I was of course intrigued to know what an “18″ was. She told me that at Hertz, an 18 was a customer. She, on the other hand was a “17″ which means Hertz employee.

We talked for a bit and I got her to share the code list. Some of them are fascinating. For instance, a “3″ is a customer who’s drunk. Apparently, Hertz gets quite a few of these as many passengers come off a flight where they’ve just had a few too many free drinks in First Class. Then, she said, they often have to call in a “6″.

The words we use shape how we see the world. I’m often annoyed when companies insist on calling people users, or buyers, or targets, or anything else that dehumanizes people or otherwise increases the schism between producer and consumer But it’s heartbreakingly hilarious when a faceless corporation forces its employees to reduce people to a number. : )

Complete code list below…

Recently at Jump I had the pleasure of interviewing Oren Jacob, former Chief Technical Officer of Pixar, in front of a small group of invited guests. Oren shared a number of fascinating stories of what went on behind the scenes at Pixar during his 20 years there.

Oren is an amazing individual. He has accomplished a lot in his career and helped grow Pixar into one of America’s most successful companies (all 12 of Pixar’s full-length feature films to date have been blockbusters!). You only need to spend 5 minutes with Oren to realize he embodies everything we have grown to love about Pixar movies. He speaks passionately, shares emotional stories that resonate with everyone, and yes, Oren is quite animated (even leaping off his stool to emphasize a point).

But what strikes me most about Oren is his ability to cross traditional organizational, academic, and industry boundaries to make great stuff happen. Oren is the epitome of a hybrid thinker. A mechanical engineer by training, Oren has played significant roles at Pixar beyond creating Pixar University and Pixar’s own proprietary software platform to manage the animation pipeline. He was also an integral part of the story-telling process and a steward of the culture.

The stories he shares of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles underlined how important hybrid thinking is for solving the ambiguous problems facing companies today.

Throughout Oren’s talk were lessons on how to use hybrid thinking to solve the large, ambiguous challenges within organizations (the visual recording of Oren’s talk by Jump’s Jonathan Gabrio is above). While much of the discussion fell under the “What happens in Vegas…” rule, I was able to net out a few takeaways that Oren was comfortable sharing with a wider audience. Here are five principles I heard in Oren’s talk:

1.  When it Sucks, Say So

In December of 1998, Pixar had finished 3 years of work on Toy Story 2. The movie was set to be Disney’s end-of-the-Millennium Christmas shining star. The problem was the movie wasn’t very good. With just 8 months left to finish production on the movie, Oren Jacob did the unthinkable and, after talking it through with his producers, went to the executive team and told them that Toy Story 2 was not good enough. In fact, Oren and a few others said the movie was horrible and might ruin the company if it was not overhauled. After watching the movie, Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer, Ed Catmull, President, and others agreed and set in motion the plan to redo the movie.

The movie was completely rewritten and produced in the remaining 8 months. Toy Story 2 went on to become one of the most critically acclaimed Pixar movies of all time, but only because Oren and others on his team had the guts to say the work wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t something they could believe in.

It can be too easy to be lulled into thinking creativity lives and breathes better when free of criticism. While quick judgment can kill great ideas in the nub, a straight-up, critical assessment is just as important as any brainstorm technique.

Be honest with yourself. When the work isn’t great, say so. Then get to work making something you can believe in.

2.  Defend Your Opinion, Then “Hit Play Quickly”

The production process at Pixar is a lengthy one, with many groups participating and weighing in at various stages. A critical point in the process is called the Notes Session. It’s when several key individuals, such as the director and head writer, sit down to watch the full movie. They then capture changes that need to be made on notes and hand them back to the team (hence the name, Notes Session).

These can be stressful times for everyone. Depending on the notes, a lot of rework could be ahead for the teams.

Oren explained that while you aren’t required to make the changes written on the notes, you better have a darn good explanation for why you didn’t. Yet spending too much time explaining why you didn’t make the changes can be suicide. “Keep your explanations brief then hit play quickly,” Oren shared. Let the work speak for itself.

The same is true in creating new businesses. Avoid falling into a meta-discussion that derails the much needed momentum. Instead, let people experience first-hand what you are creating.

3.  Look Upstream for the Source of the Problem

Oren explained that when someone is confused watching one of your movies, 99.99% of the time it’s not because of what’s happening in that scene. The problem usually lies earlier in the movie. Either the characters weren’t developed well or pieces of the story were not explained well enough. If you simply react and change the scene at the point someone got confused you’re chasing a red herring. Instead, it’s important to think about why someone doesn’t get it and focus on fixing that.

