Grace Hawthorne is an entrepreneur, artist, author, and educator. She is the founder and CEO of Paper Punk, an award-winning origami and LEGO mashup, and d.school professor, where she teaches courses on creativity and failure and capacity building, covered by Scientific American and Wired magazine. Previously, she cofounded ReadyMade and co-authored the critically acclaimed book by the same name. Her artwork has been exhibited in several national museums including the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum Triennial. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school, was founded at Stanford University in 2005. Each year, nearly a thousand students from all disciplines attend classes, workshops, and programs to learn how the thinking behind design can enrich their own work and unlock their creative potential.
“Hawthorne lays out an operator’s manual to design thinking instead of the regular ‘creativity’ blah blah. She aptly frames the fact that organizations and individuals work at different speeds—and first gear definitely isn’t the only mode for everyone or every task. Make Possibilities Happen is the ten speed bicycle workout for the mind that humanity needs right now.”—John Maeda, Vice President of Design and Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft “Buy this book. Read it. Do the exercises. What you’ll learn will pay you back a hundred-fold.”—Stefan Sagmeister, designer “Make Possibilities Happen is the boost your brain needs to transform your thoughts into action. The ideas and hacks in this book will help you sidestep invisible landmines and move from creation to completion with ease. It will be a helpful asset for anyone trying to bring new possibilities to life.”—David Kelley, founder, IDEO and the Stanford d.school