https://response-ability.tech/ Keynote: Rakhi Rajani, Chief Digital Officer, Genomics England Digital products and services live in the real world and are used by people and society, in context. Disciplinary hierarchy and disciplinary boundaries often hinder innovation. So let’s talk about how we innovate ‘at the intersections’, where brains from different disciplines such as the social sciences, engineering, design, and science bust out of their boxes and come together — instead of competing with each other — to generate solutions. Chair: Adam Warburton, CPO, Co-op.

1. Working at the intersections
or - Busting out of boxes
Response-ability summit, May 21 2021
response-ability.tech
Rakhi Rajani
@rakhi

2. Genomics England
Working at the intersections
___ // ___ // ___ // ___ // ___ // ___
Psychology // Computer Science // Spatial Design // Strategy

3. Genomics England
Human Behavior
Invention, Science Industry Shifts
white
space
Working in a world of new things with ambiguity and uncertainty

4. Genomics England
Different mindsets for different levels of innovation

5. Genomics England
We are at an inflection point
The situations we are facing,
The solutions we can generate,
The opportunities to create change, are…
Bigger and bolder than ever before.

6. Genomics England
Rakhi Rajani
• How do we bring the art and science of
problem solving together?
• How do we ‘design’ new beliefs?
• What might we create to counter the
shift?
• What data will help us create a new
future and how do we ensure it is not
biased?
• How might we engage with the natural
world more intelligently?
• How do we ‘work with’ vs ‘do to’?
People place too much emphasis on known
disciplines vs the perspectives that can
participate or change our approach
Regeneration
The situations we have created need a
diversity of mindset to shift what & how we
do next

7. Genomics England
All about the intersections
___ // ___ // ___ // ___ // ___ // ___
Beyond cross/multi/inter/intra disciplinary to the bits in-between
The place where foresight and speculative design sit comfortably
Challenge dominant perceptions to create alternative solutions

8. Genomics England
• How do we create a world where
robots and humans work together?
• How do we leverage emerging tech
and fuse it with a human touch?
• How do we build Collaborative or
Connective Intelligence that combines
empathy and uncertainty with
automation?
• How do we break down
human/machine boundaries to create
shared experiences?
Many of these situations involve challenging
boundaries and inherent social constructs
and stereotypes
Evolving tech
We are asking teams to guide new problem
spaces and define new worlds

9. Genomics England
Artificial Intelligence - or -
Artificial Intelligence
Connected // Enabled // Augmented // Encouraged
Symbiotic dynamics across people, culture, tech, [enter thing here]

10. Genomics England
Response-ability
Learning systems are as good as their teachers
+ the context and entities they surround themselves with
It’s our collective responsibility as people creating the ‘new’ to create mixed models of intelligence

11. Genomics England
Cognition is distributed and
coalesces to create diversity of
brainpower and perspectives
Artifacts
Environment
People
Cognition is siloed
Structures Profit + Loss
Thinking
Distributed Cognition

12. Genomics England
• How do we do that with empathy?
• How do we create appropriate social
and ethical boundaries?
• How might we use design to help
science make its way into the world in
emotive situations?
• How do we leverage machines to
understand patterns that can be
translated for global health?
We can literally change lives by bringing the
natural sciences and computational sciences
together
Bringing data to life
We have an opportunity to make data ask
and answer really tough questions in
healthcare

13. Genomics England
Augmenting one brain with another
Multiplex of the mind
Specialists
… bring depth
Generalists
…bring range

14. Genomics England
Disciplinary Boundaries
Artifacts
Environment
People
Disciplinary Hierarchy
Structures Profit + Loss
Thinking
+
Disciplinary caste systems discourage lateral thinking and create silos that thrive in cultures of blame

15. Genomics England
vs
We gravitate towards fit because ‘conflict’ is uncomfortable

16. Genomics England
Blockers to collaboration at the intersections
Trap doors
No common language
Poor ‘invitations to interact’
Little ‘blur’ or rituals that span cognitive styles
Role based thinking vs systems thinking
Lack of faith (vs trust)

17. Genomics England
People are not their role and problems are not singular
Bioinformatician + Magician
Psychologist + Jeweller
Engineer + Novelist
Motivate people to leverage their intersections…
storytellers, magicians, naysayers, fighters, dreamers, reflectors, rapid decision makers

18. Genomics England
Neural coupling
Our brains are in sync
We transport ideas through stories
Similar brains often predict and finish sentences
Dissimilar brains often generate new endings

19. Genomics England
At the intersection of mental models
Broaden the scope of impact
Competing ideas provide tension that can break mental models if we listen to hear vs respond
… and they exponentially increase range

20. Genomics England
Rakhi Rajani
• So we got to Mars, now what?
• What are the components of a new
civilisation?
• What infrastructure should we build?
• How could people live and interact?
• What kind of economy could we
enable?
• What does it mean to be healthy?
• What industries can we mobilise to
build the foundations?
Humans naturally transfer what they know
to other contexts but here we could start
from scratch
Navigate the unknown
Unknown possibilities & constraints challenge
everything we know

21. Genomics England
Human/organisational hang-ups
How comfortable are we with solving for the unknown
Certainty gives us control
Ambiguity does not

22. Genomics England
Leading for the unknown
Encouraging intelligence at the intersections
Leave disciplinary baggage at the door
…titles convey spikes, they don’t limit impact
Remove functional bias
…cherish the people who ‘disagree’
Make space (and curb pace) for exploration
…diverse teams define their own rituals and language
Enable circular causality
...set challenges that make the outputs of one action/decision, input into another

23. Thank you
@rakhi