Multidisciplinary Effect On Steroids

[Bret Cahill]

Consider a multi entity (DoE, Commerce, NASA, Innocentive, The
Economist,
various interested universities, etc.) proposal that would temporarily
move
engineers from their chosen fields into others, i.e., electrical to
mechanical,
or from one industry to another, for a 6 month period.

Many places already have intern programs but the goal would be to
exploit
the multidisciplinary effect to generate a firestorm of intellectual
property for
the least amount of money.

I generally get most of my ideas in the first 6 months after a change
in
interests and I'm guessing that would true for others. Even paying
the engineers
2X their usual income the cost of the program would be low as it would
be
difficult to find many engineers interested in getting ripped out of
their
fields, not to mention localities, for just 6 months. If it works as
planned the
royalties would pay for the program many times over.

The program would need to be monitored and optimized. For example,
it
may be a complete waste of time to move an electrical engineer into
microbiology.

Bret Cahill


"I have a theory. I think wit and electricity are one and the same."

-- aristocrat-researcher in Patrice Leconte's _Ridicule_ (1996)

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:04:44 -0700 (PDT), Bret Cahill
<Bret_E_Cahill@yahoo.com> wrote:

Consider a multi entity (DoE, Commerce, NASA, Innocentive, The
Economist,
various interested universities, etc.) proposal that would temporarily
move
engineers from their chosen fields into others, i.e., electrical to
mechanical,
or from one industry to another, for a 6 month period.

Many places already have intern programs but the goal would be to
exploit
the multidisciplinary effect to generate a firestorm of intellectual
property for
the least amount of money.

I generally get most of my ideas in the first 6 months after a change
in
interests and I'm guessing that would true for others. Even paying
the engineers
2X their usual income the cost of the program would be low as it would
be
difficult to find many engineers interested in getting ripped out of
their
fields, not to mention localities, for just 6 months. If it works as
planned the
royalties would pay for the program many times over.

The program would need to be monitored and optimized. For example,
it
may be a complete waste of time to move an electrical engineer into
microbiology.

Bret Cahill

After Katrina, the Dean of Tulane University had an empty campus and
serious triage issues. He decided that the Engineering School didn't
have critical mass and had to go. Nick Altiero, the Dean of
Engineering, refused to close it down. His proposal was to merge the
Science and Engineering departments and institute a dual degree
program, shared with other universities.

http://tulane.edu/sse/pep/academics/undergraduate/physics-dual-degree-engineering-program/


It seems to be working pretty well.

Dual-degree programs, including biology and engineering, are becoming
popular. Makes a lot of sense.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

 

[Bret Cahill]

Consider a multi entity (DoE, Commerce, NASA, Innocentive, The
Economist,
various interested universities, etc.) proposal that would temporarily
move
engineers from their chosen fields into others, i.e., electrical to
mechanical,
or from one industry to another, for a 6 month period.

Many places already have intern programs but the goal would be to
exploit
the multidisciplinary effect to generate a firestorm of intellectual
property for
the least amount of money.

I generally get most of my ideas in the first 6 months after a change
in
interests and I'm guessing that would true for others.  Even paying
the engineers
2X their usual income the cost of the program would be low as it would
be
difficult to find many engineers interested in getting ripped out of
their
fields, not to mention localities, for just 6 months.  If it works as
planned the
royalties would pay for the program many times over.

The program would need to be monitored and optimized.  For example,
it
may be a complete waste of time to move an electrical engineer into
microbiology.

Bret Cahill

After Katrina, the Dean of Tulane University had an empty campus and
serious triage issues. He decided that the Engineering School didn't
have critical mass and had to go. Nick Altiero, the Dean of
Engineering, refused to close it down. His proposal was to merge the
Science and Engineering departments and institute a dual degree
program, shared with other universities.

http://tulane.edu/sse/pep/academics/undergraduate/physics-dual-degree...

It seems to be working pretty well.

Dual-degree programs, including biology and engineering, are becoming
popular. Makes a lot of sense.

One pet theory is that as the fields diverge the breakthroughs tend to
become less common but more spectacular so that the low pass filtered
payoff may be fairly constant _no matter what crazy combinations you
try_.

The multidisciplinary effect really really needs to be studied in
depth with double blind control groups, etc. That might be the
rational for funding such a project.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Incwww..highlandtechnology.com  jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -