Binghamton alum’s latest book aims to solve ‘wicked problems’

Not all problems are created equal, and approaching them all the same way can lead to failure — or at least a lot of heartache along the way.

That’s the message of Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World, a new book from Guru Madhavan, MBA ’07, PhD ’09.

During his career, Madhavan — the inaugural Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and senior director of programs at the National Academy of Engineering — has confronted some of the trickiest modern conundrums: making prescription medicines affordable, drawing up a national strategy for cancer control in the U.S., guiding global health approaches to tackle infectious diseases, and delivering effectively on large engineering projects.

In Wicked Problems, Madhavan focuses on the “synergistic six” of systems engineering — efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance and resilience — to discuss wicked problems throughout history and how best to address them in the future.

Throughout the book, he weaves in the life of Binghamton’s own Edwin A. Link, who used the equipment from his family’s organ factory to invent the flight trainer and became a pioneer in aviation, later innovating underwater archaeology and ocean submersibles.

“This book is my love letter to Binghamton — the city, the community and the university,” he says. “There’s so much to learn from their universality.”

Q: What is a wicked problem?

A: At one end of the spectrum of problems are clock-like systems with predictability and controllability. You can understand and manipulate their components for solutions. On the other side are cloudy systems, with problems that defy logic and challenge us at every level.

In this book, I’m after the cloudiest of the problems. “Wicked” problems don’t have clear beginnings or endings, no clear owners, and they multiply their effects when you engage with them. Each problem is unique, and so are their costs and consequences. Any attempt to solve them only gives rise to more problems.

By training, engineers are typically comfortable with clock systems, and less so with cloud systems. How does one begin to “engineer” interventions for problems that aren’t amenable to solutions? In this book, I take a systems engineering perspective to better engage with intractable problems.

Wicked problems are composed of “hard problems,” “soft problems” and “messy problems.” The hard problems have well-defined properties and boundaries, and you can literally “solve” them.

With political and psychological influences, a hard problem can become a soft problem. You can tame soft problems by solving certain aspects of them, but you can’t attain an ultimate ideal solution. You can only “resolve” them.

A hard problem and a soft problem can interact to produce a messy problem where our value systems, ideologies and beliefs bleed in creating a condition where we may not be able to agree on the true nature of a problem. You cannot brute-force solve them like a hard problem, and you cannot resolve them like a soft problem. You must “dissolve” it, which means transforming it into a different state so you can gain a greater appreciation of it.

Like a stacking doll, wickedness is nested with hard, soft and messy problems. We can’t simply “solve” wicked problems, because then you are talking only about addressing a narrow facet of a problem. One must simultaneously look how to solve, resolve and dissolve wicked problems.

Q: How did Ed Link become a major part of the book?

A: In the years I was in Binghamton as a grad student, I’d heard Ed Link’s name a few times, but that’s pretty much it.

Years later, I discovered the significance of Link’s work during a weekend visit to the Roberson Museum. I was captivated and began a nearly seven-year journey to complete this book. Link is an exemplary archetype to guide our approaches to wicked problems. His work blended technology, psychology and sociology, the very sensibility we need to advance both engineering and its cultural uses.

Q: How did your time at Binghamton change the way you approach your work?

A: I was originally trained as a Newtonian in control systems engineering, but Binghamton transformed me into a Darwinian for complex systems engineering. Binghamton profoundly reshaped my thinking about the world, and there were more collaborative opportunities and very few impediments. I did a PhD in biomedical engineering along with an MBA, but I also took coursework in the Decker School of Nursing, attended seminars at College of Community and Public Affairs and, significantly, in Harpur College, signed up for a fluke elective course in the Evolutionary Studies Program that ignited a new sensibility in me.

Binghamton’s environment tied well with a prime attribute of systems engineers: We are more of learners than the learned.