short version: playing well with others in a creative era
DESCRIPTION
A presentation to NAE Workshop: Understanding the Design Space on the conceptual obstacles to interdisciplinary work and some organizational solutions to overcoming them.TRANSCRIPT
Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era
David E. GoldbergIllinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL [email protected]
Fast Times at Global High
• Live in fast-paced, global times.• Premium on creative,
interdisciplinary work.• Engineering a broad, integrative
activity.• Yet, odd relationships with other
disciplines.• Engineering faculty paid well, but not
at the center of academic discourse.• Need to understand our relations to
others & develop ways to work with them more closely.
Roadmap
• Creative era as motive for playing well with others.
• Conceptual barriers to playing well: envy, namecalling, and a paradigm.
• Organizational/Institutional aids to playing well: meso-level dot-connectors & pairwork.
• Examples of playing well: ETSI, WPE, iFoundry & OIP.
Playing with Others in a Creative Era
• Engineering an integrative discipline: knowledge and knowhow from many sources.
• Creative era: Flat worlds, whole new mind, & creative class.
• Increased returns to category creators vs. category enhancers.
• Renewed need to play well with other disciplines.
• But it isn’t easy.
Relation to Math & Science
• What is engineering relationship to math & science?
• Some say “engineering is applied science.”
• Engineering academics are concerned with “rigor” and “the basics” (math, sci, eng sci).
• But engineering is so much more.• Myth: radar and bomb won WW2.• Engineering envious of math/science.• Especially in the academy.
Relation to Humanities, Arts & SS
• Humanities, arts & social sciences (HASS) increasingly important to engineering.
• Yet, we use strange words.• Call HASS “soft” as contrasted to
“rigorous.”• View engineering as superior to HASS.• We envy scientist/mathematicians and
consider ourselves superior to HASS.• A epistemological classism. • A totem pole in our minds.
Trapped in Cold War Paradigm
• “Paradigm” traces to Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962.
• Engineering is stuck in cold war paradigm.
• Defending “rigorous” curriculum is not an argument.
• Offending HASS as “soft” is namecalling.
• “The basics” include science, but belief in “the basics” not itself scientific. Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996)
Solution: Emphasize Common Heritage
• Missing basics of engineering tie us to others.• Traditional curriculum to senior design, they
– Can’t ask questions (Socrates 101).– Can’t label things (Aristotle 101).– Can’t model qualitatively (Aristotle 102,
Hume 101). – Can’t decompose problems (Descartes 101). – Can’t experiment or measure (Locke 101).– Can’t visualize/ideate (daVinci/Monge 101).– Can’t communicate (Newman 101).
• Gifts to civilization dating back ~2500 years.
Socrates (470-399 BCE)
Create Meso-Level Dot Connectors
• Departmental faculty have access to– Identity– Space– Communications– Clerical support– Funds
• Getting different groups to play requires some work.• Dot Connector: Meso-level organizational structure• Gather people intellectually, virtually, and physically.• Easier in world of digital and social media.• Examples: ETSI, iFoundry, APIE2.
Pairwork then Networks
• Went from solo to teamwork in the quality revolution. Skipped pairwork.
• Georges Harik, early Google employee: pairs 20x more productive than singletons.
• Get – Large opportunity for complementary
skills.– Low coordination costs.– Maximal opportunity for marginal
creativity.– Effective emotional leveling.
• Great pairwork yields great networks.
Wilbur Wright Orville Wright
Blogpost ETSI WPE iFoundry
• ETSI = Engineering & Technology Studies at Illinois. http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ETSI
• Started as lecture series & website in 2006 following blog post.
• Grew to grassroots network of faculty.• Continues to interact & fundamental to educational &
research initiatives.• Need new institutional forms for minimal support of
interdisciplinary initiatives.• Led to WPE-2007, iFoundry. OIP, & APIE2.
Playing Well: Change Minds & Orgs
• Need to get our minds right.• Need to get our organizations right.• Creativity imperative of 21st century is calling.• Links:
– http://ifoundry.illinois.edu– http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/ETSI – http://www-illigal.ge.uiuc.edu/wpe – www.apie2.org
Summit on the Engineer of the Future 2.0
• Grassroots meeting: 31 March – 1 April 2009 (Tuesday evening – Wednesday), Olin College.
• Keynote: Karan Watson from TAMU.• Panel of young engineers and their
transformational experiences.• Brainstorming breakouts.• Signing of the transformation proclamation.• Olin in Action, Thursday, 2 April 2009.• http://engineerofthefuture.olin.edu