6 LESSONS IN INNOVATION FROM GRACE HOPPER

reprinted from the CodeSavvy.org website

Today, December 9, is the 107^th birthday of Grace Hopper – inventor and prime mover of computer programming.   Last year, I celebrated her birthday with a personal remembrance and a promise.  This year coding has become cool and the whole world is celebrating with Code.org’s Hour of Code and many other initiatives.

Grace Hopper was a masterful innovator.  Here are some of her techniques, adapted from Kurt Beyer's thoughtful biography which is the source of the quotes below.

1. Omnivorous Learning

The hungry-minded versatility that typified Grace Hopper remains a hallmark of innovators in every field today.

From her early days as a mathematics professor through her long corporate and military career, Grace Hopper was an insatiable, omnivorous learner.  She audited university classes in a wide range of fields, “… became quite an expert in military affairs … and mastered the machinations of a variety of diverse industries, ranging from insurance to aerospace engineering.  As a result, her mind was informed enough to transcend her own intellectual discipline.  She had freed herself from any particular methodology, and could approach problems from a variety of angles.” (p 316) 

  

2. The Power of Inexperience

Challenge, naivety, hubris and drive have always been potent forces for invention and innovation.

Hopper often challenged the least experienced members of a team with the most difficult technical problems.  “Experts have difficulty seeing beyond the borders of their specialty.”  Young, inexperienced programmers did not know that they were supposed to fail, and had “the ability to look beyond ‘what is’ and grasp ‘what could be’.”   (p 315)

3. The More Minds the Better

The power of sharing data, code and ideas through open source development, user groups, and other collaborative enterprises were all presaged by Grace Hopper.  She was also instrumental in founding the ACM (see p 165.)

“Hopper believed that the process of invention should not be confined to herself, her staff, or even her company.  Information flowed smoothly between her team and other organizations, with Hopper serving as the conductor of invention rather than its dictator.” (p318)

“Throughout the 1950s, she played the role of facilitator, gathering technical, economic and social feedback about automatic programming and embedded what she learned in the next iteration of design.” (p321)

4. Risk, Resilience and Irreverence

Grace Hopper was tough, determined, resilient and ready to assume considerable risk to push through her ideas and projects – the classic profile of an innovator.  

Grace was also human, and her accomplishments – like those of most innovators – “came at considerable personal cost.  Pioneers such as Hopper are faced with far more than technical conundrums.  They must deal with a variety of social and psychological pressures… the technical pioneer must manage not only his or her own doubts, but also the doubts of colleagues, investors, managers, end users and a skeptical public.  Being an inventor is in many ways an act of faith:  faith in one’s own technical abilities, faith in those who work alongside faith in the ultimate vision and purpose of the project.” (p 176)

5. Inventor as Promoter

Paving a path and selling the vision make innovations start, and stick.  This is true both within development environments, and in the world beyond.

“ ‘We had to introduce some kind of system and discipline to it,’ Hopper recalled, ‘and that’s how I eventually got put in charge of them.  I realized the things that had to be done and I pounded on management until they too accepted the concepts.’ ” (p 220)

During the 1950s and beyond, much of Hopper’s time and energy was dedicated to “spreading the gospel of automatic programming through lectures, articles and conference presentations.”   Historians note that Hopper and other inventors “were responsible not only for the invention of new technologies, but also for the integration of those technologies into the economic, political and social fabric of society.” (p 318)

6. Go for It!

Hopper was forward-thinking, action oriented, optimistic and inspirational.  Throughout her life, she blew through obstacle after obstacle, in relentless pursuit of her goals.   I remember well her challenge:

 
“I have one piece of advice for you young people,” she announced.  She smiled briefly, then glared at us, each one of us.  “DO IT!” she commanded, loud and abrupt. “If you want to accomplish something,  just DO IT.  Don’t make excuses.  Don’t ask permission.  By the time the authorities have caught up with you, you’ll have it working, and they’ll be too glad to have it to care.”    (source)   

Innovators everywhere, and all the rest of us, owe a lot -- from pivotal technical advances to ongoing inspiration – to the great Grace Hopper.   

Happy birthday Grace, and thank you.

WHAT DO KIDS WANT TO INVENT?

Check out the innovative ideas from creative kids posted on the Design Squad Nation website. 

Design Squad Nation is a high-energy, high-drama reality TV show that works with kids around the world to make their wishes come true through engineering. More on their philosophy and content here.

Some of my favorite kid ideas:

• black light sensitive lipstick (see below)
• edible crayons, 
• a princess dress that does everything for you,
• a tree house with a zipline to your bedroom
• a way to import the images from your mind onto paper
• and many more!

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LEILA JANAH and SAMASOURCE

"You don't have to accept the world for what it is.  You can mold it into what you think it could be."

Innovator and entrepreneur Leila Janah is the founder of Samasource, one of the best examples I've seen of social enterprise. Rather than a few people making billions of dollars from data entry outsourcing, Janah wants to make it possible for billions of people to earn a few dollars, transforming their lives.  Founded in 2008, Samasource has paid and trained over 3500 women and youth living in the world's poorest communities and disbursed nearly $3 million in wages.

