Going T-Shaped

One idea from the reading that stuck with me, and I want to highlight in my blog post, is the value of bringing together a group of diverse, "T-shaped" people when practicing design thinking. The idea of the T-shaped person was brought up in the "Design Thinking for Social Innovation" reading when discussing the “ideation” space of design thinking.

The T-shaped person has interdisciplinary interests, with skills in two dimensions. The first dimension, the vertical axis of the T, represents a skill that can allow a person to make a tangible contribution to a solution. The second dimension, the top, horizontal axis of the T, “is where the design thinker is made.” This is the dimension of the person that shows empathy and openness, and an interest for other disciplines. These people often have a strong ability to collaborate across differences to further a common goal.

Personally, this idea interested me because I’ve always been working to grow knowledge in variety of disciplines, and often encourage others to do the same. It’s often been difficult for me to describe why I felt this was beneficial. As a MISM student, many of my peers seem choose courses and allocate their time under the assumption that only coding classes are valuable. The reasoning that T-shaped people are more effective collaborators and design thinkers makes sense to me, and is encouraging.

I decided to read up a little bit more about T-shaped people, and found an interview that the CEO of IDEO did on the subject of T-shaped people and why they are important to his organization (if you’d like to take a look, here’s the link http://chiefexecutive.net/ideo-ceo-tim-brown-t-shaped-stars-the-backbone-of-ideoae%E2%84%A2s-collaborative-culture/ ). One thing he mentioned in the interview is what a negative impact people without both dimensions can have on a collaborative project. If people only have the vertical skills, the have difficulty integrating their views with others. If people have only the horizontal skills, they tend to lose the respect of the group and can’t contribute as fully.

It’s easy here at Heinz to get wrapped up in deepening our vertical skills. I would like to discuss ways we as Heinz students can build ourselves as T-shaped people both inside and outside of the classroom. What experiences have you had while in Heinz that have been most helpful in building up the horizontal part of your T? Have you had experiences when working in a team where T-shaped people (or a lack thereof) has shaped the outcome of that collaboration? I think a discussion of T-shaped people, and the ways we can work to insure that we are deepening our skills in both dimension of our T can help make our time at Heinz as beneficial as possible.