The Berkman Center

Cambridge, MA, USA

The Berkman Center is Harvard University's Centre for Internet and Society. It features the luncheon series with free participation. I have attended the lecture called: "Hackademia: Leveraging the Conflict Between Expertise and Innovation to Create Disruptive Technologies". As the title fits my current preoccupation with innovation in healthcare, I listened to Prof. Beth Kolko.

LUNCHEON SERIES AT THE BERKMAN CENTER

Beth Kolko is a Professor at the Department of Human-Centered Design & Engineering of the University of Washington. She leads the Design for Digital Inclusion Lab, which researches diversity and technology from a design perspective. Her academic history includes rhetoric, cultural studies, and online communities. Beth is fascinated by creativity, innovation, and how a new perspective on an old problem can be a game-changer. Hackademia is an attempt to create a cohort of "functional" rather than "accredited" engineers, to give a broad set of students basic engineering literacy and the tools to explore potential solutions by bringing the creative mindset of the non-expert into the mix.

In this presentation, Beth showed findings from a book-in-progress based on interviews with hackers and makers tentatively titled "Why Rulebreakers Will Rule the World." That book connects the hacking and making/DIY communities at the point of disruptive technologies, demonstrating how the lack of institutional affiliation and formal credentials within each community opens up the space for creative problem-solving approaches. The presentation also discussed the results of a two-year experiment she has been running within the university entitled "Hackademia," an attempt to infect academic pursuits with a hacker ethos and challenge non-experts to see themselves as potentially significant contributors to innovative innovation technologies. Here is the link to the talk presentation and the video if you want to know more.

EXCELLENT LECTURE ON HACKADEMIA

I was attracted to Beth ;) as she feels the same towards innovation as I do. We had a follow-up meeting at MIT where we agreed upon the notion that disruptive innovations must come outside of the academia/industry setting while the sustaining ones come from within (Christensen's theory). I liked her approach and publications, so we agreed that staying in touch would be good. She also created a new research process at the University of Washington where 'non-experts work on some scientific challenges and feed the research on innovations. I understand this is a tricky part, but it apparently works. She calls this approach - of non-educated engineers tackling the technical problems - The Hacademia.

Beth is a passionate entrepreneur thinking about stripping the functionality of medical devices and services to address just a simple set of needs in the developing world. Meeting her and the staff at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University was an uplifting experience.