For decades, David Kelly has helped people to unlock their creativity.

A pioneer of design, he founded Stanford's D-school as a place for cross-disciplinary problem

solving.

In tonight's Brief But Spectacular, he reflects on the journey that shaped his belief that

everyone has the capacity to be creative.

I met Steve Jobs. Soon after I started IDO, 1978, he didn't have an internal design group,

and so he was using people from the outside.

He liked what he saw, and we ended up doing 53 projects for Apple after that.

The most impactful project that I think we ever did for Apple was the computer mouse.

It's one of those great things where to see something adopted that quickly was really gratifying as a designer.

These are things I designed. So this is the chassis for the Apple 3 computer. This is the Palm 5.

It's a personal digital assistant before your time. My mom's spatula. I don't know why that's memorable.

I grew up in Barberton, Ohio, the rust belt of the country. As a kid, I was always tinkering.

You know, my grandfather was a machinist and if you needed a part for the washing machine, you made a new one.

When I first arrived at Stanford, I really didn't have any knowledge of what design was.

Design was in the engineering school, but it was very human-centered, so that was a better fit for me.

I was much better at going out and trying to understand what was meaningful for people.

20 years ago, I was diagnosed with throat cancer, and it really hit me hard,

but I really had the epiphany that I wanted to do something that was meaningful in the world.

And as I started teaching, I realized that my purpose in life

was figuring out how to help people gain confidence in their creative ability.

Many people assume they're not creative.

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