Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World PDF Author: Guru Madhavan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
An ode to systems engineers—whose invisible work undergirds our life—and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle. Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects—often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy—are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon. In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering—efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience—engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness. An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice—one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World PDF Author: Guru Madhavan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393651479
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 421

Get Book

Book Description
An ode to systems engineers—whose invisible work undergirds our life—and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle. Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects—often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy—are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon. In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering—efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience—engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness. An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice—one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions

Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions PDF Author: Peter DeGrace
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
M->CREATED

Applied Minds: How Engineers Think

Applied Minds: How Engineers Think PDF Author: Guru Madhavan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393248003
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
“Engineers are titans of real-world problem-solving. . . . In this riveting study of how they think, [Guru Madhavan] puts behind-the-scenes geniuses . . . center stage.”—Nature In this engaging account of innovative triumphs, Guru Madhavan examines the ways in which engineers throughout history created world-changing tools, from ATMs and ZIP codes to the digital camera and the disposable diaper. Equal parts personal, practical, and profound, Applied Minds charts a path to a future where we borrow strategies from engineering to find inspired solutions to our most pressing challenges.

The Wicked Company

The Wicked Company PDF Author: Marcus Kirsch
Publisher: Wicked Company
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
WE LIVE IN AN ERA OF WICKED PROBLEMS. Can your company keep up? Technology and the evolution of the experience economy have created a reality that most companies can't just buy or work their way into. These are wicked problems: issues that continue to evolve and morph beyond your solutions even as you form them. The days of tame problems-mass production, building bridges, solving for x-are behind us, but we're still designing companies to solve those tame problems. Marcus Kirsch is here to change all that. Anyone can create a wicked company, but not without implementing ways of working and thinking that are as comprehensive and complex as the problems you're trying to solve. The Wicked Company provides a roadmap to developing a mindset about operations, corporate capability, governance, and the people your organization is made up of that will help you identify, evaluate, and solve wicked problems before they slow you down-and before the other guys have a chance to catch up.

Better Business Better Future

Better Business Better Future PDF Author: Elisabet Lagerstedt
Publisher: BoD - Books on Demand
ISBN: 9152707954
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
An excellent read for entrepreneurs, corporate business leaders, board members, and strategists aiming to future-proof their business by integrating sustainability into the very core. This book offers a way forward, helps you understand the Sustainability Revolution, and provides valuable insights into the journeys and strategic choices of sustainability trailblazers such as Patagonia, Interface, Ørsted, Unilever, IKEA, Oatly, and others. Because you are not the first company to discover the potential in doing well by doing good, or as William Gibson said: "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed". Still, many wicked problems urgently need innovative solutions. Solutions that the world of business is particularly well equipped to address through the ingenuity, creativity, collaboration, and resources that it can so often call forth more effectively and efficiently than other human organizations. Here and now, this requires a move beyond business as usual and a transformation into Better Business.

Exploring Wicked Problems

Exploring Wicked Problems PDF Author: Joseph Bentley PhD
Publisher: Archway Publishing
ISBN: 1480889458
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Former Secretary of State George Shultz once drew a distinction between “problems you can solve and problems you can only work at.” These two types of problems have names: They are tame or wicked. Many people believe that their problems are “wicked,” yet few seem to understand what should be done with them. Wicked problems are messy, confusing, unstable, ill-structured, and ambiguous. This book explores the timely issue of wicked problems – what they are and why they are important. The authors open the door to a greater understanding of wicked problems and an appreciation for their complexity, sharing insights and recommendations on how to tackle them to make positive and productive changes in relationships, at home, and at work. Making one’s way successfully through the mess of obstacles and impediments that wicked problems present puts maximum pressure on our capabilities and stretches our tolerance for confusion, conflict, controversy, and chaos. Get guidance on grappling with the wicked problems in your life by increasing your knowledge about what they are and why they are so important to keep working at – even if they can’t be completely resolved.

The Mind of an Engineer

The Mind of an Engineer PDF Author: Purnendu Ghosh
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811001197
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 459

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Book Description
The Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) promotes the endeavour of the practitioners of engineering and technology and related sciences to solve the problems of national importance. The book is an initiative of the INAE and a reflection of the experiences of some of the Fellows of the INAE in the fields of science, technology and engineering. The book is about the reminiscences, eureka moments, inspirations, challenges and opportunities in the journey the professionals took toward self-realisation and the goals they achieved. The book contains 58 articles on diverse topics that truly reflects the way the meaningful mind of an engineer works.

Climate Change: A Wicked Problem

Climate Change: A Wicked Problem PDF Author: Frank P. Incropera
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107109078
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
A pragmatic, no-holds-barred assessment of climate change, for anyone wishing to be fully informed on the topic.

The Neo-Generalist

The Neo-Generalist PDF Author: Kenneth Mikkelsen
Publisher: Lid Publishing
ISBN: 9781912555390
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
We live in a world of hyper specialism, losing context and our connection to the surrounding region breaks down. The expertise we valued so highly has served to narrow and shorten our vision. It has blinded us to potential and opportunity. This book argues that there is the need and place for both specialist and the generalist. Currently, it feels the balance is tipped too far towards specialism, which results in too much blinkered decision-making. The authors call for people to develop into generalists. These are people who possess both a breadth and depth of skills, knowledge and experience. These are most definitely not 'jack of all trades, masters of none'. Rather, they are people who have the potential, the attitude and the aptitude to specialise in more than one discipline, and are adept at navigating the digital, networked world we inhabit today.

Frame Innovation

Frame Innovation PDF Author: Kees Dorst
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262324318
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
How organizations can use practices developed by expert designers to solve today's open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems. When organizations apply old methods of problem-solving to new kinds of problems, they may accomplish only temporary fixes or some ineffectual tinkering around the edges. Today's problems are a new breed—open, complex, dynamic, and networked—and require a radically different response. In this book, Kees Dorst describes a new, innovation-centered approach to problem-solving in organizations: frame creation. It applies “design thinking,” but it goes beyond the borrowed tricks and techniques that usually characterize that term. Frame creation focuses not on the generation of solutions but on the ability to create new approaches to the problem situation itself. The strategies Dorst presents are drawn from the unique, sophisticated, multilayered practices of top designers, and from insights that have emerged from fifty years of design research. Dorst describes the nine steps of the frame creation process and illustrates their application to real-world problems with a series of varied case studies. He maps innovative solutions that include rethinking a store layout so retail spaces encourage purchasing rather than stealing, applying the frame of a music festival to understand late-night problems of crime and congestion in a club district, and creative ways to attract young employees to a temporary staffing agency. Dorst provides tools and methods for implementing frame creation, offering not so much a how-to manual as a do-it-yourself handbook—a guide that will help practitioners develop their own approaches to problem-solving and creating innovation.