Newsweek Japan
U.S. Business Trend section
Published: February 27, 2002
© 2002 Susanne M. Alexander

LEGO Builds Engineers with 3M and Intel

Desperate to keep the engineers coming, companies like Intel and 3M are playing blocks--LEGO blocks, that is. By 2004, the United States is expected to need 40,000 more engineers than it's got, and that dire prospect has moved the two companies, along with other engineer-hungry corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor and Motorola, to join forces in a program to get kids excited about problem-solving and critical thinking. Called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, the program--founded by Dean Kamen (inventor of medical devices including the first insulin pump)--puts kids into corporate-backed teams that vie for awards at huge competitions.

Intel and 3M are supporting the program's LEGO League. Kids are presented with problems--for instance, how to rescue scientists from an iceberg trapped by polar bears without harming the bears--and figure out how to solve it with discounted, customized version of Lego's Mindstorms Robotics Invention System. Intel software quality engineer Joe Westling coached a team of 9 and 10 year olds and found that the experience helped him as well as the kids. "The kids were initially reluctant to get involved," he says. "It was a good opportunity to draw the best out of them, a skill I can apply to the people I work with, too."

The companies hope, of course, that some of the kids will eventually come to work for them. But even if they don't, the program builds good relationships with schools, says Barbara Kaufmann, Intel's manager of education contributions. "The best way to learn science is to do it--to work on a real problem."