Julio Mario Ottino

THINKING that connects.

EXPLORE NEXUS THINKING

THE NEXUS OVERVIEW

THE NEXUS BOOK

Augmented Thinking for a Complex World

THINKING AT THE NEXUS

Today, more urgently than ever, we need to augment our thinking. The world faces enormous challenges of unprecedented complexity—problems that intertwine in a dizzyingly interconnected, interdependent, and changing landscape.

The demands are clear: we must adopt new ways of thinking and working that cross the boundaries of classical knowledge and practice; creativity must increase, and execution must excel. How can we augment our thinking spaces to increase creative solutions? How can we make those solutions real by mastering complexity? By working at the Nexus, where art, technology, and science converge.

Today’s problems represent a higher order of complexity. The only safe prediction is that disruptions lie ahead. Reliance on a single perspective hinders our ability to successfully navigate vague situations and ill-defined questions and problems. Augmenting thinking spaces increases the number of creative ideas. But to make creative solutions real through carefully orchestrated execution, we must understand the fabric of complexity that governs how every component of society and the world functions today.

Creativity

We commonly think of art as creation, technology as invention, and science as discovery — the reality is more complex. There is more analysis in art than perceived by science and more creativity in science than perceived by art. There are creative processes and lessons that can be transferred across domains that enrich each other. Our thinking spaces expand when we learn how others think.

Today’s problems represent a higher order of complexity. The only safe prediction is that disruptions lie ahead. Reliance on a single perspective hinders our ability to successfully navigate vague situations and ill-defined questions and problems. Augmenting thinking spaces increases the number of creative ideas. But to make creative solutions real through carefully orchestrated execution, we must understand the fabric of complexity that governs how every component of society and the world functions today.

Science & Technology

We must extract lessons from the unanticipated and surprising ways that art, technology, and science collide, collaborate, and compete. Gaps are vanishing, with science and technology taking turns and often advancing in lockstep. Progress and innovation depend on the ability to switch roles; it is important to add new thinking into the mix.

How can one develop a seamless mutually-enriching science-technology relationship? The starting point is assessing the culture of the organization, identifying people with a desire and/or an ability to reach-across-the-aisle. Developing these individuals is essential, but so are lessons that provide ideas and inspiration. Adding art to the mix – equally distant from science and technology – can have profound consequences in altering thinking styles.

Technology is about invention: creatively making and building. Science is about discovery: creatively unveiling, revealing what may already be there but has never been seen. Art now is about self-expression and breaking paradigms. Modern art’s aspiration is exploration and uniqueness, with progress having little or no meaning. The challenge for contemporary artists is not to extend an existing historical cultural line but to break from that line and create a territory not already occupied. Technology is the bridge between art and science. Since the very beginning, art has appropriated technology as a means to an end. But art now wants technology’s ubiquity and power, its leading-edge processes, and its materials. On the other side, technology wants art’s inventiveness, its untethered thinking, and its built-in innovation. This is what we want to copy from art. Examples are a must. Our thinking spaces expand when we learn how others think.

Education

Science and engineering encourage thinking that is logical, rational, analytical, pattern-seeking, and solution-solving. Innovation, however, requires artistry, intuition, divergence, and fantasy, the kind of thinking more closely associated with the arts. And, at the other end of the bracket, convergence and execution to reduce ideas to practice. The goal is to nurture a new generation of people who have not only the functional technical skills but also the broader contextual and collaborative abilities to truly innovate; infuse them with permanent curiosity, inquisitive questioning, vigilance against single-lens thinking, and with the knowledge and ability to operate in complex environments.

How can one develop people and structures that lead to better desired educational outcomes? The starting point is assessing the desire for change. Providing a framework to anchor thoughts and terminology is essential as well as well-managed spirited discussions to discuss and advocate different viewpoints and possibilities. A first goal: Move from the narrow thinking that equates creative outputs with “final” products: writers with novels, scientists with unique discoveries, architects with buildings, and so on. The process that leads to the product is more important than the product itself and learning how others think is the main useful lesson.

Creativity is not magical. Ideas are, almost invariably, the result of long unseen processes. Personal experience, collaborations with humanists and artists, shows that crossing domains is not only possible, but that it can in fact lead to remarkable results. Diverse teams can successfully work together and produce outcomes can could not have been accomplished by the individual components working in isolation.

Innovation

Innovation emerges as the result of a compass that drives a culture, not of a dictum from above. Innovation is the implementation of creative thinking to solve a problem. Though often appearing clear and inevitable from the outside it is, more often than not, the result of a complex set of interactions by individuals, teams, and organizations who link and reinforce each other in unpredictable ways. Innovators must be prepared to recognize, foster, and exploit emergence, when a system organizes to produce outcomes that they are much more than the sum of their parts.

How can one develop the culture that leads to increased innovation? Recognize that creativity requires divergent thinking, that implementation demands convergent thinking, and that the two should seamlessly coexist. Divergence to create a rich idea space; convergence to reduce ideas to practice. There is no perfect formula. The starting point to assess possibilities is evaluating the existing culture – in individuals and organizations – and their eagerness to explore new ideas, and to improve, and to grow. A framework to anchor thoughts and guidance is essential, and so are lessons to provide ideas and inspiration. What makes a break-through different than a break-with? What has been the common denominator in many successful innovative organizations? But so is discussion and debate to assess comfort level with unusual collaborations, the ability to assess the benefits of facing opposing viewpoints, as well as understanding the balance between processes and products, and to avoid becoming thinking- addicted to either one. Understanding the motivations of people who do not think like us is essential. The result is to develop Nexus thinkers, crosslinkers that operate in an expanded thinking space. Not being anchored in a single domain they catalyze ideas and possibilities, becoming essential components in the innovation network of the organization. The best opportunities are at the intersections. The goal is to create conditions for successful emergence.

Management & Organizations

Maps work well in stable, well-understood environments. But in complex, rapidly changing environments, a compass is preferable to a map. Traditional leaders are map-driven, hierarchical, analytical, methodical, and evolutionary. New leaders are compass-driven, collaborative Nexus thinkers who can establish a culture of values while creating the conditions for constant reinvention and emergence.

New leaders can see simplicity in complexity and complexity in simplicity and the ability to see the patterns and implications of simple pictures as well as the simplicity hidden in complex ones. The ability to reconcile opposing viewpoints is an essential skill for a leader in dealing with the future. Emergence, the central concept in complex systems theory, when parts in system organize to produce outcomes that could not have been anticipated from its parts, teaches us the limitations of top-down thinking. A successful organization (and a successful leader) is one that creates the culture and conditions for successful emergence.

How can one develop managers and organizations that can thrive in a dizzyingly chaotic, ever- changing world? Far more complex than a series of specific learnings and lessons, or a to-do check list. The starting point is assessing the existing culture as well as the willingness, and even impatience, to improve and grow. Seeing oneself as an integral part of the network and culture of the organization, giving value to the network and, in turn, being enriched by it, is essential.

Specialists are essential but an organization cannot grow if it solely populated by single-lens individuals. A leader understands the motivations of the different people and organizations that make up the network. Extracting value from these tensions is essential. A framework to anchor thoughts and guidance, e.g., the values of maps and compasses, and the balance core and periphery, is essential. But spirited discussion of ideas and methodologies is a must. It is out of discussions and conflicts where the unique values of the organization must emerge.

Discover the world of nexus thinking

In this provocative and visually striking book, Julio Mario Ottino and Bruce Mau offer a guide for navigating the intersections of art, technology, and science.