This week’s Chronicle of Higher Education features an excerpt from the book that introduces some of the particular challenges universities face when establishing cross-discipline projects.

Big, complex problems require the work of multidisciplinary teams. Consider prostate cancer. Decades of research and billions of dollars have led to the understanding that neither doctors, chemists, biolo­gists, nor engineers can arrive at a cure on their own. That multifaceted approach is gaining acceptance among the vari­ous individuals and organizations concerned with solving great problems. When giving research money to colleges, founda­tions and government agencies often require that investigators come from multiple academic disciplines as a condition of financial support.

Yet inside higher education, it’s hard to talk about a college’s impact on the world’s great problems without getting im­mersed in a conversation about institutional structure and faculty rewards. The silo mentality and viciousness of academic infighting in higher education are legendary. Discussions of innovation and how to attack big problems often bring up questions about how the college should be organized, whether the new pro­gram ought to report to a dean or the provost, or if the leader should be a center director or a department chair.

Of course, actually dealing with the issue of global warming is more important than determining who gets credit for it or whether to create a new unit to house the project. Creating the right culture and the right team with the expertise, resources, and passion to tackle a problem will certainly have greater impact than arguing about de­velopmental structures or the overhead allocation for a particular grant or contribution. But while academics usually agree in the abstract that solving crucial problems is more im­portant than debating organizational issues, putting that belief into practice is difficult. [Read the full article.]

So where to begin if an institution wants to transform its culture to better facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration? Thorp and Goldstein offer a few suggestions in the article, and there’s more, of course, packed into their slim but meaty book. You can learn more about innovative universities, watch video interviews with innovators, and more at the RevUpInnovation website.

Also, President Obama recently named Chancellor Thorp to the newly formed National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Thorp blogged about the group’s first meeting.

Now go read and then get to innovating!

Read any good books lately? Why not crack the cover of Real NASCAR, a book that describes the “riveting yet controversial history of NASCAR”? Better yet, why not help my group market and sell 300+ of these books to strangers throughout America! And oh yeah, we only have 36 hours (tick tock). Crazy you say?!? No not crazy! This is “par for the course” in Leadership Immersion Land. That was the gist of our Apprentice-style challenge. In partnership with UNC Press, my MBA classmates and I were “broken down”….umm I mean broken into four groups to help the University publishing company develop and refine its marketing strategy. Each group was responsible for selling a book somehow tied to UNC or the state of North Carolina. The books ranged from a photography book of  UNC’s campus, to a book documenting last year’s Tarheel Basketball championship journey, to a BBQ recipe book, to Real NASCAR.

This was a seemingly “lose-lose” endeavor. One Monday morning we were handed 4 books we had never seen, and told, as a group, we should be able to reasonably sell 1000-1500 copies in all! Sheesh! My first thought was what have I gotten myself into; will these Leadership Immersion “Apprentice-Style Challenges” turn out to be futile experiments or edifying investments? Turns out the latter!

We were thrown in to an abyss of ambiguity that we had to strategically navigate our way out of. This took facing fears, taking on responsibilities, not over-thinking, and coordinating a sound strategy (tick and tock)! Beyond calling every enthusiast group, track gift shop, racing association, and motorsport hall of fame, my group ended up going off campus because our book had “range.”

We went to Winston-Salem, and outside of my teammate Kristin’s run-in with the law for not having a permit to sell on the street and our group’s donut of a sales effort in downtown Winston, it was surprisingly awesome! You haven’t lived until you’ve made the strategic decision to cold call 1000 Trails Camping LLC’s gift shop in Advance, NC for a possible bulk order, tried to sell 10 books to your mother, considered tipping the Hooters girl $25.86 (the book price + tax) if she buys a book, and almost gotten tossed in the Winston-Salem paddy wagon along the way. No Book Sale, No Peace!

In the end, our group was able to get 4 All-Star race tickets donated to us for raffling purposes, individually we were forced to overcome an ambiguous problem while confronting individual fears and insecurities associated with the task. We didn’t win the competition (must be nice to sell a photography book) but ended up selling 103 books!

As a whole, the class made UNC Press $13,000 richer over the course of three days, and I have a new appreciation for the NASCAR history and UNC Kenan-Flagler’s ability to take such an ambiguous exercise and tactically use it to enlighten one of the most intelligent, creative and ambitious groups I’ve ever been a part of!  Thank you Leadership Immersion for handing us the lemons; I hope you enjoyed the lemonade as thoroughly as we did. Also, thank you for the bail money (just kidding–no one served any time for the solicitation of Real NASCAR)!

Anthony Lewis
MBA student
UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

frodolives, a blogger over at DailyKos has an imaginative idea for part of the Stimulus Package: Invest in Books.

