use both quantitative and qualitative
methods—getting smarter from both
data and human insight to frame the
problem to solve.
This means abandoning a dogmatic adherence either to human-centered design or data analysis as the exclusive means of problem discovery.
The popularity of design thinking as
evidenced by an increasing number of
design science courses and programs,
on the one hand, and of data science
pedagogy, on the other, have led to a
headlong rush to embrace one or the
other set of tools.
Whereas data might reveal where
gun violence is occurring, only talking to those with relevant professional
know-how as well as police, victims,
and families will reveal why it is happening. Students across disciplines
must develop both sets of skills. In
the Open Seventeen program, a partnership among Tsinghua, NYU, and
the Universities of Zurich and Geneva,
global students from computer science
and informatics, design, history, policy and more, received online project
coaching from the Governance Lab and
learn to apply both human-centered
design and data analytical methods to
advance projects that respond to one of
the 17 SDGs.k
From design to implementation.
Fourth, we need to teach students the
undervalued and more challenging
task of implementing solutions, not
just designing them, by assessing feasibility in the context of real-world institutions. Even public policy schools,
where one would assume this is taught,
says Francis Fukuyamal “train students
to become capable policy analysts, but
with no understanding of how to implement those policies in the real world.”
Tackling social problems requires
a deep understanding for engineers
and computer scientists, too, of how
to work with institutions to take advantage of their power, reach, and resources. Thus, to develop their lifelong
clinical problem-solving capabilities,
the would-be public entrepreneur
must learn a deep understanding of
how bureaucracy and politics can be
harnessed for impact. This is why at
Purdue the Engineering Projects in
k http://openseventeen.org
l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/francis_fukuyama
Community Service (EPICS) projectm
offers students the opportunity to learn
about the social context of the projects
they do. More than clever ideas and
ingenious gadgets, our ability to solve
problems depends upon people with
the willingness and wherewithal to deliver and spread impact.
From social enterprise to public entrepreneurship. To be sure, most schools
today offer some kind of program
in private entrepreneurship. Yet the
pedagogy of problem solving taught
in those clubs and classes has critical
limitations.6 Private entrepreneurship
focuses on the ego of the individual
and the ability of a person to devise
their own original solution, launch an
app, or start a company.
But true public problem-solving demands solutions that are legitimate as
well as effective. This means that, rather than learning to develop solutions
oneself, students must learn participatory and democratic methods for defining problems and developing solutions
with rather than for communities.
Take the example of Indian public
entrepreneur and biophysicist Samir
Brahmchari, former director general
of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of the Government of
India. In India, thousands of primarily
poor people die every year from tuberculosis. Yet there has been no new TB
treatment developed in 40 years and
resistance to existing drugs is increasing. So Brahmchari became the chief
mentor for the Open Source Drug Discovery project,n a crowdsourcing effort
to “provide affordable healthcare to the
developing world by providing a global
platform where the best minds can collaborate and collectively endeavor to
solve the complex problems associated
with discovering novel therapies for
neglected tropical diseases.” By recruiting college students, academics, and
scientists from around the world and
across India, most in remote villages
not elite universities, Brahmchari created his own inexpensive army to collect, annotate, and extract information
from the scientific literature on the TB
pathogen. With a $12 million grant, he
coordinated the incremental contributions of 7,500 participants from 130
m http://www.ijee.ie/articles/vol21-1/ijee.1549.pdf
n http://www.osdd.net/
countries and began clinical trials for
a new experimental drug at 20% of the
cost of a traditional drug in 2014.1
Brahmchari is paradigmatic of
the new public entrepreneur who
works differently, taking advantage
of new technologies, especially the
tools of big data and collective intelligence—but also the convening
power of institutions—to take on
difficult and seemingly intractable
public problems.
Complementing traditional university education in computer science and
engineering as well as law and policy
with public problem solving in multidisciplinary teams to design and implement workable solutions with public
institutions would allow us to cultivate
more such public entrepreneurs, transforming how we educate while producing the leaders and problem solvers
committed to improving people’s lives
that we so desperately need.
References
1. Ardal, C. et al. Open Source Drug Discovery
in Practice: A Case Study National Center for
Biotechnology Information (Sep. 20, 2012); https://
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447952/
2. Boydston, J. John Dewey: The Later Works
1925–1953, Vol. 8 1933 Essays and How We Think,
Revised Edition. Southern Illinois University Press,
Carbondale, 1986.
3. Cech, E. and Sherick, H. Depoliticization and the
structure of engineering education. In International
Perspectives on Engineering Education (2015).
4. Farra, H. The reflective thought process: John
Dewey re-visited. The Journal of Creative Behavior
(Mar. 1988): https://doi-org.proxy.library.nyu.
edu/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1988.tb01338.x
5. Getzels, J. and Csikszentmihalyi, M. The Creative
Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem Finding in Art.
Wiley, New York, 1976.
6. Giridharadas, A. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade
of Changing the World. Knopf Doubleday Publishing
Group, New York, 2018.
7. Jonassen, D. Learning to Solve Problems: An
Instructional Design Guide. Wiley, New York, 2003.
8. McGuinness, T. and Slaughter, A. The new practice of
public problem solving. Stanford Social Innovation
Review (2019); https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_
new_practice_of_public_problem_solving#
9. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and
Medicine. The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by
Income: Implications for Federal Programs and
Policy Responses. The National Academies Press,
Washington DC, 2015; https://doi.org/10.17226/19015
10. Noveck, B. Smart Citizens, Smarter State: The
Technologies of Expertise and the Future of Governing.
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2015.
11. Savin-Baden, M. The problem-based learning
landscape. Planet (2001); https://doi.org/10.11120/
plan.2001.00040004
Beth Simone Noveck (noveck@thegovlab.org) is
a professor in the Technology, Culture, and Society
department at New York University’s Tandon School
of Engineering and director of The Governance Lab,
Brooklyn, NY, USA. Her new book Public Entrepreneurship
will appear with Yale University Press in 2020;
see https://www.publicentrepreneur.org/.
Copyright held by author.