In my Openness book I argue that the kind of entrepreneurs who matter most in changing the world are what I call “project entrepreneurs,” those who are on a mission to bring their project into the world. Mike Wood, discussed in the obituary quoted below was a project entrepreneur.
I sometimes wonder how much formal education would be desirable in a world, unlike our world, that lacked creeping credentialism. Samuel Smile’s biography of George Stephenson says that he had zero formal education, but early-on paid someone from his meagre wages in the mines, to teach him to read. After that, the inventor and innovative entrepreneur read prodigiously to became an exemplary autodidact.
Today, Stephenson could learn to read through phonics technology like the LeapFrog pads developed by Mike Wood.
[By the way, Mike Wood, like Danny Kahneman recently, committed suicide at Dignitis in Switzerland in anticipation of declining health, in Wood’s case Alzheimer’s. As a libertarian, I believe they had a right to do this, but were they right to exercise this right? Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert cites (2006, pp. 166-168) research showing that people generally underestimate their resilience in the face of major health setbacks. They can often recalibrate to their new more limited capabilities, continuing to find challenges they find fulfilling to overcome. If so, then maybe Wood and Kahneman were wrong to exercise their right to end their lives. (More than most of my claims, I very readily admit this one could be wrong.)]
(p. A21) Mike Wood was a young father when his toddler’s struggles to read led him to develop one of a generation’s most fondly remembered toys.
Mr. Wood’s 3-year-old son, Mat, knew the alphabet but couldn’t pronounce the letter sounds. A lawyer in San Francisco, Mr. Wood had a new parent’s anxiety that if his child lagged as a reader, he would forever struggle in life.
So on his own time, Mr. Wood developed the prototype of an electronic toy that played sounds when children squeezed plastic letters. He based the idea on greeting cards that played a tune when opened.
Mr. Wood went on to found LeapFrog Enterprises, which in 1999 introduced the LeapPad, a child’s computer tablet that was a kind of talking book.
The LeapPad was a runaway hit, the best-selling toy of the 2000 holiday season, and LeapFrog became one of the fastest-growing toy companies in history.
. . .
Former colleagues recalled Mr. Wood as a demanding entrepreneur who was driven by a true belief that technology could help what he called “the LeapFrog generation” gain an educational leg up.
He had “famously fluffy hair,” Chris D’Angelo, LeapFrog’s former executive director of entertainment, wrote of Mr. Wood on The Bloom Report, a toy industry news site. “When stressed, he’d unconsciously rub his head — and the higher the hair, the higher the stakes. We (quietly) called them ‘high-hair days.’ It was funny, but also telling. He felt everything deeply — our work, our mission, our audience.”
. . .
A shift in reading pedagogy in the 1990s toward phonics — helping early readers make a connection between letters and sounds — drove interest in LeapFrog’s products among parents and teachers.
. . .
In 2023, his daughter-in-law, Emily Wood, posted a TikTok video of Mr. Wood teaching her daughter to use a forerunner of the LeapPad. The video received 391,000 likes and thousands of comments.
“I owe him my entire childhood,” one viewer wrote. “I spent hours on my LeapFrog with my ‘Scooby-Doo’ and ‘Shrek’ books.”
“I sell books now because of him,” another viewer wrote.
“I’m learning disabled and have a stutter,” wrote a third. “This man helped me learn to speak.”
“I’m 25 and I loved my LeapFrog,” a fourth commented. “Coming from an immigrant family, reading made me have so much imagination. I never stopped reading.”
For the full obituary, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date April 19, 2025, and has the title “Mike Wood, Whose LeapFrog Toys Taught a Generation, Dies at 72.”)
My book mentioned in my initial comments is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Smiles’s biography of Stephenson is:
Smiles, Samuel. The Locomotive: George and Robert Stephenson. New and Revised ed, Lives of the Engineers. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1879.
Daniel Gilbert’s book that I mention in my opening comments is:
Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
