Reading

SFIP President David Breecker weighs in on some of today’s most compelling writing on innovation.

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns, by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn

Christensen, the originator of the disruptive innovation framework popularized in books such as The Innovator’s Dilemma, here trains his sites on the problem called our public education system. By his own account, he had initial misgivings on how well his framework could be applied to this somewhat sui generis sector; but happily, he finds the common elements that allow a very natural fit, and this leads to a trenchant analysis of the problem with surprisingly hopeful prescriptions for solutions, and predictions for the future, e.g.: by  2019, 50% of all high school courses will be on-line. As they say in school: required reading.

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, by Martin Jacques

Don’t let the somewhat sensationalist title fool you. This is a masterful, scholarly, erudite, and deep analysis of the tectonic shifts taking place in what some pundits call the “new world disorder.” Jacques’ main thesis is not simply that China is an economic powerhouse that can sustain its current growth and leadership; he shows, convincingly, that it is a millennia-old “civilization-state” that will change the way we all grasp “modernization,” and our western bias in understanding the world.

For a taste, try this mind-bender: “…the most extraordinary economic transformation in human history is being presided over by a Communist government during the period which has witnessed the demise of European Communism.” The book is actually a page-turner, and reads more like a political thriller than a text; perhaps Jacques has created a new genre, to go along with his new paradigm. A must-read for anyone interested in global trends and dynamics.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, by Clay Shirky

I confess that I was initially skeptical of this book, thinking it was another trend-du-jour geek social media apotheosis; but I picked it up after seeing Shirky’s star performance with the TED@State show.  Turns out he’s a profound and original thinker, a scholar, and an important analyst on why this stuff is really important (and relevant to SFIP), to wit:  ”Revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new technology.  It happens when society adopts new behaviors.”

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, by Jeffrey D. Sachs

Sachs, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University (itself an inter-disciplinary center with an action agenda) articulates the need for global approaches and the proper role of the public, private, and social sectors with extraordinary precision, while advocating new collaborations:  “Scientific research proceeds in intellectual silos that make far too little contact with one another; research in the physical sciences, biology, engineering, economics, and public health is rarely intertwined, even though we must solve problems of complex systems in which all of these disciplines play a role. The problems  just refuse to arrive in the neat categories of academic departments.

“Moreover, the problems can only be solved through an interactive approach that combines general principles with the details of a specific setting. Academic studies too often begin and end on the basis of general principles without due regard for ground-level complexities.”

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It, by Joshua Cooper Ramo

Ramo, former International Editor for Time Magazine and currently Managing Director of Kissinger Associates, spends half his time in Beijing, the rest everywhere, and knows his stuff first hand.  Among numerous provocative and insightful observations, he hits two critically relevant points:  first, the inextricable connection of the arts and humanities with the wider world of politics, science, and even war (see his extended riff on Picasso, Cubism, and the Great War); and second, the need for radically new problem-solving approaches and capacities to meet future challenges.  He charges his readers with a quote from Roberto Unger that could easily be SFIP’s motto:  ”The task of imagination is to do the work of crisis without crisis.”

The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, Societies, by Scott E. Page

By “diversity,” Page most emphatically does not mean gender, ethnicity, or sexual preference (indeed, he shows that disagreement on fundamental values can inhibit problem-solving teams).  No, Page (External Faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute) is on the SFIP wavelength.  His proposition, proven beyond any doubt (he’s an economist), is that combining different problem-solving “perspectives and heuristics” will beat hyper-specialized mono-culture “expert” approaches almost every time.  Except maybe… open-heart surgery.  One canonical example he offers:  “…during World War II, the British brought together twelve thousand people in Bletchley Park… to crack the Nazi Enigma code…. Many of the people brought to Bletchley Park—Brits, Americans, Poles, Aussies—had training we might think appropriate for code breaking. But other people… had been trained as language experts, moral philosophers, classicists, ancient historians, and even crossword puzzle experts.”

Innovation Nation: How America Is Losing Its Innovation Edge, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do to Get It Back, by John Kao

Kao, a prominent innovation consultant, wrote this to stimulate urgent debate during the 2008 presidential primary season, but it remains relevant today.  While his prescriptions are a bit STEM-heavy for our taste, he does recommend a network of “national innovation centers” to stimulate bold activity and support a globally competitive U.S. national strategy based on innovation.  Well-traveled, Kao cites examples of other countries who are eating our lunch, for example:   “Denmark’s government identified the need to deepen the relationship between the arts and business in 2000. The goal was to expose businesses to new creative and artistic skills; encourage new product development, design, and services; and bring about change in organizational cultures.”