Intelligent CXO Issue 47 | Page 66

BUSINESS INSIGHTS

GREAT BARRIER RELIEF – HOW UNITING DATA AND IMAGINATION CAN SUPERCHARGE BUSINESS SUCCESS

In the UK at least , there ’ s an artificial – and frankly unhealthy – societal divide between the arts and the sciences . Apparently , you ’ re either in one camp or the other . But when it comes to business strategy , bringing creative thinking and scientific rigour together turns out to be a winning formula . Ben Bush , Partner and Head of Strategy at design-led consultancy , The Frameworks , argues that it ’ s time to break down artificial barriers and draw on the artist and the scientist in all of us when it comes to solving gnarly business challenges .

It ’ s been an eventful few weeks for mathematician , author , broadcaster and all-round cleverclogs , Hannah Fry . Not only did she appear on the Taskmaster New Year Treat – surely a career high – she has also been named the Professor for the Public Understanding of Mathematics at Cambridge University .

It ’ s hard to begrudge her this accolade . By fronting Radio 4 ’ s Rutherford and Fry , various BBC television documentaries and Numberphile videos , she ’ s done more than many to drive home the power , importance and beauty of science and maths .
The pity , though , is that we need such a role in the first place .
Long division
Arguably , this goes much further than an ambivalence to mathematics . I find it weird and frustrating that it ’ s not only acceptable for someone to flout their antipathy to maths , it ’ s somehow considered cool . How did we get to a stage where a subject so fundamental to our lives – from household budgeting to understanding risks to our health , from the technology we all rely on to deciding whether or not to play the lottery – is flippantly dismissed as something only a select band of nerds and geeks need to know about ?
It ’ s equally frustrating and bemusing when I hear other people – often , again , with a weird sense of pride – say that they never read a book . How rational and buttonedup in your empirical worldview do you have to be to genuinely see no value in the insights and inspiration that only great writing can deliver ?
The idea that you ’ re either a science or an arts person is introduced to us at an early age , often tacitly accepted by parents and teachers , before being actively reinforced by study choices kids make when they ’ re barely in their teens . And it ’ s clearly nothing new : in his seminal book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution , CP Snow argued that the artificial schism between science and the humanities was a significant barrier to the world addressing its biggest challenges . This was in 1959 .
Some argue that we ’ ve put much of this division behind us . And it ’ s certainly true that great swathes of modern cinema and music , not to mention the entire computer gaming industry , wouldn ’ t exist without people playing nicely together across both
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