This principle is applicable to many processes within organizations, particularly to developing new offerings, platforms, and businesses. Before reacting to feedback, ask why someone is seeing things the way they are. You might discover what needs to be changed is back upstream.

4.  Match the Medium to the Message

Early on in his role as Director of Studio Tools, Oren realized the company needed to create its own software platform to manage projects throughout the production process. After all, Pixar knew animation better than anyone, and there was no point being at the mercy of a software company who was mainly interested in serving the needs of the video game industry.

When it came time to pitch the idea to executives including Steve Jobs, Oren chose to explain his argument with hand sketches—50 pages of them to be exact. Why? Because “storyboards are the currency of the building.” Oren had also learned the hard way that if an idea is too polished it will evoke negative criticism rather than help to push the idea forward.

The sketches worked. Steve Jobs approved the unprecedented budget request and said, “Don’t screw it up.” Pixar’s next movie, Brave, coming out in 2012, will be the first fully-developed with this new, proprietary software platform.

Sketching storyboards and acting out scripts are the currency of ideas at Pixar. Try a variety of different media to find what works best for you and your organization.

5.  Hire for Excellence

When Pixar is evaluating potential hires they look for 3 traits. Humor, the ability to tell a story, and an example of excellence. These aren’t unique qualities to assess in applicants but how excellence is defined is not that common. It doesn’t matter what you are excellent at, just that you have reached a level of excellence. It’s important that you know what excellence feels like and what it takes to achieve it. It could be gardening, jujitsu, or cooking. The main thing is you’ve had a taste of excellence and will know how to get there again.

What do you hire for? Is a taste of excellence one of your requirements?

It is because of hybrid folks like Oren, who see past the status quo to create better systems that enable greatness that we stand a chance to solve the toughest, most ambiguous problems facing our world today.

What are your thoughts?

First, some context. I was milling around at the NY Forum yesterday after participating on a panel when Lance Knobel, the conference curator, approached me. Half-jokingly he informed me that he was going to have me fill in for a panelist who canceled last minute. Since all of Jump’s ideas come from interaction between teams of hybrid thinkers I quickly shot an email off to a few colleagues back in San Mateo for input.

In the spirit of transparency, here’s what happened:

Email from Dev, Tue 6/21/2011 3:01 pm PDT

Subject: 911

Tell me something smart about connecting in an age of hypertransparency. I have to speak on it in 5 minutes.

Email response from Peter at 3:04 pm PDT

Not entirely sure what that means, but my latest hypothesis is that, like all cultures are, online and social network cultures are by definition constructed. Therefore, the premise of hypertransparency is questionable. We have the illusion of transparency, and all that’s clear is we’re seeing how people wish to represent reality.

Also, you know, obvious phoniness in ham-handed fashion inevitably outs itself, so providing a steady stream of your version of reality is better than trying to hide or debunk.

But again, don’t quite understand the topic. Going Geertz on them might be the best route.

Email response from Clynton at 3:05 pm PDT

It can be tempting to let the medium providing the transparency become the focus over the message. For example, twitter provides transparency into communications of a company but the medium is only good for certain types of communication. Similarly, the web is not a stand-in for face-to-face communication.

Email response from Conrad at 3:05 pm PDT

Hyper-transparency is bull. It’s actually harder to dig past the “public personas” that people now actively “manage.” Call it “ersatz transparency.”

Totally different point:

Hyper-transparency is a double-edged sword when it comes to connecting. It provides ice breakers gleaned “asynchronously” (Saw on Facebook you went to Laos. Amazing!) But it also robs you of those same topics of conversation in some ways, because you already feel “caught up” (Laos. Got it. What else?)

Talking Point 3:

For corporations and people in power, it’s more nuanced than we give it credit for. Yes, two-way, not one-way. Yes, be authentic and open. But there’s more to it than that. Weiner’s not a stupid man. There’s something deep-seated that happens. I’m sure you’ll figure out what by the time you read this.

Besides the fact that it shows the strength of my bench at Jump, what I love about these responses is how hybrid they are. Hypertransparency, like so many ambiguous problems in the world today, is not just a technology issue. To understand it we must pull from history, the social sciences, and even economics.

