Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World

by Guru Madhavan

Overview

An ode to systems engineers—whose invisible work undergirds our life—and an exploration of the wicked problems they tackle.

Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects—often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy—are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon.

In linked chapters focusing on key facets of systems engineering—efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience—engineer Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines best-known tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. Braided throughout is the uplifting tale of Edwin Link, an unsung hero who revolutionized aviation with his flight trainer. In Link’s story, Madhavan uncovers a model mindset to engage with wickedness.

An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice—one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393651461
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/26/2024
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Guru Madhavan is the Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and senior director of programs at the National Academy of Engineering. He is a prize–winning author of essays and books, including Wicked Problems and Applied Minds. He lives in Washington, DC.

Editorial Reviews

"Wicked Problems combines the rigor of engineering with the wisdom of philosophy into a one-of-a-kind strategy guide.… Guru Madhavan has crafted a manual useful from the corporate boardroom to city hall."

Daniel H. Pink

"Guru Madhavan argues that the growing number of cloudy problems in our world demands a broader, more civic-minded approach to engineering. . . Madhavan’s ultimate argument is an important one, particularly in an age of rampant solutionism and “one neat trick” approaches to complex problems."

MIT Technology Review - Bryan Gardiner

"In Wicked Problems, Guru Madhavan offers a primer on . . . problem framing that are intended to empower both engineers and non-engineers as engaged civic actors. . . Wicked Problems is a reminder that to be a force for good in the world, we need—and long have needed—the intellectual power developed through the breadth of a liberal education. "

Science - Donna Riley

"Madhavan champions the importance of looking at seemingly technical problems through a wider lens—such as the business, policy and social aspects. . . Wicked Problems is a wake-up call for all engineers to expand their mindset"

Nature - Susan Krumdieck

"Inspired by Edwin Link’s revolutionary work—from flight simulation to deep-sea diving—Guru Madhavan has effectively described the value of systems engineering for society. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Wicked Problems."

M. Stanley Whittingham

"In this wise, wide-ranging, and wonderful work, Guru Madhavan catalogs the kinds of engineering—that have shaped the modern world—often not in the ways expected. And all too often such engineering is carried out by those who persist and persevere in—the background to maintain our world from collapsing, and—who are ignored without credit or reward,—a point seldom appreciated by those who allocate funding and celebrate excellence."

Don Norman

"With fascinating and wide-ranging narratives, Wicked Problems highlights the engineering inventiveness and responsibility in tackling tough challenges, and what’s essential for our common future—it should also make us all more mindful of what our everyday lives owe to ingenious engineers."

Martin Rees

"Profound, readable, and above all humane—a substantively and stylishly engineered book."

Tim Harford

"We all struggle with maddeningly complex challenges that defy our efforts to understand, simplify, or effectively address them. In Wicked Problems, Guru Madhavan puts them into focus and then prescribes a systems approach that can allow us to get our minds, arms, and communities around them. As entertaining as it is brilliant."

General Stanley McChrystal

"A wonderful and energizing book.… It is an espresso machine for the imagination."

Rory Sutherland

"Guru Madhavan’s extraordinarily creative ideas and imagination best categorize him as an engineer’s engineer. His Wicked Problems provides an absorbing account of the world’s complexities and ways to deal with them constructively and collectively."

Rita Colwell

2024-01-13
An investigation of how to “advance engineering concepts for cultural use.”

Madhavan, senior director of programs at the National Academy of Engineering and author of Applied Minds: How Engineers Think, emphasizes that there are three categories of engineering problems: hard, soft, and messy. Hard problems are solved by tools, a formula, or perhaps another invention. Soft problems involve human behavior, so they are not solved, only “resolved.” Traffic congestion can be eliminated only at a cost no one will pay, so solutions are never optimal, only “good enough.” Messy problems emerge from ideology—e.g., the refusal to wear masks during the pandemic. Madhavan’s solution to messy problems involves words like “reframing” or phrases like “respecting cultural sensitivities.” In fact, systems engineering has a good record with all three categories, which, taken together, form the “wicked problems” of the title. Madhavan extols the work of the Wright Brothers, whose first flying machine “transformed the world.” However, it didn’t transform those machines into useful transportation because learning to fly while actually flying was dangerous, so piloting remained an occupation for adventurous young males for the next two decades. Madhavan maintains that the still obscure Edward Link deserves as much recognition as the Wrights. His Link Trainer, now in universal use, converted piloting from a risky game into a profession in which students learn their craft on the ground rather than inside a machine that could kill them. The systems engineer’s job is so complex that each of Madhavan’s six chapters discusses an area that they deal with: efficiency, vagueness, vulnerability, safety, maintenance, and resilience. His concluding epilogue is less a summary than a high-minded, well-informed criticism of engineering education’s concentration on technical achievement to the near exclusion of “cultural, ethical, social, and environmental issues.”

A thoughtful review of how engineers approach their most intractable problems.

Kirkus Reviews