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"Hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares"

§ Strasbourg

USIAS Scientific Advisory Board

24 November 2012 Louis Pasteur

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1.  Celebrate the creative genius of Louis Pasteur & the University of Strasbourg

2.  Use his example to remind us of our individual and collective responsibility

3.  Discuss the role of Pasteur’s “the prepared mind” in discovery, invention and innovation

4.  Review emerging knowledge in the elusive science of creativity and imagination

What works, what doesn’t French Flavor

OBJECTIVES

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1.  Roots dating back to 1538 2.  Evolved over almost 500 years in Alsace 3.  Subdivided in ’70s

Louis Pasteur University Marc Bloch University Robert Shuman University

4.  Re-aggregated January 1, 2009 5.  Distinguished history

Extraordinary discovery – 15 Nobel Prizes 6.  USIAS – Inaugural Scientific Advisory Board

UNIVERSITY OF STRASBOURG

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1.  Distinguished French Scientist 2.  Education – depth & breadth

Bachelor of Arts (1840)/Science (1842) École Normale Superieure

3.  Professor of Physics – Dijon Lycée (1848) 4.  Deputy Professor and Professor of Chemistry –

University of Strasbourg (1849) 5.  Dean, University of Lille (1854) 6.  Paris École Normale (1857) and École des Beau Arte

(1863), Sorbonne (1867), Pasteur Institute (1889)

WHY LOUIS PASTEUR?

Birthplace

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1.  Molecular asymmetry Doctoral Thesis on crystallography à Professor of Chemistry, Faculté Strasbourg

2.  Biogenesis vs. spontaneous generation “Omne vivum ex vivo – all life is from life”

3.  Beer, wine and milk preservation “pasteurization”

4.  Saved French silk industry by solving riddle of parasite attacks on silkworm eggs

5.  Immunology “vaccinization” – cholera, anthrax, rabies

PASTEUR’S BROAD SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS

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1.  The ability to survey all the data –> link to hypotheses

2.  Patience to strictly control experimental conditions

3.  Sagacity to seize on the unexpected

PASTEUR’S WORK – UNIFYING ATTRIBUTES

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From the French sagacité -- of quick and acute perception

The quality of being sage and wise;

discerning, judicious, farsighted able to make astute decisions

SAGACITY

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“Imagination should give wings to our thoughts but we always need decisive experimental

proof, and when the moment comes to draw conclusions and to interpret the gathered

observations, imagination must be checked and documented by the factual results of the

experience.”

IN HIS OWN WORDS

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“Use Inspired” basic research

PASTEUR’S QUADRANT

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USE INSPIRED BASIC RESEARCH

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1.  Lycée Pasteur – Neuilly-sur-Seine 2.  Avenue Louis Pasteur, Saigon, Vietnam 3.  Pasteur Institute, Paris 4.  Streets of 16 Institutes and Medical

Centers in 15 Countries

ACADEMIC LEGACY COMMEMORATED

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300 Pasteur Drive, Stanford, CA

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1.  Chemistry 2.  Microbiology, bacteriology, virology 3.  Immunology 4.  Unraveled profound disease entities

Protected the world through vaccination and pasteurization

PASTEUR’S ENDURING CONTRIBUTIONS UNDERSTANDING AND UTILITY

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“… dans les champs de l’observation, le hasard ne favor que le espirite

prepare”

In the field of observation, fortune favors only the prepared mind.

1854 – PASTEUR NAMED DEAN, UNIVERSITY OF LILLE

Institut Pasteur de Lille

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1.  Luck 2.  Chance 3.  Fortune 4.  Serendipity – happy accident but

only exploited by the sagacious person

WHAT’S IN A WORD?

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1.  “Serendip” – an old name for the island Ceylon, now Sri Lanka

SERENDIPITY

2.  The Three Princes of Serendip – Children’s tale of accidental discoveries by sagacious explorers

3.  “Serendipity” coined in a letter from Horace Walpole derived from these tales

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1.  Ambroise Pare @ the siege of Turin 2.  LJM Daguerre “photography” 3.  Penicillin “discovered” by Alexander

Fleming 4.  Charles Goodyear – rubber/sulfer mix

–> vulcanization 5.  Percy Spencer testing the magnetron

and the melted chocolate bar

PREPARED MINDS IN SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY

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Absent sagacity, a chance observation of an important phenomenon will have no impact, and the observer may be denied historical attribution for the discovery.

Alfred A. Baumeister

IS IT JUST LUCK?

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“Scientific research is based not on chance but on highly focused thoughts. It is not by chance that it is always the great scientists who have the luck. We are surrounded all our lives by innumerable ‘facts’ and ‘accidents’. The scientist’s skill is to know which are important and how to interpret them.”

The Unnatural Nature of Science -- Lewis Wolpert

ACCIDENT OR “PREPARED MIND”?

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CAN WE UNDERSTAND IT?

ENCOURAGE IT?

NURTURE IT?

TEACH IT?

WHAT IS THE “PREPARED MIND”?

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EXAMPLES OF UNPREPARED MINDS

or

LOW INTELLECT IN HIGH PLACES

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Radio has no future.

LORD KELVIN

Scottish mathematician and physicist, former president of the Royal Society,

1897

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Everything that can be invented has been

invented.

CHARLES H. DUELL

U.S. Commissioner of Patents, 1899

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The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only

a novelty – a fad.

A president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising HORACE BACKHAM (Henry Ford’s lawyer) not

to invest in the Ford Motor Co., 1903. A 2000% return in 3 years

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Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military

value.

