Playing Well with Others in a Creative Era

David E. GoldbergIllinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering EducationUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignUrbana, IL 61801deg@illinois.edu

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