Vinod Vasnani¹, Ameek Kaur², and Randall SIE¹

¹Institute for Engineering Leadership (IEL), College of Design and Engineering (CDE)
²NUS Business School

Editor’s Note: Vinod and his co-authors document the interdisciplinary collaboration which is a key component of their course. This follows from their presentation at HECC 2023 under the sub-theme “Interdisciplinarity and Education”.

The class of MT5920 “Enterprise Development” for Semester 1, AY2023/24. Diversity in disciplines and cultures provides the environment for interdisciplinary collaboration. (Photo provided by the authors)

Vasnani, V., Kaur, A., & Sie, R. (2024, June 25). Interdisciplinary collaboration: Its role in encouraging critical and creative thinking. Teaching Connections. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/teachingconnections/2024/06/25/interdisciplinary-collaboration-its-role-in-encouraging-critical-and-creative-thinking/

 

Interdisciplinary collaboration is at the heart of the course MT5920 “Enterprise Development” offered at the College of Design and Engineering (CDE). MT5920 offers students an industry-relevant experiential learning opportunity. In collaboration with real technology companies, course participants experience working in diverse teams of four to five students to find new and relevant market opportunities for an existing technology (tech) or company competence. The companies that participate range from multinational companies (MNCs), small and medium enterprises (SMEs), to growth startups.

 

The class setting for MT5920 emulates a real industry environment, including the process of conceptualising, developing, as well as validating a new product/solution design. The diverse composition of the teams in terms of disciplines and cultures provides the environment and fuel for interdisciplinary collaboration. It encourages students to apply and develop their critical and creative thinking further. Over the years, these teams have produced interesting work, even discovering market opportunities that the participating companies did not envision!

In this post, we share details of MT5920’s course structure and the processes that make the learning environment of the course conducive for such collaborations and innovative ideas to surface.

 

Class and Team Composition

Figure 1.  Each class in MT5920 is run as a workshop with the teams presenting and collaborating to apply what is learnt.

 

A typical class comprises students from various disciplines within CDE and the other Colleges and Faculties in NUS¹. The team compositions are based on the student’s personal interest in the tech or company, as well as their respective (work) experience and backgrounds, i.e. their nationalities, whether they are full- or part-time students and other factors.

 

Course Structure and Process: Enabling Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The course structure, tasks and situations presented in MT5920 necessitate interdisciplinary collaboration and critical thinking to succeed. The course is run as a weekly workshop where students learn and apply frameworks to identify, analyse, and evaluate opportunities that are validated primarily through customer interviews.

 

Initially, students brainstorm potential market opportunities individually across the various companies. Students also fill out a survey ranking their choices for the companies as well as relevant background information about themselves. They are then assigned based on diversity of the team, affinity with the technology, skillset, background and choice ranking. Typically, most students are assigned to their top two choices. Once formed, each team will have a wealth of creative ideas which reflect the diverse interdisciplinary composition of the entire class, making it conducive for each team to shortlist four to five ideas for validation. The teams identify potential customer pain points they believe the technology can address, which they then validate through interviews. Students are instructed in interviewing techniques, including in-class roleplays and methods for identifying potential interview candidates. These candidates should be selected based on their alignment with the assumed customer pain points. Students are encouraged to connect with relevant individuals through the Institute for Engineering Leadership’s E-Magna alumni (via LinkedIn)², as well as through their own personal networks.

 

The teams meet weekly to evaluate and analyse the data gathered³ synthesise the findings, present a 3- to 4-minute update the following week in class, and propose the next steps. With the information gained each week and the internal discussions, the teams must make decisions on whether to continue or give up on identified market opportunities. Ultimately, the teams select a final opportunity to present to the participating companies. The final pitch is based on the data collected and analysis, integrating frameworks with insights gathered from the customer interviews. These frameworks include the Market Opportunity Navigator (Gruber & Tal, 2017), Jobs to Be Done (Ulwick, 2005; Christensen, 2016), Customer Discovery (Blank, 2013) and Business Model Generation (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010).

 

Each week, we encourage different members within the teams to take on the team leadership role. The diversity of leadership styles (based on experiences, cultures, and language) creates an added challenge and learning opportunity for the students to manage, communicate, and push their teams forward creatively and effectively.

 

The course also promotes psychological safety by having a process for students to understand and appreciate the role of managing team dynamics in the team’s success (Vasnani et al., 2023). This process lets ideas flow relatively freely and provides the environment for innovation and creativity.

 

Critical and Creative Team Outcomes

What becomes apparent is the Medici Effect⁴ owing to the interdisciplinary composition of the teams (Johansson, 2006). As such, we have often seen teams develop creative ideas for products and business plans that the companies did not envision. As a result, the participating companies in MT5920 are excited by the outcomes and are motivated to continue participating in the course in subsequent semesters. We are fortunate to have one participating company participate for the past eight years!

