Fostering a spirit of experimentation and promoting innovative educational initiatives in IT

We should foster a spirit of experimentation and promote innovative educational initiatives to accelerate creative evolution in information technology.

Article  |  Spring 2014

We have experienced amazing innovations in information technology (IT) during the last few decades. Computers, Internet, wireless communication, digital television and videos, smartphones, digital music, digital cameras, navigators, social networking, medical imaging, automation, and other technologies have significantly changed our lives and thinking. Such innovation and evolution have been too fast and disruptive to forecast. For instance, Thomas Watson, founder of IBM, claimed in 1943 that we only need five computers in the world. Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, stated in 1977 that we do not need a computer at home. Bill Gates believed in 1982 that personal computers would not need more than 637K of RAM. Even in the 1970s, most people could not have imagined personal computers, the Internet and Web, wireless digital communication, digital television, or smart phones. Many disruptive inventions and discoveries have shifted IT evolution in directions we had not previously imagined.

Disruptive innovations and inventions are often triggered by unrelenting experimental exploration rather than theoretical inquiry. Faraday, who was virtually uneducated, discovered many key electromagnetic principles by a spirit of unflagging experimental inquiry and endless intellectual inquisitiveness. Those experimental discoveries and inventions were later coined into elegant mathematical theory by Maxwell and other scientists. Creativity for innovative inventions and discoveries frequently came from hands-on labs and trial-and-error experimentation for solving real problems. Engineering tradition had been developed through such numerous experimental works and trial-and-error labs for solving real-world problems to fulfill human and business needs.

However, after World War II, most engineering research and education in academia were too inclined toward ‘engineering science’ (theoretical or mathematical modeling and analysis), which is often superficial and detached from real-world problems and human and business needs. To keep accelerating IT innovation, IT research and education should not only recover a spirit of experimentation but also explore changing human and business needs that induce engineering challenges.

To secure creativity for disruptive IT innovations, we also should change the ways of educating students to include more labs and experiments, problem-solving, discussion, and teamwork in classrooms. E-learning and IT should be properly used to increase such in-class interactions rather than to maximize efficiency for massive low-cost delivery of conventional lecturing.

We also should teach students customer-oriented thinking to understand who customers are and what their needs are. Customer needs can be better understood by examining human needs, from which business needs are derived. Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs or Max-Neef’s 36 classified human needs cells, we observe that the value of IT should shift toward higher level human needs such as social networking, knowledge sharing, happiness, and social values from lower level physiological convenience and entertainment. Our students should better understand humans and society. The future of IT depends on our educational innovation.

by professor Tae-Eog Lee (Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering)