The Diamond

Innovative thinking involves stretching the mind. In many ways, the mind of the typical engineer can be described as an "Inch wide and a mile deep." The education of an engineer has concentrated on the construction of "silos" - - vertical storage units with a narrow knowledge base. Transportation engineers that focus on just transportation. Water resource engineers that focus on just water resources. Energy engineers that focus on just energy issues. Don't get me wrong, some level of specialization is required. Every farm needs a silo - - but at the same time someone needs a holistic view of the entire farm and various processes. This person typically is an "Inch deep and mile wide" thinker.

The problem you run into is that most of our truly complex problems cross a wide spectrum of our technology and cultural landscape. This runs counter to the engineering mind of information narrowness but logically deeper thinkers. We seek out far less information - - then having gathered it, we strive for logical consistency amongst the various pieces of information we have deemed relevant. We are trained to look for ways in which our observations connect to what we know. Engineers look for the logical implications of what we already know or believe in order to decide what new beliefs to hold out for testing. We look for connections of the logical and causal type among facts and quasi facts, rather than just associations and connections.

Engineering needs to think about a key question as we approach huge problems such as sustainability - - In what circumstances should logical depth dominate information breadth, and vice versa? In the context of a multi-disciplinary problem such as sustainability - - is more thinking better than more foraging or more asking, given that one can only think (or forage) more if one forages (or thinks) less?

Engineering typically rewards individuals for specialization - - the mile deep mind historically has been valued for the ability to explain "a lot by a lot" or even "a little by a lot." That worked well, as long as messy, complicated, and contradictory problems didn't cross vast oceans of knowledge. But problems relating to climate change, sustainability, and new energy systems are going to cross such oceans.

Some core group of engineers should have a focus on "Squaring the Mind" - - stretching depth and breadth into a diamond. The group needs to resist the desire to make easy tradeoffs -- between the ability to explain a lot by a little and the ability to see and observe a lot. The core group should have the ability to switch between thinking deeply and thinking broadly, and being able to integrate between the two. We need engineers that have an ability to think about thinking while thinking. In the context of sustainability - - we need engineers to think about what they are thinking about - - about the complexity of the problem they are trying to solve, while at the same time, thinking through various solutions to the problem.