Engineering Spanners

The Chronicle had a very interesting article on March 29, 2013 by Dan Berrett - Double Majors Produce Dynamic Thinkers, Study Finds.  Engineers and organizations that hire and development engineering talent should take note of several key points in the article.

Engineering consistently views the breadth / depth of knowledge issue as a binary decision point - - it is always an either/or decision.  Rarely do we think in terms of both/and.  In our complex and multi-disciplinary world, the collective inability to think in terms of both/and is troubling and has serious long-term consequences for the various engineering professions.  The bottom line in the breadth / depth issue - - it impacts our ability to produce innovative solutions across a host of complex problems.

Our engineering future will require more individuals with what is known as integrative thinking.  This will entail engineers learning the deeper, underlying meaning of a discipline while making connections across disciplines and applying different intellectual perspectives.

This type of creative thinking that embraces "both/and" gives engineers the opportunity to build bridges between domains of knowledge (and allows engineers to actually across the bridges from time to time).  Bridges give engineers the opportunity to generate fresh and original ideas by interfacing with distance disciplines and spheres of knowledge (the Internet has changed the picture and application of a knowledge bridge).

Engineering has a successful legacy of producing "deepeners" - - hyper-specialization in one domain.  Research indicates that "spanners" are able to integrate nearly as well as the "deepeners" - - but the "spanners" were much better at being able to think differently and were able to approach tasks more creatively.  The "spanners" don't get stuck in one frame of mind and have the ability to switch back and forth among various disciplines.

Engineering "spanners" - - be thinking double major and a life of bridges.