0. Inside my little Black Box, an Innovation Education
As Masters of Design Innovation candidates each of us brings something knew to our group work, our experiences. Though one unicorn-kind-of-person may maintain the skill set of a crowd, favoring this individual vantage over a handful of studied ones would be remiss. The history of the innovation practise has fallen from the hands of the Master Builder, the infallible visionary, whose archetype we replace with mindful menageries. In the complexity of 21st century innovative, with genius redrawn from multiple viewpoints, the struggle to enable innovative flows is bumbling from industry to industry.
Practitioners and students alike search their tool-kits to conceive of the next disruptive innovation. Two industries at the bleeding edge are (not so incidentally) the two industries that draw balance into my professional and educational lifes, Data Science and Design. For me, both of them use black boxes in some regard. In Data Science, black boxes transform inputs into functional outputs, while a networked algorithm inside the box remains beyond knowledge.
…is there a cat in the box, no cat, or both a cat and not a cat in the box simultaneously!? Who knows. This black box concept is also a great way to describe the non-linear problem solving nature intrinsic to design to the business world. Being immersed in interviews and project research, creating prototypes and iterating all leads to some coalescence, an “AHA,” an output.
Tracking the moments of insight that lead to the perfect idea, the right next step, there isn’t a discrete algorithm for it. In this way our brains are the original black boxes on which the neural networks of Data Science are modeled and remodeled. As the Data driven left grinds closer to the shifty creativity of the design thinking right, I, in this unique position, am forced to consider the question and answer it simultaneously: Is it possible that both industries be the face of innovation? See Figure 1. Design thinkers are hacking and rewriting brain circuits as data scientists and neuroscientists pool to aim their models at a moving target.
Perhaps this section should be called my two-faces or Mr. Hide’s blather, but I digress.
As each of us at MassArt studies here in our dedicated lab, and at other institutions, like Olin, Wentworth, and MIT to build original technologies, learn some new basics, leverage our standbys, collaborate with peers, and realize the delta, I plead the case of my high school sweetheart Ralph W.E.
“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance.
If you can bare the abstraction, and my tone, what I mean to say is that the value of these overlapped experiences shaped by their specific vantages are not merely a product of diversity, but also of resolution of character. Without conviction and, frankly, righteousness, the value of additional perspective vectors is consternation. See Figure 2.
With that I share a handful of advice.
One. Don’t go to grad school for fun, and don’t go because it seems like the next step, go to focus, go to stand on the shoulders of giants, and, on occasion, let your wealth of experience teach them something.
Two. Continuously question your primary assumptions, wholey listen, and embody multiple perspectives, heed the words of contemporary philosopher Ms. Katy Perry, “everything you see, ain’t always what it seems.”
Three… which, the spirit of, is never to be forgot. “Anyone can cook,” Chef Gusteau — Ratatouille. Other’s experiences are valuable. Where my style may be cooked-on-a-campfire, theirs could be molecular gastronomy.
🃏
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A special thank you to MDES — Experience Design Lab instructors Jonathan Campbell, Senior Vice President, Experience & Service Design at Continuum and former Senior Director of Innovation at Sutherland Labs, now, VP at Hill Holliday, Benjamin Little for their directives. Look forward to the second post in this series. 1. Public Innovation,Comparing Innovation Centers
