David Kelley, founder and CEO of IDEO Product Development, grew up in Ohio, where he survived on a diet of Velveeta cheese and white bread, He attended Carnegie Mellon and studied electrical engineering, but spent more time working on carnival floats. After graduation, he worked for Boeing on the 747. He learned early that in a large company, he didn't get to choose the people he worked with. He came to the Graduate Product Design Program at Stanford, where he discovered his passion–design. His first company was called the Intergalactic Destruction Company. One of the things he learned in graduate school was that you can use design in any situation in life.
Related

Video
Innovation
Dare to Stretch Your Boundaries [Entire Talk]
Lisa Alderson, Genome Medical
56 minutes

Video
Startups
A Burnout Manifesto [Entire Talk]
Gabriel Parisi-Amon, Nebia Shower
53 minutes

Video
Culture
Debugging the Brogrammer Culture [Entire Talk]
Tracy Chou, Project Include
57 minutes

Article
Startups
Entrepreneurship Will Steer Self-Driving Cars Forward
Mike Peña, Stanford University
7 minutes