistication for its own sake, but what he calls "joyful, deep learning experiences." When students are genuinely engaged—when they're playing while learning—they develop both technical skills and creative confidence.
Childlike Wonder as MAGIC in Business
Perhaps most importantly, Lauwers has identified something that many leaders and educators overlook: the strategic value of wonder. In our hyperconnected, constantly distracted world, the ability to be genuinely curious and creative has become a rare commodity.
“Children are the most creative of all of us. They’re the least inhibited. They’re the least conditioned by the kind of world around us. And so that sense of childlike wonder is ultimately the root of creativity and the root of invention.”
But can adults recapture this wonder? Lauwers believes they can, and his creative process offers clues about how.
Creating Space for Ideas
Lauwers has discovered that his best ideas don't come during busy meetings or while consuming content. Instead, they emerge in quiet moments—during bike rides, walks, or showers. "I get a lot of good ideas when I've turned off music and sound and podcasts, ironically, when I am not listening to anything and I'm walking around."
This insight has profound implications for leaders and educators. In our rush to optimize every moment with information consumption, we may be destroying the very conditions that foster innovation.
“I feel like distraction is the enemy of wonder to some extent, because when you’re distracted, you can’t wonder.”
Practical Wonder for Innovative Leaders
Create undistracted time. Schedule regular periods without meetings, emails, or media consumption. Let minds wander between ideas.
Encourage experimentation. Like the teacher who invented robot poetry, permit people to combine seemingly unrelated concepts.
Practice decomposition. When facing overwhelming challenges, break them into smaller, manageable pieces. This computational thinking approach makes innovation less daunting.
Design for inclusion. The most creative solutions often come from diverse perspectives. Create tools and processes that engage different types of minds.
Remember that innovation is a journey, not a destination. As Lauwers borrows the quote, "Utopia is a journey, not a destination." Focus on continuous improvement rather than perfect solutions.
Conclusion
For innovative leaders, Lauwers' journey offers an interesting reframe of what drives breakthrough thinking. As he puts it, his work isn't really about the robots—it's about providing "space for students to be creative, to see that learning isn't something that is siloed." The same principle applies to organizational leadership: innovation flourishes when we create environments where people discover they're more capable than they imagined.
"Innovation is almost where creativity meets practicality," Lauwers reflects on his mission. "You need the creative process because without creativity, you can't conceptualize new things." This intersection—where wonder meets execution—is where transformative ideas are born.
In our hyperconnected, perpetually distracted business environment, Lauwers' insights become even more valuable. The most innovative thing leaders can do might be counterintuitive: turn off the noise, create space for exploration, and permit their teams to wonder "what if?"
As Tom Lauwers reminds us: "That sense of childlike wonder is ultimately the root of creativity and the root of invention—it's very important to try to keep it going as much as possible." For leaders seeking competitive advantage in an AI-driven world, one question could be “ how to nurture the fundamentally human capacity for creative wonder?”
Workbook
Editor’s Note
Looking at the research evidence, there's a fascinating interconnection between creative thinking and robot making that reveals itself through multiple educational dimensions. The studies (Anwar et al., 2019; Aslanoglou et al., 2025; Kozcu Cakir & Guven, 2025) demonstrate that robotics serves as both a canvas for creative expression and a catalyst for innovative thinking processes. When students engage in robot construction and programming, they're not simply following technical instructions—they're entering a creative problem-solving space where imagination meets engineering constraints.
The research also reveals that this creative-technical synthesis operates on several levels. Students must creatively conceptualize solutions to design challenges, then translate these ideas into tangible robotic forms through iterative making processes. This cycle of ideation, creation, testing, and refinement mirrors professional creative practices while building technical competencies. Particularly compelling is how robotics activities that incorporate everyday experiences and culturally relevant contexts, such as addressing environmental issues through robotic solutions, seem to amplify both creative engagement and learning outcomes.
What emerges most clearly is that the act of making robots transforms abstract creative thinking into concrete, observable actions. Students don't just think creatively about possibilities; they physically construct and program their ideas, creating a feedback loop between imagination and reality. This embodied creativity appears especially powerful in STEM contexts, where the research suggests robotics helps bridge the traditional gap between technical learning and creative expression. The studies indicate that when creativity is woven into the foundational stages of robotics education, it functions as a motivational catalyst that simultaneously reduces learning barriers while deepening engagement, though this effect may diminish as students advance to more specialized technical levels.
Haven’t been able to find research focusing on creativity and team building in an innovative context.
References
Kozcu Cakir, N., & Guven, G. (2025). Enhancing engineering design, scientific creativity, and decision-making skills in prospective science teachers through engineering design-based robotics coding applications. Research in Science & Technological Education, 1-26.
Anwar, S., Bascou, N. A., Menekse, M., & Kardgar, A. (2019). A Systematic Review of Studies on Educational Robotics. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 9(2), Article 2.
Aslanoglou, K., Zygouris, N. C., Tsermentseli, S., Beazidou, E., & Xenakis, A. (2025). Utilizing educational robotics in elementary school to foster problem-solving skills and enhance the teaching of history. Pedagogical Research, 10(1).
⭐ Tom’s MAGIC
His rare combination of engineering skills with deep empathetic listening creates solutions that genuinely serve human needs rather than just showcasing technological possibilities. His superpower lies in this continuous cycle of "Is this useful? What if we changed it?"—transforming creative ideas into meaningful innovations through relentless user feedback and iteration. This approach has enabled him to democratize robotics, turning a niche technical field into a universal creative medium accessible to everyone.
Connect with Tom
As founder and CTO of BirdBrain Technologies, Tom Lauwers has spent over 13 years leading teams of educators, engineers, and researchers through what he calls a "thoughtful, listening-based design process." Since launching from Carnegie Mellon University's CREATE Lab in 2010, his bootstrapped company has achieved something rare in educational technology: sustainable profitability while staying true to its mission of sparking "deep and joyful hands-on learning for all students." BirdBrain's three flagship products—Finch, Hummingbird, and Owlet—have collectively reached approximately one million students worldwide, transforming abstract STEM concepts into creative, tangible experiences that make computational thinking, engineering design, and robotics accessible to thousands of teachers across the globe.
Tom’s linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-lauwers-bbtech/
Apply for a loan to gain access to robots: https://www.birdbraintechnologies.com/loan-program/
Credits & Revisions:
Story Writer/Editor: Dr. Jiani Wu
AI Partner: Perplexity, Claude
Initial Publication: May 29, 2025
Disclaimer:
AI technologies are harnessed to create initial content derived from genuine conversations. Human re-creation & review are used to ensure accuracy, relevance & quality.
