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Jim Collins wrote in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t that the “flywheel effect” is one of the enduring principles that enables good companies to become great ones and how great companies maintain sustainability. He continues, “Tremendous power exists in the fact of continued improvement and the delivery of results. Point to tangible accomplishments – however incremental at first-and show how these steps fit into the context of an overall concept that will. When you do this in such a way that people see and feel the buildup of momentum, they line up with enthusiasm.” His conclusion is that, “Each piece of the system reinforces the other parts of the system to form an integrated whole that is much more powerful than the sum of the parts. It is only through consistency over time, through multiple generations that you get maximum results.”
My ethnography about innovation and entrepreneurship at Yale is an examination and description of the pieces of the buildup-to-breakthrough flywheel pattern. These pieces comprise a story that represents one way to portray the modern Yale. The overall framework as theorized under the theory of academic capitalism and the cultural system of creative confidence signifies that many factors work together to create this flywheel pattern, and each component produces a push on the flywheel.
An informant, in the early stage of my ethnographic work, told me that academy silos were impenetrable and virtually indestructible. The Global Health Hackathon that InnovateHelath Yale held at the Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design (CEID”) demonstrated that academy silos can be demolished, to the benefit of all. CEID, InnovateHealth, and the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (“YEI”), the three major interstitial organizations that sponsor and foster student-led innovation and entrepreneurship collaborated to make this event an incremental step in pushing the innovation and entrepreneurship flywheel at Yale. (This event was sponsored by Connecticut Innovations. Tagline: Creative Connections. Empowering ideas.)
This event was not the typical hackathon where computer programmers and others in the field of software development collaborate intensively on soft-ware-related projects. Rather this was an event where budding social entrepreneurs came together to ideate about solutions to global health issues such as childhood obesity, maternal mortality, and child mortality among others. In some respects, this event was a lead-in to the upcoming Thorne Prize for Social Innovation in Health. There are three key dates for the Thorne Prize: Stage #1 Letter of Intent, due by midnight February 23rd, Stage #2 Written Application, due by midnight, March 30th, and Stage #3 Live Presentations, April 26, 2014.
The magic of the momentum at Yale during the past 24 months surrounding innovation and entrepreneurship is awesome. Some examples include CEID opening, YEI significantly expanding its programs, and InnovateHealth launching after two year’s planning. The Yale Net Impact Undergraduate Chapter was started to expose Yale students to social entrepreneurship, and to show them how to use their interest in business for social change. Yale President Peter Salovey has reaffirmed the university’s commitment to student-led innovation and entrepreneurship. Y-Hack put Yale on the map with the ubiquitous hacker community. And after several years of dormancy, the Yale Entrepreneur Magazine re-launched as both an on-line and a hard-copy publication.
As an ethnographer, it is striking to me that many members of the three creative tribes (Atoms, Bits and SE’s) at Yale are often unaware of the magnitude of the transformation that is occurring. I hope to play a small part in interpreting this cultural transformation and articulating its significance to people inside Yale, as well as those outside Yale that have an interest in understanding how this iconic institution is sustaining itself through adaptation and reinvention.