Innovation at the Intersection of Ideas
Every field has its experts. Yet, there are some problems that stump even the experts. That’s when the specialists are brought in. Guess who comes in handy when even the specialists of a field fail to come up with a solution? Not a super-specialist, but someone with interests wider than the area in question. Let me tell you a story about a Japanese astrophysicist, Koryo Miura.
A FOLD IN TIME
If he was only an astrophysicist, we wouldn’t be talking about him. Koryo Miura, you see, also practised origami, the traditional Japanese art of folding paper into different shapes. I think you would agree aerospace and origami are completely separate fields—one a science, the other an art. However, they will intersect in our story.
In 1985, Miura created a method of folding paper, or any flat surface, into a compact bundle that could be opened and closed with a single motion. This method was called the Miura fold.
That may not seem like a great technological advancement to us but in 1995, Japan’s Space Flyer Unit deployed solar panel arrays using this exact fold.
Around the same time, NASA’s engineers were striving to fit huge space telescopes into relatively small rocket cargo bays. They too found their answer in origami. And that the packed telescopes would unfurl autonomously in space made it even better.
That’s not all though. This is a manifold story. I know that’s a terrible pun. I have no excuse so let’s turn the page on that!
Medical engineers discovered more than one use for similar folding patterns. One of many was to pack heart stents into tiny catheters that pop open inside blocked arteries, changing millions of lives.
INNOVATION AT THE INTERSECTIONS
Who could’ve imagined that these cutting-edge innovations would owe their existence to the art of folding colourful sheets of paper?
But then, what is innovation if not the breaking down of the man-made walls built around disciplines? Understanding this is the key to solving complex problems. The answers to many perplexing questions are often found at the intersections of ideas.
Perhaps that is the reason why people who solve complicated problems usually have interests in more than one field, an ability to zoom out from the minutiae of an issue and look at the bigger picture from a different perspective. In author Frans Johansson’s words,
“We need to look at problems from multiple angles because complex problems don’t fit neatly into a single discipline.”
That said, not always can a single person or even a team bring varied perspectives to the table. At times like these, simply possessing the acuity of seeing something exceptional at play, appreciating the skill it calls for, and having the humility to ask for help can make a huge difference. That’s what changed lives at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in the late 1990s.
THE FORMULA THAT SAVED BABIES
Doctors at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital noticed that they were losing many patients during the “handover” phase when babies were moved to the ICU after cardiac surgery. These handovers were usually chaotic and extremely stressful, even as the staff scurried around doing their best.
After one such stressful weekend of surgeries, Professor Martin Elliott, a paediatric cardiothoracic surgeon and his colleague, Dr Allan Goldman sat slumped on a couch, watching a Formula 1 race.
If you’ve ever watched a Formula 1 race, you may have observed how fast and precise the pit crew is. There’s no standing around, waiting for instructions. To the average person, it looks like a cross between choreography and magic. Prof Elliott and Dr Goldman probably felt the same way.
At a management conference, the doctors got in touch with Ferrari, eventually leading to a partnership. When Ferrari’s experts analysed videos of the hospital “handover” phase, they immediately picked up on a lack of clear-cut, assigned roles and synchronization.
They restructured the ICU handovers almost entirely. As a result, medical errors reduced by over 42% and information handoff omissions dropped by almost 50%.
Over the years, these procedures were rolled out at many hospitals across the United Kingdom to similar success, saving thousands of babies. And it all began with a Formula 1 pit crew.
LEARNING FROM NATURE
Speaking of folks who get stuff done fast, we humans, pride ourselves for the leaps we’ve made in the short time we’ve been on the scene. Except Nature is always ahead of us.
Even in her astoundingly infinite variety, Nature never shies away from using the same idea in multiple places. Take for instance, the similarity between the ratios and flow of a tree’s branches and roots, the shape of river deltas and the blood vessels in our bodies. They all follow the same math.
BIOMIMICRY TO THE RESCUE
And in the spirit of such recycling, we return to Japan. Japan’s bullet train is iconic, but even icons have their troubles. The Shinkansen, as the bullet train is known in Japan, was redesigned in the 1990s.
The new design had a structural problem – the compression of atmospheric pressure when a train entered a tunnel and the pushing out of that air from the other end of the tunnel at the great speed caused a deafeningly loud sonic boom. Understandably, this was a nuisance for residents in nearby areas.
Luckily for the manufacturers of the bullet train as well as the eardrums of the people living near the abovementioned tunnels, Eiji Nakatsu, the Shinkansen’s engineering director, was an avid birdwatcher. His years of watching birds were about to come in handy.
He had observed kingfishers diving into water at great speed creating barely a splash, transitioning seamlessly between mediums of different densities—air to water.
Inspired, Nakatsu studied the structural geometry of a kingfisher’s beak and applied it to the nose of the bullet train. The new design eliminated the sonic boom, increased the train’s speed and reduced energy consumption. It was a triumphant example of biomimicry.
CONCLUSION
What does these stories teach us? One, that if you must be a nerd, be a multi-faceted one! And two, there is nothing new under the Sun and that solutions to new problems can often be found amongst stuff that’s been around for a very long time. All you need is to view it from the right angle and the answer becomes visible.
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