Creative play all in a day's work at ITRI
Officially, it's known as room 131 of Building 53, just one of the many innocuous white-tiled structures in the sprawling Hsinchu campus of the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan. Anyone familiar with the place, however, knows that this is "where the crazy people hang out."
This is a lab, but its only concession to that fact is its PCs. The rest of the space looks like Romper Room for researchers. Big bay windows illuminate bits of scattered artwork and accentuate an unrestrained color scheme. The array of cutesy knickknacks on view ranges from an MIT teddy bear to a kite dangling from the exposed pipes crisscrossing the ceiling, which give the place a cool industrial feel.
Economic miracle
Run by Hsueh Wen-jean, whose title is future producer, this space is more widely known as the Creativity Lab Hsueh, who holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, doesn't look crazy. Perhaps a little mischievous and also quite determined. She will need both traits to play her role as a catalyst for change at the island's most prestigious research institute.
Partially credited with the "economic miracle" that years ago hoisted Taiwan into the club of developed Asian nations, ITRI is a quasi-government think tank famous for its pioneering role in the formation of Taiwan's electronics and semiconductor food chain. Throughout its 30-year history, the institute has helped form more than 100 companies, including United Microelectronics Corp. in 1979 and Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg Co. in 1987.
Back in the late 1970s, the 1980s and the early 1990s, ITRI was a prime place to work. Some of Taiwan's biggest names have walked its halls, such as TSMC chairman Morris Chang and UMC chairman Robert Tsao. The institute boasts more than 50 alumni who are the CEOs of publicly traded companies and cites a local study claiming that for every dollar ITRI invests, roughly $10 is returned to society.
But ITRI is also a victim of its success. The industry it spawned has well outgrown the institute, and in some cases spurns it as a lumbering behemoth—the antithesis of the nimble small and midsize businesses that keep Taiwan's economy humming.
ITRI, however, isn't ready to slip into obscurity. In several ways, it is laying the groundwork to ensure its continuance as an influential force in Taiwan and thus to help the island grow into a new regional role that will complement the higher profile Asia is assuming in the 21st century.
With this goal in mind, ITRI has made some changes of late, small experiments that could reap profound rewards in the way they encourage risk taking, internal collaboration and international cooperation. It is a new way of doing things at ITRI, and may eventually be a guideline for a less tangible way of measuring success in Taiwan.
Hsueh is one of a crop of fresh leaders trying to prepare the institute for its next big challenge, one that the whole island is grappling with as it drifts from the copycat business practices of the past and seeks to become an originator of ideas.
As befits her eccentric title, Hsueh spends some of her time daydreaming, and encourages others to do it, too. She calls it "sparkling time"—brainstorming sessions intended to take the long view, to mull future concepts and link them to present-day research that will slowly bolster Taiwan's ability to be a leader.
"We have come to a time of knowing that we need to get ahead in this industrial value chain," she said. "We need new ideas. So we have started to set up programs to interact with people from psychology, sociology, performing arts and so on. We try to get insights from their point of view and novel application concepts. And from these concepts, we integrate technologies within ITRI and try to plan a new direction for ITRI's disciplines."
Although Hsueh said it is a bit early for the Creativity Lab to have racked up concrete accomplishments, she pointed to a couple of projects that suggest its mission.
For example, the lab and ITRI engineers are finding ways to encourage senior citizens to access IT for everything from entertainment to delivery of medical services. Some of the research may involve their own field observations, as well as experience gained through alliances with local and global research projects that track the lifestyles of the elderly.
On the more whimsical side, the lab invited a master kite maker to display his kites around the ITRI campus to encourage engineers to realize their work "doesn't just have to result in a manufactured product," Hsueh said. "It can go into artwork or other projects that they might not have considered." Now some of the engineers are working with the master kite maker to find new, stronger materials that will enable larger, more complex, higher-flying kites.
Hsueh is also serious about improving the human experience of the virtual world. For example, she said, "an e-mail cannot convey a real emotion, so we have to find ways that people can feel and better understand each other through digital interfaces."
That sort of talk isn't common at the said institute. Yet the ability of engineers to readjust their mindset to incorporate this kind of thinking may profoundly influence the future of the island. Till now, it has served as a linchpin in the electronics food chain, quickly filling the demands of U.S. and European clients. But as Taiwan gets overshadowed by mainland China, and as investment dollars follow that irreversible trend, there is a chance the island could lose its prominence.
Frontier innovation
Hsueh's Creativity Lab, which is loosely modeled after MIT's Media Lab, wouldn't have been possible in the ITRI culture of a few years ago. But Johnsee Lee, ITRI president, endorsed it upon becoming president last year.
"Looking to the future, we know that Taiwan has to focus more on innovation, especially frontier innovation," Lee said.
ITRI has set up six joint research centers with Taiwan universities to try to harness some of the local research into commercial projects. It is also setting up a visiting-professor program and already has about 30 to 40 academics in residence. The target is 300 to 400, including visiting foreign professors. Currently, the institute is recruiting more non-Chinese-speaking researchers, of which there are about 50 in residence.
At the Creativity Lab, Hsueh seems inspired by the possibilities of such international exchanges. An eight-year employee of ITRI, she seems more concerned about its future than she is enamored of its past. Not long ago, shortly after Hsueh got the news that her Creativity Lab would happen, she immediately made a small but telling change that showed the gadfly in her. She simply painted over her blue office door with a lively green and added red Chinese calligraphy.
She didn't ask permission from her boss and was quietly encouraged to change it back by some co-workers. She didn't. And her boss actually liked the change. "If people have to seek permission for change all the time, then they will not be creative," she said.
Eventually, if Hsueh has her way, there may be just as many green doors as blue ones to knock on at ITRI.
- Mike Clendenin