Solving complex problems through collaboration

Collaborative Intelligence is the ability of a group of people to solve complex problems, generally considered intractable by individuals, by pooling their knowledge and skills together. Even if the problem is solvable by an individual, the collaboration results in a much higher quality, balanced, and an interdisciplinary work product. The core idea behind this type of collaboration is to value our intellectual diversity—that is, the ways in which each of us is uniquely gifted, how we process information and frame questions, what kind of things deplete us, and what engages and inspires us (Markova & McArthur, 2015). Within this collaboration network, there could be both humans and non-human (Artificial Intelligence driven bots) agents; however, for the purposes of this article, I will focus on human agents only.

Maker Space - A Collaborative Intelligence Platform

A Maker Space is a unique collaborative intelligence platform (Cope & Kalantzis, 2018), generally involving a physical location, where a group of people/members who share a passion for making and inventing physical objects, have an opportunity to explore their own interests and ideas; learn to use various physical and virtual objects, tools and materials; and develop creative or solution oriented projects with the help of others members and/or instructors in an affordable manner.

Some people use it as a shared space for experimentation with a pay-as-you-go logic, not only for equipment, but also for experts’ time; some people use it to learn specific skills to fill knowledge gaps which are stopping them from completing their projects; and some people are simply looking to connect, share and validate ideas, acquire new skills in a boot-camp style, and especially, build teams through the members’ network. It is a pretty powerful platform for learning by doing and especially for aspiring entrepreneurs while harnessing the collaborative spirit to solve problems or to come up with products which individuals cannot do by themselves due to various financial and knowledge constraints.

My favorite location for such a space is TheShop.Build out of San Jose, CA which I have visited and have spent some time at. There is also a somewhat simpler/minimalistic version of a Maker Space in Karachi, where I currently live, called Tajurbagah. If you want to share your artifacts electronically, Thingiverse provides an excellent repository, i.e. an e-library of downloadable and printable objects. On a personal note, I and my children regularly use a local Maker Space to design and print spare parts of our home toys which need repair, ranging from school-water-bottles to home-use RC helicopter rotor couplings. This is my primary way of teaching my kids of how to be an inventor and problem solver.

One of the methods used in Maker Spaces to collaboratively solve problems or come up with products is Design Thinking.

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Design Thinking is a reasonably well-defined process, almost like the Socratic Method, where you follow steps like - Frame a Question, Gather Inspiration, Generate Ideas, Make Ideas Tangible, Test to Learn, Share the Story.

For further research and learning on Maker Spaces for Education, please also visit this excellent resource - http://www.makerspaceforeducation.com/.

References -

1. (Markova & McArthur, 2015): https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227071/collaborative-intelligence-by-dawna-markova-phd--angie-mcarthur/

2. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2018): https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning/lecture/Xp01E/collaborative-intelligence-part-5b-collaborative-learning-dynamics

3. Design Thinking: https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking

4. Maker Movement: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3758336