Now, more than ever, this world needs people who can connect what has traditionally been different fields of thought. And it doesn’t hurt to have folks with mobile phones who can respond in 4 minutes.

Last Saturday, I was honored to be the commencement speaker at I.D.’s graduation ceremony. I stuck to the traditional format of commencement speeches and read a prepared text from the podium.  This was an unfamiliar experience for me, as my talks typically involve me roaming around a stage, cracking jokes and speaking extemporaneously from PowerPoint.  Nonetheless, the results were not abysmal. I received several requests for copies of my text, so I include it here.

Some notes of attribution: the speech borrows heavily from some of my previous articles, with significant additions from my partner Pete Mortensen. I learned of the wonderful story of Lewis and Clark from my brother Udaya, who in turn drew it from Undaunted Courage by the late Stephen Ambrose. Here’s the speech…

————-

“Thank you.  I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest design schools in the world.  Of course, to say that the Institute of Design is a design school is a bit of an accommodation: to say that you are all designers doesn’t actually tell the whole story. Many of you simply don’t have the skills that any reasonable person would expect from a designer. Heck, some of you couldn’t draw a lamp or toaster if your life depended on it. But that’s okay.  Because your life doesn’t depend on it. In fact, your livelihoods depend on you being able to do other things.  And in any case, if you are a brilliant toaster designer, then I would also hope that you are fluent in Mandarin and desire to live in Asia, and are willing to work for far more hours and far less money than what our modern rendition of the Protestant work ethic would imply.  Because that’s seems to be where design is headed.  But for you, the term designer doesn’t seem to fit.

“I’m equally befuddled by the term design thinker. And even though I teach in a school that champions design thinking, I’ve always felt that talking about design thinking as something separate from design resulted in something diminished. Too many of the folks who consider themselves to be purely design thinkers are really just design talkers, able to expound ad nauseaum without actually doing the deed.

“And yet, I do think that the journey that all of you are on is far more powerful than any of those careworn concepts.  So I’d like to spend some time talking about what I do think makes you all so brilliant, and what makes you so needed in the world today.

“You see, the real greatness in what you represent is not that you are designers.  You’re actually something far more special than that. You’re a brilliant alchemy of multiple disciplines.  Yes, on one hand many of you do possess the skills and mindset of a designer, but many of you are equally adept in the social sciences.  And you bring an understanding of business strategy that so many designers and social scientists lack.

“You’re hybrid thinkers. One part humanist, one part technologist, and one part capitalist. And it’s the willful mash up of these disciplines that makes you great, because you’re also more than the sum of these parts.  It turns out that when you put all of that knowledge into one head, a remarkable thing begins to happen – those fields began to blur, change, and become something altogether new.  They hybridize.  And all of a sudden you’re writing business plans like a designer, studying people like a strategist, and designing products like a student of culture. You have the empathy to sense what’s needed before anyone else can, you have the creativity to come up with surprising and elegant solutions, and you understand execution, the ability to get things done. This is a rare set of talents, and, in my opinion, it’s what our society needs most right now.

“Our companies, our governments and our social institutions have just spent the last 75 years creating systems and structures to handle incredibly complicated problems, starting with the storming of Normandy, and working right through the Space Race, the Cold War, and the building of the Internet. Today, if you can ask a good question, our organizations have the power to provide you with a very detailed answer to what ails you. You just need to know the right question to ask.

“In fact, it’s that very question: “What is the question?” that seems to be the nub of the problem these days. In an increasingly turbulent and interconnected world, the ambiguity that surrounds us is rising to unprecedented levels. And that’s a kind of problem that our current systems can’t handle.

“These problems will only increase in our lifetime.  In the next hundred years, people will fight wars over water the way that we fought wars over oil in the last hundred years.  Our healthcare system is bankrupting our government and gradually strangling our economy. The United States now incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than the Soviet Union did under Stalin. And rates of mental depression seem to be doubling every ten years. For all of these problems, there is no straightforward path to a solution. The metrics of success are unclear. And simply applying the accumulated wisdom of an existing field will not work.