From his entry:

“a fund of two billion dollars a year to be distributed directly to all public libraries in the United States, for at least five years. (With, perhaps, another billion specifically for university libraries.) I suggest two billion because libraries need money for construction, jobs, equipment, etc. as much as they need money for books. So we give them two billion, and mandate that half of that be spent on books. On top of that we mandate that at least half of the money to be spent on books be spent directly in bookstores and not with either publishers or wholesalers. That’s what makes it a job maker.”

frodolives continues:

“Some points: first, it has to be over several years. Books are a seventeen billion dollar a year industry, so just one billion will have a significant impact on the industry. If, however, we just buy a billion dollars worth of books all at once, it will only serve to enrich the large corporations who own most major publishing houses. They’ll sell off their inventories, print the additional volumes they need, and consider it a windfall. But, if publishers know that this money will be spent every year, then they will need to keep buying new titles, which requires editors, marketing and distribution, new production, and so on.

That is also why there has to be the buy from bookstores clause. Bookstores themselves simply need the business, and will thereby be able to at least keep current employees employed. Beyond that there is a whole world of traveling sales reps who present the books to individual book stores, and, not so incidentally, spend a lot of time and money on the road, at hotels, restaurants, and so on.

It’s a classic case of real world trickle down. The librarians will keep their jobs, they’ll employ people directly and indirectly through construction, puchases of manufactured goods, and purchases of books, which in turn will promote job creation by publishers and booksellers.”

I’ll acknowledge that it’s a far from perfect idea, but I really like the concept. This support for the supply chain from Author to Publisher to Bookseller to Library reaches into the workforce in ways that the current economic Stimulus Package
does not. It also promotes Libraries as community learning centers through the infusion of books (and, presumably, other media) and the operating costs to properly advertise themselves to their communities.

And, as a member of a publishing house, I like the added job security it might provide to myself and my colleagues. That this idea came from someone not in publishing but affiliated with a book store, is also positive, in my mind. It’s an example of someone trying to work out a solution that will help all sorts of people within the community for both the short and long term.

– tom

The Association of American University Presses occasionally compiles lists of books published by member presses that offer insight into a particular moment in history as it’s happening. “Books for Understanding” lists have grown around topics such as global climate change, immigration, September 11, Iraq, and dozens of other news-making issues. The latest Books for Understanding list addresses the financial crisis.

Announcing this new list, the AAUP said:

As the extent of the financial crisis has grown clear, there have been several announcements of book proposals and forthcoming books that will look at current market events. For incisive, in-depth understanding of what has brought us to this point, however, there is no need to wait. The member publishers of the Association of American University Presses have in print scholarly works for both general and specialist audiences that illuminate the roots of the current situation, and offer potent analysis of regulatory and market solutions.

In “Books for Understanding: The Financial Crisis,” readers, journalists, librarians, policy makers, and teachers will find information and knowledge they can use today to help understand global financial events.

The New York Times has already posted a link to the AAUP list. One could spend all the money stuffed under one’s mattress to buy up all the books on the list, but they’ve broken the list into categories (Wall Street & Financial Markets, Financial Panics & Market Crises, Market Regulation, and Business Ethics) so you can sort through and find what interests you most.

UNC Press has a couple of books on the list. One is Panic!: Markets, Crises, and Crowds in American Fiction, by David A. Zimmerman, which I blogged about in July. The other UNCP book on the list is a history of the institution now known as Bank of America, which is currently in the position of acquiring other struggling institutions (Countrywide, Merrill Lynch). The Story of NationsBank: Changing the Face of American Banking, by Howard E. Covington Jr. and Marion A. Ellis, tells the history of the Charlotte-based bank whose leaders prioritized competition.

–ellen

The Triangle is home to some fantastic independent book stores. Our friends over at WUNC’s “State of Things” recognize this as well. Last week host Frank Stasio interviewed Nancy Olson, founder and owner of Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh.

Just how good is Quail Ridge Books and Music? Good enough to win the 2001 Publisher’s Weekly Bookseller of the Year Award the PW award given to the best book seller in the entire USA.

Stasio spoke with Nancy about her career as a book store owner and her experiences with authors over the years. It’s an enjoyable, insightful interview, regardless of where you live. You can five it a listen at the “State of Things” archive page for “Meet Nancy Olson.”

– Tom

During the economic depression of the 1890s and the speculative frenzy of the following decade, fiction writers published scores of novels that explored the new cultural visibility of Wall Street, high finance, and market crises. Blending literary, historical, and cultural analysis, Zimmerman investigates how writers turned to fledgling research in mob psychology, psychic investigations, and conspiracy discourse to understand how mass acts of financial reading and popular participation in the corporate transformation of the American economy could trigger financial disaster and cultural chaos.

A Nota Bene selection of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Panic! has received much positive review attention:

• MFS: Modern Fiction Studies [Muse subscription required for viewing] says: “Zimmerman’s book goes a long way toward providing an imaginative and rich analysis of financial panic’s literary coordinates.”
• Novel: A Forum on Fiction says: “Zimmerman’s book should be on the reading list not only of Americanists but also of other scholars interested in the intersections of fictional narrative and financial modernity.”
• EH.Net Review says: “Panic! is a well-written, well-researched study and a worthy addition to the literature of economic and literary history.”
• Business History Review [pdf] calls the book “a winner.”
• The American Historical Review [access to Chicago Journals required] notes: “The book is rich in the anecdotes and details that capture the cultural context of the decades that straddled the turn of the twentieth century.”