In 2008, research teams at Duke and Harvard surveyed 652 U.S.-born chief executives and heads of product engineering at 502 technology companies. They learned that, although a degree made a big difference in the success of an entrepreneur, the field it was in and the school that it was from were not significant. YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki, for instance, majored in history and literature; Slack founder Stewart Butterfield in English; Airbnb founder Brian Chesky in the fine arts. And, in China, Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma has a bachelor’s in English.
The key to good design is a combination of empathy and knowledge of the arts and humanities. Musicians and artists inherently have the greatest sense of creativity. You can teach artists how to use software and graphics tools; turning engineers into artists is anther story.
A technological shift is in progress that will change the rules of innovation. A broad range of technologies are advancing exponentially and converging, making amazing things possible. To create the amazing future that technology is enabling, we need our musicians and artists working hand in hand with our engineers. It isn’t either one or the other; we need both the humanities and engineering.
For the last few decades, the focus in the U.S. has been on what are called STEM subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Recently some schools have added an A for Art, making it STEAM, trying to restore some importance to the arts. But the liberal arts and humanities have been deemphasized to the point where many schools don't even include music or the arts (or foreign languages) anymore. As we move into the new future of the IoT and robotics, etc., the ability to think creatively and with a human context will become essential.