“That’s problematic because large organizations are phenomenally good at managing complexity, but they’re actually quite bad at tackling this sort of ambiguity. And the difference between ambiguity and complexity is an important one. A problem of complexity is like playing a game of chess.  It’s hard to play chess; we train supercomputers to do it.  But it’s an incredibly clear problem.  There are only sixty-four squares on a chessboard and thirty-two pieces.  And it’s not like new kinds of pieces appear in the middle of the game with new rules that we hadn’t counted on.  That’s very different from an ambiguous problem.  An ambiguous problem is having your in-laws over to dinner for the first time. That’s a fairly simple situation, but it’s what you don’t know that you don’t know that can get you into trouble. And problems like health care and poverty and entertainment and joyfulness are challenges of ambiguity, not complexity.  And we’re just not set up to face it.

“But there is an answer to the greatest problems facing our society: people like you.  Because hybrid thinkers are the antidote to ambiguity. Take healthcare for example. Is fixing the American healthcare system a medical problem, a political problem, an economic problem, a social problem, a religious problem, or a technological problem? The answer is “yes.” It’s all of the above. And you can’t solve it simply by getting a doctor, an economist and a priest into a room. That’s the start of a great joke, but not an answer to the problem. Getting these folks together just results in having them talk past each other.

“What we need are people who are adept at deliberately mashing these disciplines together.  We need people like you.  That is the journey that you came to when you joined the Institute of Design.

“But that’s the good news.

“The problem is that, despite our need for hybrid thinking, we live in a world of silos.  A world that actively seeks to squash all of us into narrow boxes. You see, we praise Leonardo da Vinci, but we live in the world of Henry Ford: a world of increased narrowness and specialization.

“Think back to when you were 5 years old. If I had asked you when you were 5 to make a list of all the things that you were interested in, that list might have been 50 or more things.  And by the time you were in sixth grade, that list had been reduced to 20 things.  And by the time you graduated high school, you were lucky if you allowed yourself to be interested in 5 things.

“That’s not by accident.  That was your brain responding to the constant pressure for depth and specialization.  That was you responding to the old saying that “A jack of all trades is a master of none.”  But that’s an old piece of advice.  And some user manuals do go out of date. And yet, we still live in a world that forces hybrid thinkers like yourselves to pretend that your experts in something, design or innovation or whatever.

“The situation is made more challenging because it’s hard for hybrid thinkers to measure their progress. The siloed world has created narrow ladders of success with very clear rungs demarcated to show how far along you’ve moved.  Hybrid thinkers have no such clear ladders.  And sometimes, it’s hard to tell whether you’re exploring something new or simply wandering in circles.

“There is, of course, no greater exemplar of this challenge than Meriwether Lewis.  Lewis was one of history’s greatest explorers.  Indeed, Lewis and Clark led the original expedition to open up the American frontier.  To map territory that had previously been unknown to those of European Descent.  And to ultimately take the first fragile steps in what would ultimately become a century of westward expansion for a new country.  And it all started with that first trip, a trip that Lewis and Clark might not have survived.

“It’s important to note that Meriwether Lewis was selected for the mission precisely because he was a hybrid thinker. As aide de camp and protégé of Thomas Jefferson, Lewis had been schooled in history, cartography, architecture, botany and zoology.  And while his partner James Clark brought to their team the prodigious depth of experience of a life long career in the military, Lewis offered the expedition the broad set of skills that were required to not just make the trip, but make sure that the trip was worth taking.  His job was to learn what was out there.  What this new land was like.  Who its inhabitants were.  What the terrain was like.  And what plants and animals and other wonders awaited American pioneers.

“We can learn so much about navigating ambiguity by considering how Lewis felt in the midst of his journey. Fortunately for us, Lewis kept a detailed diary, not just of his experience, but of the meaning he made of it.  And as luck would have it, Lewis’ crossing of the Continental Divide coincided with his thirty-first birthday.   And so sitting there, at the literal apex of his journey, having successfully avoided drought and famine and pestilence and death at the hands of hostile indigenous nations, Lewis contemplated his achievements.  And he wrote:

“This day I completed my thirty first year. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the happiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation.  I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended.”

“To translate his diary into modern terms, Lewis asked himself, having just successfully explored the continental United States, having opened up the wilderness to a new nation, having written himself into the annals of history, ”Dear Diary, today I turned 31.  And what the hell do I have to show for it?”

“Sometimes, when our career is an act of discovery, our own achievements are not apparent, even to ourselves. And exploring a new continent, can feel a lot like wandering in the wilderness.

“This, then, is my challenge to you. Though there is tremendous excitement today around things like innovation and design, don’t use this excitement as an excuse to build another new silo. We will accomplish little if every government, business, and institution established a department for this new flavor of design. We’ll have just one more group that doesn’t operate well outside its comfort zone or communicate effectively with people outside their silo.

