Wicked Problems : How to Engineer a Better World

Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public and planetary aspects – often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy -are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon.

In this book, Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future. He examines bestknown tragedies and lesser-known tales, from the efficient design of battleships to a volcano eruption that curtailed global commerce, and how maintenance of our sanitation systems constitutes tikkun olam, or repair of our world. An homage to society’s innovators and maintainers, Wicked Problems offers a refreshing vision for readers of all backgrounds to build a better future and demonstrates how engineering is a cultural choice-one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.