Building Places for Multidisciplinary Collaborations
This chapter is a part of the book “How to Build Thriving Start-up Ecosystems: Five Information Patterns for Success.”
Kieran’s colleagues were largely health professionals, and so he had no one in his network who was a lawyer to speak with before the Innovation in Health pitch competition. This lack of a diverse information network meant Kieran did not know about the potential legal ramifications of direct food donation through his app, Food Connect, that ultimately made the start-up unviable.
One way that Community Information Designers (CIDs) can help founders like Kieran build rich multimodal mental maps is to build spaces for multi-disciplinary collaboration on campus. These spaces can lead to Kieran to develop a more diverse information network through knowing people from several disciplines that can help him surface potentially known problems earlier. Whether you have full control on the build out of a physical collaboration space for founders, or can tweak existing spaces, these design suggestions can guide you to make interdisciplinary engagement an integral part of founders’ routines.
Centers and Flows: Foundations of Multidisciplinary Spaces on Campus
The design of Apple’s headquarters, known as Apple Park, is a reflection of Steve Jobs’ obsession with the future and perfectionism (O’Brien). He wanted to engineer a physical space that guaranteed the kind of continued innovation that people have come to expect from Apple products.
One way Apple Park’s physical design of the space is engineered to encourage collaboration is through its circular design. The continuous loop design makes it so to get to a specific area, people need to walk through a half dozen different departments on their way. This lightly forced interaction makes it more likely that people stay on top of what is happening in different departments, and might stop in for a brief chat that could turn into a new product. Universities might not be able to shell out the roughly five billion dollars it took to create the Apple campus, but they can implement many of these ideas. One way is to situate offices and classrooms within the same building, but not the same wing as their associated department. This forces professors from different fields to commingle with each other casually throughout the day.
The Apple Park also has a 30-acre courtyard at the center of the campus that acts as a communal space where employees can gather, relax, and engage in informal conversations. This natural meeting place encourages employees from different departments to mix and share ideas (Satariano). For CIDs that can decide where to locate a multidisciplinary space on campus, choose a centrally located space that naturally is convenient for people from many disciplines. As well, choose a place that is large enough that a multitude of conversations can happen at once.
Remember to brand this space for a general audience. It is essential that this space is not seen as a space solely for entrepreneurship — it is for everyone to collaborate. With signage CIDs should use words like “Innovation Space,” “Idea Hub,” “Collaboration Junction” or some other nomenclature that is not directly start-up related.
Sharing is the Start to Collaborating
Mervin Kelly, a physicist and later President of Bell Labs intentionally designed the corporate campus for multidisciplinary collaboration. His theories seemed to work — — during its eighty years the researchers at Bell Labs’ collaborations have created such technologies as the transistor that paved the way for modern computers, lasers, information theory, solar cells, satellites, and the Unix operating system (Riordan). Specifically the creation of the Unix operating system is one place where the collaboration between computer scientists, hardware designers, and mathematicians was integral to its formation.
One thing Kelly believed in was to use shared resources to generate collaboration, and there was no better shared resource than the office’s cafeteria. Everyone needed to eat, so it ensured that everyone would use the space and feel comfortable doing so because they did not need to have a reason or defined identity to use the space. The cafeteria had long rows of tables so people from different departments had to sit together. This setup promoted interaction between researchers because the lack of division between different tables subtly broke down divides between different conversations and departments. At universities cafeterias also serve as a good option for collaboration spaces. Other shared resources might include printers, tech support, book stores, and study spaces that can serve as natural focal points for collaboration spaces.
Seating was another key aspect to the intentional physical design of Bell Labs, with its creators providing its employees with a range of different seating options that were comfortable but easily moveable. Researchers could easily move chairs into new formations to make it possible to use one space for small group discussions, team meetings, or one-on-one conversations. This malleability in use of the space that encouraged researchers to think outside of the box in their research can also be echoed at universities to help founders think in unconventional directions about their companies.
Comfort is another small but important detail. When Bell Labs purchased chairs for their spaces, they sought out both function and comfort. The thinking was, if people felt as if they were in a casual, approachable environment they would feel more comfortable sharing potentially “silly” ideas or feedback. This same sentiment should be echoed in the university’s collaboration space. A law student needs to feel comfortable jumping into a conversation with sustainability students if they overhear something that does not quite add up. A business or marketing student needs to feel like they can introduce themselves to a group of engineers. In a world where it is extremely easy to disengage with phones and other digital technology, physical comfort can help to generate a low-stakes, safe environment that makes these kinds of multidisciplinary collisions more likely.
Engrain Engagement into Spaces
To further help students build multi-disciplinary connections, CIDs can also be more upfront with programming these spaces for collaboration. One way is through the placement of ample white boards, chalk boards, and chalk/markers throughout the space. Bell Labs had something specifically called “Work in Progress Boards” where researchers could write about an unfinished project or problem they were working on onto communal boards, and invite others to contribute their insights or suggestions. This is a low-stakes design strategy CIDs can adapt for universities.
As well, CIDs can place interactive “games” on the whiteboards or walls to generate engagement between students. One game can be as simple as writing “What does fishing mean in your field?” on a white board and students can write or draw their interpretations. Each week CIDs can put up a different word such as: model, theory, function, band, cell, network, drift, bond, scale, field, subject, portfolio, channel, amongst many others. This casual touchpoint for collaboration encourages people to add to the collaborative brainstorm, and might encourage founders to think of how these different fields might impact their own work.
There are many ways that CIDs can utilize design on their campuses to create multidisciplinary collisions, from situating collaborative spaces at natural meeting junctions, using shared services as a focal point for collaboration, and integrating activities into physical spaces. These design decisions are not a silver bullet to help founders find all of the unknown-unknown problems with their companies, but it is a great place to start.
