Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, has a new book, How the Might Fall, in which he details research into what he identifies as the five stages of failure:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Useful reviews of the text are  available here.

A new volume Engineering in Context edited by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen, Bernard Delahousse, and Martin Meganck was launched 2-3 July 2009 at Engineers Ireland in Dublin, Ireland at workshop by the same name (more here).  iFoundry was represented at the meeting by co-director David E. Goldberg who presented a talk: The Missing Basics: What Engineers Don’t Learn and Why They Don’t Learn Them (here).

Engineering in Context

A 2007 paper (download here) Preparing for Substantial Change: The iFoundry Initiative and Collective Learning discusses the founding and early days of the iFoundry initiative.  In particular, the paper outlines the organizational change theories used in designing iFoundry, its initial design, and some of the first steps toward collective learning in 2007 and 2008.

Pairwork, teamwork performed by teams of two, has been an important ingredient to iFoundry and its precursors.  A preprint of a paper by iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg accepted for publication at the 2009 IEEE Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference to be held in San Antonio, The importance of pairwork in educational and interdisciplinary initiatives, is available at PhilSci archives here.

On Wednesday, 6 May 2009, iFoundry held a year-end event to mark its first eight months in business.  The event was introduced by Associate Dean Chuck Tucker, and iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg made remarks entitled “iFoundry as Connecting Dots, Changing Minds,  and Teaching the Missing Basics.”  Those remarks can be downloaded as a pdf file here.

iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg’s book The Entrepreneurial Engineer (Wiley, 2006) can now be previewed on Google Books.  Click here, on the image, or on the Amazon link (here) to learn more.

A preprint of an article The Missing Basics & Other Philosophical Reflections for the Transformation of Engineering Education submitted to a volume edited by Dom Grasso, Dean at UVM, tentatively entitled The Future of Engineering Education and Practice is available at PhilSci archive here.

A related YouTube video can be viewed here or in the viewer below:

The University of Illinois and Olin College co-sponsored yesterday’s Summit on the Engineer of the Future at Olin College.  iFoundry co-director David E. Goldberg helped open the summit with his remarks, Lonely Dots, Dot Connecting & the Engineer of the Future. Download the remarks in pdf form here.

Powerful forces, including demographics, globalization, and rapidly evolving technologies are driving profound   changes in the role of engineering in society.

The purpose of this study is to pull together the principal findings and recommendations of the various reports concerning the profession of engineering, the technology and innovation needs of the nation, and the role played by human and intellectual capital.

It is clear that our nation faces the very real prospect of losing its engineering competence in an era in which technological innovation is key to economic competitiveness, national security, and social well being. Bold and concerted action is necessary to sustain and enhance the profession of engineering in America. It is the goal of this report both to sound the alarm and to suggest a roadmap to the future of American engineering.

The report can be downloaded from here. Other iFoundry readings can be found here.

You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is “flow,” an experience that is at once demanding and rewarding–an experience that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates is one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have.

For more information or to buy to book please check here. For other recommended readings refer to our reading page (here).