March 8, 2004, Vol.
74, No. 8S
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| BERKELEY
INNOVATORS: A group of students dedicates
one night a week to brainstorming ideas on how to help improve life
on campus. The most promising ideas are pursued.
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BioE junior
starts multidisciplinary, problem-solving group to foster innovation
Berkeley may have
one of the best engineering programs in the country, but BioE junior
Menzies Chen thinks that a room full of engineers lacks the synergy
required to optimize innovation.
According to Chen,
the way to produce truly breakthrough ideas is to assemble a team that
is as diverse as possible.
“Innovation
takes a large knowledge base that can only be captured through diversity.
If the group was all engineers we would not be as successful,”
he says.
Last semester Chen
launched Berkeley Innovation, an interdisciplinary consortium that meets
weekly to brainstorm ideas for improving the quality of life at Berkeley.
“The idea
is to get students from across campus to do design projects and use
creativity and teamwork to come up with innovative design solutions,”
says Chen.
Inspired by the
brainstorming tactics of industry leaders such as Google and IDEO, Chen
searched for a campus organization that used similar methods to cross-pollinate
ideas. Finding nothing, he decided to create such a group from scratch.
Working with a
few “creative acquaintances,” he secured funding and office
space for the group. Now in its second semester, the team has grown
to 15 members from different majors and includes a membership application
process.
“We don’t
require members to have a certain type of GPA, major, or resume to join,”
says Chen. “We are just looking for creative, team-oriented people.”
Knowing how to work in teams is an important prerequisite for membership
and the collaborative effort.
While the biggest
and most compelling part of the group’s creative process involves
brainstorming, they also employ Play Doh rapid prototyping and user
interviews and observation to help develop ideas.
Currently, about
half the group’s members are engineering students, while others
hail from majors such as business, cognitive science, architecture,
and psychology.
“The non-engineering
students help us test out the design of user interfaces because much
of the time engineers come up with products that only other engineers
are comfortable using,” says Berkeley Innovation team member and
EECS junior Ben Liu.
The group recently
dreamed up some wild ideas for alternatives to alarm clocks. How about
a bed that tilts five degrees every minute or deflates to rest on a
bed of rocks? Other ideas include environmental ring tones for cell
phones. An example is setting your ringer while you’re sitting
in class to sound like a backpack zipper or notebook closing. The team
is also working on a project that would let students know in real time
when the next shuttle bus is on its way.
While some of the
ideas will never get off the drawing board, the process of brainstorming
serves as creative lubricant that can eventually lead to pragmatic ideas.
The best testament to the group’s success is their near perfect
attendance at meetings.
“People come
to meetings because it’s fun,” says Chen.
For more information,
go to the Web site at innovation.berkeley.edu.
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