If I were twenty years younger, I would go back to school. I would return to my alma mater, Northwestern University, and enroll in the engineering school again (yes, again!), so I could learn about design and complex networks and product development. 

I was probably the only reader of the recent magazine for engineering alumni who was drooling–after reading an article about cross- disciplinary collaboration between medical researchers and engineers and sociologists at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). The mission of NICO goes to the heart of boundary crossing:

"To serve as a hub and facilitator for path-breaking and relevant research in the area of complexity science transcending the boundaries of established disciplines."

As an example of the concrete benefits of boundary crossing in academia, engineering professor Seyed Irvani, who uses applied math to make supply chains more efficient, said this about his work with NICO:

"I was very excited because I was able to steal a concept from one discipline and bring it to another. I'm bringing the concept of complex systems and social networks to operations management, which hasn't been done enough." 

The idea this researcher had "stolen" came from study done by sociologist Brian Uzzi, on how networks played a part in successful Broadway shows.

Other articles from the same magazine point to the convergence of design with other disciplines, to create social impact and better product development. 

I attribute the pervasiveness of boundary crossing in Northwestern's engineering school to Dean Julio Ottino.  I met with him several years ago and discovered that he's a boundary crosser himself. The tip off came when I noticed the office walls were adorned with his own abstract oil paintings.  This was not paint- by-the-numbers stuff.

Yet NICO also points to how our world is changing. With complex systems, it's not enough to be a specialist in one area, isolated in one's efforts to find a breakthrough.  We can and must learn from each other to solve today's problems. Boundary crossers facilitate this learning.