Some of the companies participating over the years are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Participating companies in MT5920 over the years, many of whom continue to do so over several semesters.

 

We highlight examples of teams pitching their ideas to participating companies, and the positive outcomes that follow:

 

These are just two of several examples. The teams have developed many creative and out-of-the-box ideas over the years. The interdisciplinary nature of the teams, we believe, is a vital factor in encouraging critical thinking and creativity in coming up with these solutions.

 

Looking Ahead: University-wide Interdisciplinary Collaborations

MT5920 is open to all graduate students at NUS, regardless of their enrolled faculty. The interdisciplinary nature inherent in MT5920 is critical to the learning and development of the students and our future.

 

If you would like to add an experiential course (elective) to your graduate programme, please reach out to vinod@nus.edu.sg for further information or view all the experiential learning courses by the Institute for Engineering Leadership (IEL) at CDE that are open to graduate students across NUS.

 

Endnotes

1. Students taking MT5920 come from Faculties and Schools across NUS, including the NUS Business School, the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS), the Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science (FOS), and the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine).
2. The Institute for Engineering Leadership’s (IEL) alumni group is called E-Magna and currently has more than 850 members. All our students and companies become alumni upon graduation by requesting to join the Linkedin group. IEL actively engages the alumni for speaking engagements, pitch judging and career sharing opportunities.
3. Each week, the data collected primarily focuses on primary research, specifically in-person interviews, to validate or invalidate the assumptions the teams develop weekly or from prior weeks, based on the methodologies and frameworks taught in class. This is supplemented by secondary research when appropriate. For instance, if a team assumes that current water quality monitoring solutions for aquaculture do not adequately meet the needs of farmers, they would interview farmers in the region to validate this and understand their requirements. This primary research is supplemented by secondary sources, such as library resources, to determine the potential market size for aquaculture in the region. With each team working to validate four to five ideas, they gather a substantial amount of data each week to analyse and present updates.
4. “The Medici Effect” by Johansson (2006) explores how breakthrough ideas and innovations occur at the intersection of diverse fields, cultures, and disciplines. Johansson argues that by combining distinct concepts from various domains, individuals and organisations can achieve groundbreaking results and foster creativity. The book emphasises the importance of embracing diversity, taking risks, and leveraging the unique perspectives that arise when different ideas collide.

 

References

Christensen, C. (2016, October 3). Clayton Christensen: The theory of jobs to be done. HBS Working Knowledge. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/clay-christensen-the-theory-of-jobs-to-be-done

Blank, S. (2013). The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful strategies for products that win. Wiley.

Gruber, M., & Tal, S. (2017). Where to Play: 3 steps for discovering your most valuable market opportunities. Pearson Education Limited.

Johansson, F. (2006). The Medici Effect: What elephants and epidemics can teach us about innovation. Harvard Business School Press.

Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation. John Wiley and Sons

Ulwick, A. (2005). What Customers Want: Using outcome-driven innovation to create breakthrough products and services. McGraw-Hill.

Vasnani, V., Kaur, A., & Sie, R. (2023). Scaffolding team dynamics for team effectiveness in project based learning courses [Lightning talk]. In Higher Education Campus Conference (HECC) 2023, 7 December, National University of Singapore. https://blog.nus.edu.sg/hecc2023proceedings/scaffolding-team-dynamics-for-team-effectiveness-in-project-based-learning-courses/

 

	Vinod Vasnani is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Engineering Leadership (IEL). Leveraging his over 28 years of experience leading tech innovation & entrepreneurial ventures, he has developed and led unique experiential modules in IEL since its inception in 2012. He is passionate about teaching using experiential learning pedagogy and collaboration to develop future engineering leaders. Vinod can be reached at vinod@nus.edu.sg.
	Ameek Kaur is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at NUS Business School. She teaches Bachelor and Master level courses on Technological Innovations, Leadership, Negotiation and Conflict Management. Her research interests are in the areas of teamwork and innovation. She is also engaged in pedagogy research on the topic of deliberate learning from failure and class culture setting approach for course design. Ameek can be reached at bizameek@nus.edu.sg.
	Randall SIE is currently an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Engineering Leadership (IEL) under CDE, involved in teaching Engineering Leadership, innovation management and technology commercialization – having taught fulltime for 6 years at NUS previously. Alongside his academic responsibilities, Randall was Director of Innovation at MetLife’s Innovation Centre, a strategy and management consultant at Capgemini Consulting, and co-founder of two companies. Currently, Randall manages his own consulting firm Infinite Leaps Pte Ltd, offering strategic advice on innovation to startups, government entities, and corporations. His overall interest is to develop innovative talent and resources that can deliver next-level innovations. Randall can be reached at r.sie@nus.edu.sg.