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Hello, Genius 


Sir Ken Robinson’s legacy is helping democratise childrens' learning opportunities all over the world.  

The most watched TED talk of all time, with over 400 million views in 160 countries, is by the late creativity pioneer Sir Ken Robinson: ‘Do schools kill creativity?’ In his 2006 talk, Robinson challenges the way we educate our children, championing a radical rethink of how our school systems cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.  

“Children learn in different ways…There isn’t a single measure of intelligence,” was a favourite philosophy of his. “A growing emphasis on personalisation is needed in education as we are all very different,” was another.  

Fifteen years later and Robinson was still championing an education system that nurtures diversity and creativity. Before his death in 2020, one of the last projects he was involved with was an app called ‘Hello Genius’. Robinson was a co-founder and early investor and board member.  

“The thesis for Hello Genius was based on Sir Ken’s theories, ethos, and spirit,” says Lee Daley, co-founder and chief strategist and chairman of Hello Genius. Daley comes from a star career in business, as chairman and CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi UK, global chief strategy officer of McCann Erikson and many other top roles advising technology firms. But he became jaded with his career. “I got bored of business and the lack of innovation,” says Daley, over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles. “I saw the seismic changes happening in society were around the intersection of ideas, capital and technology. The world is being defined by the upstarts. I thought that technology is where creativity is going to have a bigger impact on society.”  

Daley was also inspired by his own children, who were and continue to be a living example of Sir Ken Robinson’s hypothesis. While Daley’s daughter was speaking five languages by the age of 16, got a double first from Cambridge, and won academic prizes year after year, his son Walter was “an academic write-off”.  

“In his Darwinian school system, they said he would not amount to much because he lacked attention. The situation was causing my wife and I much stress and sadness,” recalls Daley.  

But one day when he was aged 12, Walter picked up a camera and “the lights came on”, says Daley. He discovered movies and storyboarding and that a key part of the narrative of film was conveyed by music, which he could create on his laptop. As Daley puts it, he fell in love with music and media.  

His son went on to get a first-class degree in music in London. But left to the traditional school system, Walter might have become a deeply troubled teenager. Technology and devices also played an essential part in his son’s journey. “Children these days don’t want toys, only tech, and you find yourself giving in and feeling terrible. But technology is an inevitability in the lives of children. It’s like parents saying in the 1950s, ‘don’t watch TV’.” 

Lee Daley

Daley was inspired to set up an app called Hello Genius, an AI-powered learning platform created by thought leaders in parenting, education and technology. It goes by the mantra of Robinson, that “nearly every public education programme across the world has the same hierarchy of subjects for what to teach their kids. At the top, there are languages and mathematics. Near the bottom, we have the arts. There isn’t a single public school that teaches children dance with the same emphasis as math.” 

Hello Genius gives equal weighting to all subjects, introducing children to a rainbow of ideas from carpentry to zoology, pottery and agriculture. Children can get to know Einstein and Bocelli, learn about tie-dye and polar bears, through tens of thousands of high-quality, curated books, videos, photos and music. While they are learning, the parent app builds a picture of their interests that can be shared with teachers and tutors. Subscription to the app is priced at US$10 a month. Now in pre-launch phase, the app has some 5,000 soft users, with an aim to launch next year.  

Some of the board members who have helped build the app include co-founder Jack Lee, formerly the general manager of Microsoft US and Greater China; Prof Ger Graus OBE, founding CEO of the much-awarded Children’s University; and Rasha Khawaja (formerly Saïd), a philanthropist and entrepreneur who was the founding ambassador of the Prince’s Trust’s #Womensupportingwomen Council. Walter Daley, Lee’s son, is the creative content director, responsible for creating media, video and music.  

Education is something that everyone has an interest in, but in an unknowable future the question is how can we teach? Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2081. If we barely know what the world will look like in five years’ time, how can we possibly prepare them to go into the workplace in a post-Covid world? 

Daley says: “Through Covid there is a massive shift towards hybrid learning with tech playing a key role, and education is far more supportive. What we’ve built is adaptive curriculum management in the classroom, recognising children’s differences.” 

As the late Sir Ken Robinson said: “All children have tremendous talents, and we squander them pretty ruthlessly. Creativity is as important in education as is literacy, and we should treat it with the same status. Our task is to educate our children’s whole being, so they can face this future. Our job is to help them make something of it.” 

This article originally appeared in Billionaire's Learning Issue, Winter 2021-22. To subscribe contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.