"Sama means equal and our mission is to give work rather than handouts.   Samasource connects people living in poverty to work via the Internet. Samasource provides work to poor women and youth in East Africa, South Asia and Haiti through microwork, a model we developed to break down data projects into small tasks. In parallel, Samasource offers high quality data services  to enterprise customers including LinkedIn, eBay, Walmart.com, and the US State Department."

Take some time to watch Janah's TED talk, read this short profile or learn about Samasource and her other inspirational projects. 

"Give work, and every family can afford three meals a day for their bodies. Give work and every child can enjoy education and culture for her mind.  Give work, and one day in the deep future people everywhere can enjoy dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits."

ps. Another wonderful model is the Women's Digital League in Pakistan started by Maria Umar   http://mashable.com/2013/06/29/pakistan-woman-entrepreneur-2/

OLIN TURNS 10

If you were re-designing undergraduate engineering education, what would you do?

Olin College of Engineering, started 10 years old, focuses on the design process, collaborative teams, entrepreneurship, and real-world projects.  Olin recently won a $500,000 prize from the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of their experiments and success in developing effective engineering leaders. 

Mission:  Olin College prepares students to become exemplary engineering innovators who recognize needs, design solutions, and engage in creative enterprises for the good of the world.

Richard Miller, founding president, was interviewed by Jeffrey Mervis for an article  in Science Insider.  Miller's evocative quotes give a feel for Olin's philosophy:

An engineer is someone who envisions something that has never been, and does whatever it takes to make it happen. If you can't envision it, you can't create it.  And we're looking for people with passion, because nothing hard ever gets done without real passion behind it.

We set out to create a new paradigm for undergraduate engineering education, and I think we have made a good start. But the students were paying attention to something else. We thought we were talking about innovative engineering. They thought we were talking about education reform. 

An employer survey given out two times, after 6 months and 2 years, finds that new Olin graduates are equal to those with 3 to 5 years of experience. We believe that competency is a consequence of working in teams. Our kids are used to problems that are ill-defined. They develop practical solutions and get it done. And that's what most companies like.

The American aerospace industry was invented in a bicycle shop in Ohio. It wasn't invented in a physics lab. In the United States, in my view, we don't do a good enough job of teaching the process of creative design. And while there's obviously a place for the content and body of knowledge, assuming that is all education is about or the most important part is a distraction.

One of the challenges Olin addresses is the huge attrition rate in undergraduate engineering:

Only about 4.5% of the bachelor degrees awarded in the United States last year went to students studying engineering. And it's a declining market share. About half of the students who declared engineering upon entering any college in the U.S. will not graduate with an engineering degree. We think that this is largely a fixable problem. 

Professor Mark Somerville elaborates:  “I think the key thing that Olin does really well is recognizing the importance of creating an environment where students love to learn—where they are working really hard, but having fun doing it."  Every student, for example, must start and run a business. They also have to design and build something as a freshman, a project normally reserved for seniors at other schools.

Olin does not intend to participate in the current trend of online offerings from major universities:

You can learn a lot of the content from a book, or by interacting with the Internet. But you can't learn the process of engineering from a book. ...  A lot of it comes from direct experience. You have to learn to listen to that inner voice and shape it with reactions from other people.

Olin's Jeff Satwicz helped create the first solar trash compactor.

We think of engineering as a profession. And like all professions, it has less to do with what you know than with what you can do. To be good at a profession is the equivalent of being good at a performing art... I think you have to learn to perform in front of a live audience, to read the audience, how to deal with stage fright, and so on.

The NAE award cites the college's commitment to design process, collaborative teams, entrepreneurship and real-world projects, and also praises Olin's collaborative work. 

We have a higher calling, and that is to inspire other universities to think about the undergraduate education they are offering. The idea is to incorporate the latest learning in cognitive sciences and education and do a better job of inspiring the next generation of students in STEM education.  

We're hoping to help inspire and lead a transformation of engineering education in the U.S. and around the world. So we plan to ...work more with other universities in what we call consultation and co-design partnerships. The idea is for faculty members at other universities to come to us with their ideas about how to innovate, and give them a chance to try them out and plant them at Olin. There are about 10 universities that have already done that, and about 200 universities have contacted us to talk about their ideas.

Even problem-solving the start-up pains used an innovative approach (source):

During the first official school year, a dozen students descended upon Miller’s office to tell them that they were transferring out of the school. They said they were overwhelmed with work.  “I told them, wait, don’t go. So we set up a rubber castle on the soccer field and gave the students eggs to throw at the faculty members. We had fun for a day,” said Miller. “Then we told the students to count the hours they were studying. Let’s try and recalibrate.”

Enjoy reading the whole article or check out the college website for more detail on Olin's innovation in engineering education.  

Also of note:  45% of Olin students are female. This compares to a recent national statistic of only 17.8% female undergraduate engineering majors, a 15 year low.