McMinsky
McMinsky
Science, technology and human sensitivity in one place, for those who are tired of promises.
What usually goes wrong: the same program for everyone, the child treated as a grade level, the municipality treated as "a medium-sized municipality".
What we do: we start from the concrete person, by name, and design from there.
What usually goes wrong: talking about motivation and well-being without knowing how attention, sleep, memory or blood pressure actually work.
What we do: a physician and a neuroscience PhD in the room, not in a citation.
What usually goes wrong: this year's trend with an English name.
What we do: Minsky, Papert and decades of evidence about how people learn, applied today.
What usually goes wrong: the platform nobody uses and the licence that gets paid anyway.
What we do: we build our own tools and only place them where they help the person.
What usually goes wrong: solving one symptom and creating two.
What we do: we map what connects grades to sleep, isolation to health, training to the service that receives it, and act where the effect is biggest.
What usually goes wrong: the plan in a slide deck that was never tried out.
What we do: a small pilot, with real people, before any scale-up.
What usually goes wrong: at year end, nobody knows what changed.
What we do: we define what gets measured before starting, and come back with numbers you can read out loud.
What usually goes wrong: schedules, jargon and formats built for the supplier's convenience.
What we do: we go where people are, at the time they can, in the language they speak.
McMinsky comes from Marvin Minsky. The pedagogy comes from Seymour Papert. They worked together at MIT and co-authored the book that dismantled a trend ("Perceptrons", 1969), which already says what this house thinks of trends.
Intelligence does not come from a single principle, it comes from many simple pieces working together.
Application: we do not sell "the method". We assemble the right set of pieces for each person and each population.
You only truly understand something once you have learned it through more than one path.
Application: every subject taught through two or three paths: symbol, image, body, simulation.
You learn by building something you can show to others.
Application: you leave with something made, never just slides.
Children do not want it to be easy, they want it to be hard and fun at the same time.
Application: that is "Deep work. Deep fun." Now you know where it comes from.
Physician (FMUL). PhD in neuroscience (Munich). Over a decade in the field with students from age 6 to 80. Programs the systems himself.
Founder of the intelligence podcast: Carne Esperta
We say what will not work before you sign, and what did not work afterwards.
Every recommendation comes with its cause-and-effect chain. There is no "best practice" without a why.
Whoever spends afternoons with 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds knows how to read a room before opening their mouth.
Medicine, neuroscience, programming and pedagogy in the same head. There are no middlemen between "the technician" and "the scientist".
The solutions that work usually come from combining two things nobody had put together before.
The client knows what troubles them. Our first meeting is to listen, not to present.
We are there, on time, in the field. Execution is not subcontracted.
Everything in writing, in plain language, before and after.
Articles, tools and a podcast. None of this sits behind a form.
McMinsky Lumiar is one of McMinsky's public studios.
Azinhaga da Cidade 24A r/c
1750-063 Lisbon
Inside a private gated complex with a security guard
Tutoring, study room, intensive courses, exam simulations, reskilling, senior study room and consulting for parents. From 1st grade to age 80.
1,000+ students and families already supported.
See programs →Studies, consulting, training, events and content for municipalities, inter-municipal communities, schools, charities and companies.
We know how public funding works, including EU funds, and we fit each proposal to the real capacity of each institution, without lowering the standard.
See institutions →For inquiries, partnership proposals or other questions.