Finding Tools in Unlikely Places

If you had told me a decade ago that one of the most effective tools I’d use to teach design thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset would be a Nintendo video game, I probably would’ve laughed and moved on. But here we are—and I’m convinced.

Lately, I’ve been watching my ten-year-old son play Super Mario Maker 2—and by “play,” I really mean design. If you’re not familiar, the game allows players to build their own Mario levels from scratch. You choose the terrain, the enemies, the layout, the obstacles, the surprises. And then? You test it. You play it. You tweak it. You watch others interact with it and see what works and what doesn’t.

At first, I thought we were just having a little father-son gaming time. But the more I watched him build, adjust, and rebuild, the more I realized—this was entrepreneurship. This was prototyping in real-time. This was design thinking in action. And the best part? He was completely immersed. Fully engaged. Learning, without even knowing it.

That’s when I started bringing it into my work with schools. What started as a fun at-home experiment became a full-on teaching tool. We began using Super Mario Maker 2 to teach design thinking frameworks and entrepreneurial mindset principles—empathy, iteration, creativity, testing ideas, learning from failure. And it worked. Really well.

Because here’s the thing: students don’t need a formal business plan to start thinking like entrepreneurs. They need an opportunity to create. They need permission to test ideas and fail fast. They need tools that meet them where they are—and sometimes, those tools look a lot like video games. Too often, we dismiss the power of play. We limit our tools to what feels “academic” or “professional,” when the truth is that real learning often starts in the unexpected spaces—on the floor with Legos, outside with melted marshmallows, or behind a Nintendo Switch designing a level that’s just hard enough to keep a player coming back for more.

What I’ve learned is simple: engagement leads to empowerment. When students feel ownership over their learning—when they’re building something, testing something, improving something—they grow. They take risks. They start to think differently. And that’s exactly what we want from the entrepreneurial mindset.

If a ten-year-old can learn resilience, iteration, and user-centered thinking through a Mario level, imagine what our students can do when we expand our definition of what counts as learning.

Let’s stop waiting for the “perfect” tool. Let’s start with what we already have.

Let’s go!

Want to explore how to bring tools like this into your school with some engaging lesson plans and curriculum? Reach out today and let’s talk about what’s possible when we start teaching entrepreneurship in the most unexpected ways.

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