Click here to order a copy of it The NexusAugmented Thinking for a Complex World, The New Convergence of Art, Technology and Science
The art of paper folding dates back centuries. Through the design of elegant three-dimensional shapes, origami artists have developed ways to create objects that are light but incredibly strong and complex.
But it wasn’t until the twenty-first century that engineers began to notice. Faced with designing solar arrays and telescopes that can fit inside rockets and then deploy themselves in space, NASA scientists turned to methods inspired by origami.
That it took so long for these two areas to cross reflects the historical barriers between art and science, he says Julio M. Ottinoprofessor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, former dean of the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern, and author of The Nexus, Elevated Thinking for a Complex World.
“Objects lived in museums. Equations lived in journals. Ideas remained isolated from each other, separated by disciplinary boundaries,” says Ottino. “The answer, conceptually, has been hiding in plain sight for five hundred years.”
It’s a historical lesson that companies looking to innovate should keep in mind. Facilitating innovation, Ottino says, means striking a careful balance between two opposing ways of thinking—the exploratory and the systematic.
Exploratory thinking deals with issues that are amorphous and unpredictable. Systems thinking focuses on implementation and operations. Drawing on the work of philosopher Karl Popper, Ottino also refers to these as “cloud” and “clock” thought.
Business leaders who want to innovate must be able to build a bridge between artists and engineers, discoverers and doers, Ottino says. “You need these nexus people, who can connect the people who are really good at the cloud thinking part – the creative part, the different people, the metaphorical thinking – with the clock thinking people who are more logical, rational and quantitative. You need both.”
Ottino offers three recommendations for how business leaders can balance exploratory and systematic thinking to make discoveries and make them happen.
Develop a culture of curiosity throughout the organization
Sure, some of your employees will be more adept at cloud thinking and others at clock thinking. However, it is not enough for companies to open an innovation department where a small group is responsible for all the big ideas. Instead, curiosity and discovery should be built into the fabric of the organization because great ideas can come from someone involved.
“You want ideas to emerge because they’re part of the culture of the place, not because it’s dictated by leadership,” says Ottino.
But a culture of curiosity doesn’t just happen spontaneously. Setting the stage for ideas to emerge depends on active leadership at the highest levels, according to Ottino.
3M, for example, once fanned the flames of innovation by allowing employees to spend 10 percent of their time working on whatever they wanted. The goal for the company was not to build on achievements from the fringes, but to foster an environment where employees could explore.
“Encouragement to innovate must flow continuously from the top,” he explains. says Ottino. “The way a culture of curiosity should work is that some element each the worker’s brain must be focused on discovery.”
Break down silos
Along with giving people the space and encouragement to pursue innovative ideas, leaders also need to bring together different types of thinkers, according to Ottino.
“Connectivity is essential,” he says. And empowering the entire organization to innovate can make the market for these new connections easier for everyone involved.
Ottino used this interdisciplinary approach when developing a first-year course for undergraduate engineering majors at Northwestern. Design Thinking and Communication, co-taught by faculty from the university’s writing program, brings students into small groups to solve what The Wall Street Journalin an article about the coursehe calls “unsolved problems”.
For example, students in a course at what was then the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab) met with a 10-year-old patient who was born without arms. Students suggested ideas to the child and parents to help the patient be more independent. They then received feedback on what might be effective.
“Students learn empathy, creativity, teamwork and resilience,” says Ottino. “It’s called ‘Design Thinking and Communication,’ but it’s basically innovation leadership.”
This partnership demonstrated the importance of recognizing that the cloud thinkers you need may not be in a specific department — or even within the organization. During Ottino’s tenure, the McCormick School also launched new initiatives with the Block Museum of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to expand the relationship between cloud and clock thinkers.
These projects echo a longer history of successful art and science collaborations in the corporate world. For example, in the 1966 performance series 9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering, Bell Labs allowed 30 of its engineers to collaborate for 10 months with 10 artists, including composer John Cage, painter Robert Rauschenberg and dancer Lucinda Childs.
“There are a lot of technologies that were developed there for the first time,” says Ottino. “Why? Because artists discussed things, these people listened, and one thing led to another.”
While Ottino doubts that any modern company would commit 30 of its engineers for months on a similar project, it’s important for business leaders to create partnerships and protect spaces where people from different disciplines can come together and experiment.
“You have to dedicate resources to people to work on these things,” he says. “You have to commit to them, even if they’re hard to quantify in the short term.”
Communicate a vision
Cross-pollination of cloud and clock thinkers does not guarantee that curiosity will be part of a company’s culture. A consistent message from business leaders about their vision for the organization is also crucial, according to Ottino.
“You have to constantly and consistently communicate who you are,” he says. “That permeates through the organization.”
A clear communication strategy is necessary in part because of the inherent tensions between exploratory and systematic thinking. In the Design Thinking and Communication course, for example, mistakes are inevitable, a reality that can sit uneasily with the typical engineering student’s desire for perfection.
“Failures are a given,” says Ottino. “They’re not setbacks. They’re useful information.”
Leaders, he suggests, must relentlessly clarify how failures fit into a broader innovation strategy. Otherwise, businesses will be tempted to turn away from creativity and return to solid ground when ideas don’t pan out.
“People prefer clarity and [in uncertain times] You’ll always, always go back to the clock thinking,” he says, “when what you need is a little patience for ambiguity.”
A place’s culture is its compass, he says, and the strategic plan is its map. An organization that successfully cultivates innovation will have both. But to get there, business leaders must make balancing the cloud and the clock a top priority.
“Most organizations are set up to favor one function and suppress the other,” says Ottino. “Rare breakthroughs happen when both ways coexist – when exploratory thinking finds unexpected connections and systematic thinking makes them real.”