“Instead, go to the places that value you for the hybrid nature of your thinking.  Find places that give you room to think with your entire brain, not just one tiny piece of it. As you head out and make your mark on the world, find or build yourself a haven for other folks who are just as passionate about mashing up previously existing fields of thought as you are.

“Talk about how the diversity of your backgrounds actually changes how you think compared to your siloed peers, and then demonstrate that difference through the power of your actions.

“Continue to feed your head, reading more in what you already know and outside what you know. Maintain the hunger to expand your field of vision to something approaching three dimensions.

“And finally, socialize with other hybrid thinkers. Go where they are, spend time with them, and remind yourselves that you aren’t strange.  Remind yourselves that you aren’t alone.  And remind yourselves that you’re doing something more than making better things, you’re making things better.

“I look forward to bearing witness to the great things that you all will accomplish. May you continue on the intellectual journey that brought you to the Institute of Design. May your successes grow from more to more as your talents are put to the test.  And may the world be enriched as a result.

“Thank you all very much.”

That’s why Ito is such an ideal leader for the organization. The article describes him as a “Drop-out VC,” but I would apply a different label: hybrid thinker. Crucially, he effectively answers a critical question: just how deep should you go in any one field if you want to develop hybridity?

Joichi’s history is prototypical: physics, computer science, DJ, Hollywood producer, venture capitalist, scuba instructor. It’s also clear, more importantly, that he isn’t just an eclectic guy. He consciously tries to mash his experiences together in order to make something new, and he has a great bar for how much he needs to learn to incorporate a new field into his experience:

“It’s not about being a generalist. I like to go deep in a lot of things, but when I do, I like to go deep enough to contribute. If I like scuba, I become an instructor. If I like music, I become a disc jockey. If I like movies, I want to work on a movie set. I don’t become a world class academic in that field, but I get good enough to understand the nuances. And then, because I have experience in so many fields, it gives me a pattern that other people don’t have.”

“Deep enough to contribute.” That’s it exactly. It’s one thing to admire well-designed products. It’s another to learn enough to be capable of making one yourself. Just as it’s one thing to tag along on an anthropological study and it’s another to be capable of creating and conducting one. Unless you go deep enough to contribute, you are, ultimately, a dilettante. That might make you a fun conversationalist, but it won’t actually make you more hybrid.

My colleague Jay Newman, along with several other Jumpsters, recently helped organize our annual Martin Luther King Jr. service day event. It’s a day when we close the office to take part in improving and supporting our local community. With a new video highlighting the wonderful events of the day hot of the presses, Jay asked to share some thoughts with the hybrid community…

Glance at the video above to see an example of hybridity making a difference, as musicians and artists and servants from all walks of life came together to support arts education and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. As Donn Harris, the executive director of the Oakland School for the Arts, shouted to pump up the crowd, “creativity, innovation, and the arts is the language of the millennium.” We couldn’t agree more.

Over the weekend, I came across a fantastic op-ed article in The Washington Post by Heather Wilson. Wilson, in addition to being a former Congresswoman from New Mexico and Air Force Academy graduate, is a long-time veteran of the Rhodes Scholarship selection committee. From this vantage point she has access to some of the best and brightest college students in America. In essence, she sees our future before the rest of us do.

That’s a refreshing and hopeful view, and as decision makers we should now aim to transform Hart’s definition of ‘normal’ into abnormal. When well-rounded college graduates enter a world with well-rounded opportunities, we might find that some of the tough challenges we currently face start to look less messy.

Depending on your point of view, I either had the great pleasure or misfortune of skipping out on CES 2011, easily the largest technology bonanza on Earth. Yet, with plenty of our clients attending and presenting at CES, we had a large contingent of Jumpsters on the ground in Las Vegas this year to take it all in. In addition to meeting new folks and testing out an endless supply of tablet computers and 3-D TVs, our team was there to collect insights and spot future trends.

We’ll continue to add more insights this week. I hope you enjoy!

Not too many days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a short but intriguing article about an emerging breed of museum curators who use a hybrid approach to examine the human experience in past centuries. Their approach stands in contrast to the more typical, single-themed museums that focus on objects from a particular place and time. But what they say about the sort of knowledge we can gain from a hybrid exploration of a subject is as valuable for business innovators as it is for museum curators.

To read the full story in the Wall Street Journal, click here.