Working with Parallel Universes

In working on cross-disciplinary problems, there are many challenges in understanding the technology and biases of others and how they can contribute to our projects. However, it’s not just the others on the team that we need to understand and leverage. It’s the potential parallel universes of technology, that we often ignore, that can assist us in developing breakthrough technologies. The barriers to recognizing and using these parallel universes is most frequently our egos, that make us want to believe our problems and challenges are special and unique, and the many special acronyms and words we use in a particular technology area that reinforces the idea that the problems we have are special. They seldom are.

For example, a recent consortium that formed in Houston, TX between the oil and gas industry and the medical heart researchers is exploring how their similar experiences in fluid flow and friction factors can accelerate technology developments in both fields. These two major industries have been centered in Houston, TX for decades, but have just now have started talking to each other. A similar collaboration has now formed in Europe. The question we need to ask is where we might be with cardiac conditions and more efficient oil and gas recovery if these two industries had talked to each other decades ago.

This presentation will show additional examples and demonstrate some useful techniques to “generalize” the problems we have and how to search for parallel universes of solutions.