Over the past 15 years or so, you may have had the privilege of working with some incredibly smart people. Intellectual horsepower near the top of the charts, yet you've been frustrated by the communication. Specifically, why do they say it's 'working', when it's clearly incapable of producing repeated results?
Biology is usually expressed through academic papers. These papers have a focus on logic and provable hypothesis through experimentaiton. Saying something 'works' is the most important thing a PhD or postdoc can communicate. This collapses all of their work into a vague, but professionally accepted terminology that allows them to move forward. It can be hard for us low-level engineers to understand, but saying something 'works' is declarative on multiple levels, the most important of which is from a psychological safety standpoint.
Here at the R&D Prototype delivery stage, there is another mechanism developed for the expression of biology: manufacturing. Instead of logic and known outcomes, the output is a range of outcomes with repeatability. It's a convergence towards a less-wrong set of end states. It's not about being right, it's about controlling the dimensionality of the wrong-ness.
That's why when the biologists say 'it works', they mean it's theoretically possible. When they apply that to the biological prototypes or the machines used to make those biological prototypes, it's still technically true, but inaccurate to the point of limiting business goals.
The friction lies in removing the inaccuracy of language in order to extract the intuitive understanding into something portable across the organization.
The best way to move forward is replace all qualitative terminology with quantitative. Instead of 'it works', the language needs to be 'it performs goal X, Y% of the time'. It's truly a rare relationship where you can propose this and not be met with immediate resistance.
Instead, Next time they say 'it works', try this:
Can I see?
Now you'll head into the lab with them and they will show you their prototype or procedure and talk about all the salient points. This achieves two critical objectives:
Special thanks to Joey Papu and the team at the Regenerative Medicine Lab at United Therapeutics for helping us understand this technique and why it can be so effective.
Over the past 15 years or so, you may have had the privilege of working with some incredibly smart people. Intellectual horsepower near the top of the charts, yet you've been frustrated by the communication. Specifically, why do they say it's 'working', when it's clearly incapable of producing repeated results?
Biology is usually expressed through academic papers. These papers have a focus on logic and provable hypothesis through experimentaiton. Saying something 'works' is the most important thing a PhD or postdoc can communicate. This collapses all of their work into a vague, but professionally accepted terminology that allows them to move forward. It can be hard for us low-level engineers to understand, but saying something 'works' is declarative on multiple levels, the most important of which is from a psychological safety standpoint.
Here at the R&D Prototype delivery stage, there is another mechanism developed for the expression of biology: manufacturing. Instead of logic and known outcomes, the output is a range of outcomes with repeatability. It's a convergence towards a less-wrong set of end states. It's not about being right, it's about controlling the dimensionality of the wrong-ness.
That's why when the biologists say 'it works', they mean it's theoretically possible. When they apply that to the biological prototypes or the machines used to make those biological prototypes, it's still technically true, but inaccurate to the point of limiting business goals.
The friction lies in removing the inaccuracy of language in order to extract the intuitive understanding into something portable across the organization.
The best way to move forward is replace all qualitative terminology with quantitative. Instead of 'it works', the language needs to be 'it performs goal X, Y% of the time'. It's truly a rare relationship where you can propose this and not be met with immediate resistance.
Instead, Next time they say 'it works', try this:
Can I see?
Now you'll head into the lab with them and they will show you their prototype or procedure and talk about all the salient points. This achieves two critical objectives:
Special thanks to Joey Papu and the team at the Regenerative Medicine Lab at United Therapeutics for helping us understand this technique and why it can be so effective.