Breaking Down Walls to Creativity Through In te rd i sci pI ina ry Design Richard E. West This article describes initial success in developing an interdisciplinary st udio for teachi ng coll aborative creativ- ity and design, with facu lty from multiple departments co-teaching and co-mentoring interdisciplinary st udent groups engaged in social innovation. The rationale for developing this studio has been to prepare students for the kind of interdisciplinary creativity that will be essen- tial to their careers post-graduation. So me have argued that universit ies are becoming increasingly irrelevant; the author argues for the criti ca l ro le of universities in prepar- ing students for successful integration into the innovation eco nomy. To meet this cha ll enge, we need to evo l ve as institutions and individuals in how we teach and co ncep- tualize the creative design process. Introduction Higher education has increasingly been judged unnec- essary, as commentators cite examples of successful ungraduated entrepreneurs, point to rising tuition costs, and ask whether people really need to go to college (Anderson, 2012; Stephens, 20 13). Th at a former United States Secretary of Education has asked if co ll ege is worth it (Ben nett & Wilezol , 2013) is evidence that the matter is receiving consideration. Most of the criti cs base their arguments on a perception that coll ege edu- cation provides little add itiona l va lue over the free learn ing ava il ab le via the Internet, MOOCs , and open educational re sour· ces. Because univers ity instruction often emphasizes transmission of information and Richard E. West, a Contributing Editor, is Associate Professor of Instructional Ps ychology and T echnology at Brigh am Young University. He researches open badge credentials for educa- tion, online social learning, and strategies for fost ering co llab- orative innovation. He tweets @ ri chardewes t, and hi s researc h is ava il able at https: llbyu .academia .edu/ RichardWest. He co-found ed the Creativit y, Innovation, and Des ign group at Brigham Young Uni ve rsity (http: //inno va tion.byu.edu) (e -mail: rickwest @by u.edu ). knowledge-th e lowest leve ls of Bloom's taxonomy (A nderson, Krathwoh l, & Bloom, 2001 )-these criti cs may be right. Th e uncomfortable tr·uth for many educatms is that we are no longer uniquely valuable as sources of infor- mation, insight, and knowledge. That does not mean that hi gher ed ucation should discontinue its role in society. It just means our role must change. Traditionally uni- vers iti es have had the important job of creat in g new sc ientific knowledge through research. In the future, higher ed ucation mu st al so see the importance of creat- ing new knowledge, innovations, products, and id eas through its teaching as well. No lon ge r will it be suffi- cient for universities to be places where students come to receive knowledge. For higher ed ucation to survive, we need to develop campuses where st udents come to produce and create. This focus on creat ivity and innova- tion will be the key to pi'Oviding value to future students, thus keeping higher education relevant. The Innovation Economy The important role of creativity and innovation in our society should not be surprising. In 1950 j. P. Guilford, in his presidential add r·ess to the American Psychological Association, argued that "psychologists have seriously neglected" the study of creativ it y (p. 44). He envisioned "t hinkin g machines" (co mput ers) comp letely changing the nature of so ciety because "eventually about the only economic va lue of brains left would be in the creative thinking of which they are capab le" (p. 36). We see a partial fulfillment of th at vision now, as a third of jobs in the United States (a nd grow in g) require creativ ity (F lorid a, 2012), and as CEOs of the most successful compan i es are focus- ing on ag ility, experimentation, and innovation (IBM, 2016). "Creativity at all leve ls and across different types of jobs is increas ingly necessary," Zhou, Hir st, and Shipton (2012) argued, "to deal w ith th e velocity and frequency of change" (p. 80). We have in effect become an Inn ovat ion Age, and while previous ca ll s within the instructional design com munit y have been to renovate ed ucational systems for the information age (Reigeluth, 1992), we now need to expa nd our thinking abo ut h ow we ca n effect change in education- al systems to support the innovation age. While Guilford may have foreseen the criti ca l rol e of creativity in th e modern economy, he did not expect the increasingly necessary role of co ll abora ti on in innovati ve thinking. Because mos t current problems are too big to be solved by one person or even one disciplinary point of view, we are increasi ngly seeing the important role of int er disciplinar y thinking in busi - ness beca us e often th e " ri ght knowledg e to so l ve a problem is in a differ·ent place to the problem itself, so interdisciplinary innovation is an esse nti al tool " (Blac kw ell, Wilson , Street, Boulton, & Knell, 2009, EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY/November-December 2016 47