Nature is just like that - no boundaries whatsoever. An atom can today be part of the oceans and tomorrow that of land.
I like to apply similar thinking to our lives - why is it that they say - a designer is a designer, that a doctor is a doctor that a business person is a business person.
We are educated from our toddler years. At first, we are taught a wide array of subjects in school - as we grow older and go to college, we choose a few subjects to study and then as we study more, we choose our focus and as we go ahead, our focus keeps on getting smaller and smaller - Nothing wrong with that - It is a good way to learn what you really like. Concentrating only on one subject deepens one's knowledge about the subject but in the course it cuts one's association with other subjects. Our thinking gets locked into a pattern and we start thinking in a predicted manner as we learn from our concentration study. Such pattern hardly evokes innovation.
But, as observed, innovation happens when there is a radicle change in the thinking pattern. When it comes to Mac and its success, Steve Jobs does not forget to mention his course on Calligraphy that gave him the design sense. It helps when you can take different points of view to look at a problem - that sparks innovation. If you have just one tiny view to look at a Elephant, you might see just the trunk or the tail or the leg - and assume that a Elephant is just that. It is only when you broaden you views, look around and have various perspectives, will you understand the animal.
Being a Master of one and a Jack of all is the way to innovation. Being multi-disciplinary in one's outlook, education and jobs should be encouraged. This is one key element to innovation.
Schools like Stanford are now encouraging and have courses where design thinking is applied to Business and Engineering. I feel this is just the start of a new era where a field will have no boundaries.
I like to apply similar thinking to our lives - why is it that they say - a designer is a designer, that a doctor is a doctor that a business person is a business person.
We are educated from our toddler years. At first, we are taught a wide array of subjects in school - as we grow older and go to college, we choose a few subjects to study and then as we study more, we choose our focus and as we go ahead, our focus keeps on getting smaller and smaller - Nothing wrong with that - It is a good way to learn what you really like. Concentrating only on one subject deepens one's knowledge about the subject but in the course it cuts one's association with other subjects. Our thinking gets locked into a pattern and we start thinking in a predicted manner as we learn from our concentration study. Such pattern hardly evokes innovation.
But, as observed, innovation happens when there is a radicle change in the thinking pattern. When it comes to Mac and its success, Steve Jobs does not forget to mention his course on Calligraphy that gave him the design sense. It helps when you can take different points of view to look at a problem - that sparks innovation. If you have just one tiny view to look at a Elephant, you might see just the trunk or the tail or the leg - and assume that a Elephant is just that. It is only when you broaden you views, look around and have various perspectives, will you understand the animal.
Being a Master of one and a Jack of all is the way to innovation. Being multi-disciplinary in one's outlook, education and jobs should be encouraged. This is one key element to innovation.
Schools like Stanford are now encouraging and have courses where design thinking is applied to Business and Engineering. I feel this is just the start of a new era where a field will have no boundaries.