MARSHAL FERDINAND FOCH French military strategist World War I commander

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What use could this company make of an

electrical toy?

Western Union president WILLIAM ORTON, rejecting Alexander Graham Bell’s offer to sell his struggling telephone company to Western Union for $100,000

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[Man will never reach the moon] regardless of all

future scientific advances.

DR. LEE DE FOREST

Inventor of the Audion tube and a father of radio, February 25, 1967

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There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.

KENNETH OLSEN

president and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

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The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut

from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.

SIR JOHN ERIC ERICKSEN Surgeon-Extraordinare to Queen Victoria. 1837

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1.  Co-author of Built to Last Good to Great

2.  Stanford GSB lecturer on Creativity 3.  Systematic study of decline in high

performance companies Bank of America Hewlett Packard Merck Motorola

JIM COLLINS

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WHERE DOES FAILURE START?

“Great enterprises (people) can become insulated by success; accumulated momentum can carry an enterprise

forward …. through poor decisions or lost discipline.

People become arrogant, regard success as an entitlement, and lose sight of the

true underlying factors of success.

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When the rhetoric of success (“We’re successful because we do these specific things “) replaces penetrating understanding and insight (“We’re

successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would

no longer work”), decline will very likely follow.

Luck and chance play a role in many successful outcomes, and those who fail to acknowledge the role luck may have played in their success – and thereby overestimate their own merit and capabilities – have

succumbed to hubris

The loss of the prepared mind!

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“In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The

learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no

longer exists.”

Eric Hoffer U.S. Philosopher, Longshoreman, 1973

There are no experts on the future, … just experts in the present.

Judah Folkman, MD

You can write the entire history of science in the last 50 years ….in terms of papers rejected by

Science and Nature.

Paul Lautebur

TWO EXPERTS WHO GOT IT RIGHT

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The real act of discovery consists not in finding new

lands but in seeing with new eyes.

Marcel Proust

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1.  Often comes outside the active search 2.  Shockingly obvious and complete 3.  Accompanying certainty

How do we go from block to breathless?

INSIGHT EXPERIENCE

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1.  Archimedes’ gold crown composition 2.  Pasteur’s silkworm disease 3.  Judah Folkman’s “tumor vessels” puzzle 4.  Your current unsolved problem

All about the impasse

IT ALL STARTS WITH A PROBLEM

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Archimedes “Ah Ha” Moment

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Move one line to make equation true

A SIMPLE PROBLEM

IV = III + III

VI = III + III

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A TOUGHER PROBLEM

Again, move one line to make equation true

Feel yourself think, search Probably reach an impasse

III = III + III

III = III = III

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1.  Stop concentrating on details 2.  Search more broadly – involve others 3.  Lose focused consciousness

Daydream Exercise Take a bath (worked for Archimedes)

WHAT ARE CONDITIONS TO ENHANCE SOLUTION

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1.  Sell 55,000 different products Touch screens Sponges Batteries Post-It notes

2.  Large research investment 3.  Third most innovative company in world 4.  Hard wired creativity policies

MINNESOTA MINING & MANUFACTURING CO.

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1.  Flexible attention policy Take a walk outside

Ping Pong 2.  15% rule

Speculative new ideas BUT

Must share with colleagues 3.  For profit company – 75 years of success 4.  Long before Google

3M INNOVATION POLICIES

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1.  Arthur Fry – engineer , paper products 2.  During 15% time attended Tech Forum

Spencer Silver – adhesives What to do with a very weak glue

3.  Hymnal pages of church choir book marked with paper scraps – often lost

4.  Daydreaming during sermon 5.  Prototypes shared & played with others

jotted notes

POST IT NOTE STORY

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1.  Pasteur was right Fortune does favor the prepared mind

2.  Minds are like parachutes – they function only when open

3.  Success-fueled hubris is fatal 4.  Universities are privileged places for discovery,

invention, innovation Learning environment Cross disciplinarity Hard work Playful time

SUMMARY

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Merci beaucoup!

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An early daguerrotype made by Daguerre himself in 1838, titled “View of the Ile de la Cité with Notre Dame”.

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1.  Set of heuristics & practice 2.  Careful control 3.  Consistent methodology 4.  Hypothesis testing Permits the identification of the “unexpected”

PASTEUR’S SCIENTIFIC PROCESS

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“This marvelous experimental method eliminates certain facts, brings forth others, interrogates nature, compels it to reply and stops only when the mind is fully satisfied. The charm of our studies, the enchantment of science, is that, everywhere and always,

we can give the justification of our principles and the proof of our discoveries.”

Ernest Renan

PASTEUR METHODS AS DESCRIBED BY OTHERS

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Scientists are not passive recipients of the unexpected, rather, they actively create the conditions for observing the unexpected and have a robust mental toolkit that makes discovery possible.

Kevin Dunbar and Jonathan Fugelsang

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1.  Age – not chronologic but ossification 2.  Dogma

Nicolas Copernicus: “On the revolution of the heavenly spheres”

3.  Hubris of “The Expert”

IMPEDIMENTS TO A PREPARED MIND

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1.  Literally means “breathed upon” 2.  Until the Enlightenment was attributed to

higher power muse channeling the deities

3.  Human imagination has no clear precursors 4.  The Ah Ha event epiphany How do we imagine and then create something

that has not existed Music, Art, Architecture, Science

HISTORIC VIEWS OF CREATIVITY: AN EXTERNAL INSPIRATION

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