Cross-border thinking, system breakthrough

In early winter, a rare cold snap swept across Beijing. Standing in the foundation's newly established "Cross-Border Innovation Lab," Li Xiaoyu gazed at the intricate project relationship diagrams on the wall and felt an unprecedented sense of bewilderment.

The success of the "Organizational Health" project at Xincheng Technology was like a stone dropped into a lake, creating ripples beyond everyone's expectations. In just two months, they received partnership invitations from dozens of industries, including manufacturing, finance, and educational institutions. Each industry has its own unique challenges, and each one is entangled with complex systemic causes.

"Secretary Li, this just won't work," said Zhang Wei, a project manager, wearily rubbing her temples. "The methods we use at tech companies don't work in textile factories. The workers don't need 'Quiet Wednesdays,' they need overtime pay to cover their children's tuition."

The technical director also raised a challenge: "The stress management program we designed for the bank was very satisfying to their HR department, but the business department wasn't buying it at all. Employee mental health always takes a back seat to profit targets."

As solutions move from individual cases to systems, the complexity of the problem begins to grow exponentially.

Li Xiaoyu walked to the whiteboard and wrote down two typical cases she had recently encountered:

Case 1: A large manufacturing company experienced persistently high employee turnover. Research revealed that the real reason wasn't salary, but rather the highly alienated nature of the production line—workers repeated the same actions thousands of times daily, feeling like they were part of a machine.

Case 2: A key middle school experienced frequent student psychological problems. The underlying cause was the singular nature of the education evaluation system—a "score-only" approach that led to self-doubt among students who failed to achieve in exams.

"See?" Li Xiaoyu circled the two cases with a pen. "On the surface, these are psychological issues, but they actually involve production process design and educational evaluation systems. We, with a psychology background, are like craftsmen who only know how to use a hammer; everything looks like a nail."

Just then, the laboratory door was pushed open, and Cuyu walked in, wrapped in a cold air. She had just returned from England and hadn't fully adjusted to the time difference, but her eyes were still clear.

"I heard you've hit a bottleneck?" Moyu took off his coat and walked straight to the whiteboard. "I just encountered this problem at an international forum in Edinburgh."

She shared what she had seen: in Scotland, doctors have begun prescribing "social prescriptions" to elderly people with autism - not medication, but "joining a community choir" or "volunteering in a library for two hours a week."

"The most interesting thing," says Moyu, "is that this prescription was developed jointly by the general practitioner, community workers, and the patient himself. They call this 'co-production'—the providers and recipients of services working together to create solutions."

Real innovation often occurs at the intersection of disciplines, just as mixing different colors produces entirely new colors.

This concept was like a flash of lightning, illuminating Li Xiaoyu's thinking. "We have been defining problems using our own professional terms, but we forget to ask the question: What does this problem look like in the world of the people we serve?"

She immediately adjusted her work methods. The next day, the foundation's team arrived at the manufacturing company with a special mission—not to conduct research, but to experience a day of work on the shop floor.

Li Xiaoyu was assigned to the assembly line, applying screen protectors to mobile phone cases. Over eight hours, she repeated the same exact movements 2,367 times: picking up the case, spraying it with detergent, applying the screen protector, pressing, and then placing it on the assembly line. By the end of her shift, her fingers were numb and unresponsive. Even more terrifying was the feeling of spiritual emptiness—she understood why workers felt so alienated.

At the middle school, the team members experienced a day in the life of a senior high school student: from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., except for eating and going to the bathroom, almost all the time was spent attending lectures, doing exercises, and taking exams. At the end of the day, even the youngest interns felt suffocated.

"I understand now," Zhang Wei said at the review meeting. "Why did the 'mindfulness-based stress reduction' program we proposed fail? Under that high-intensity work and study pace, what they need isn't more 'courses,' but methods that can truly change their situation."

Based on these insights, a new "cross-border workshop" was launched. The participants of the workshop were unprecedentedly diverse: in addition to psychology experts, there were also industrial engineers, educators, urban planners, and even philosophers.

The first workshop was full of tension.

"You psychologists always personalize problems," Professor Wang of Industrial Engineering bluntly stated. "Workers feel alienated? That's because the Taylorist production model itself is inhumane! Instead of teaching them to regulate their emotions, why don't we work together to redesign the production line?"

Professor Li of the School of Education was even more pointed: "Talking about reducing the burden on students under the current college entrance examination system is like scratching an itch with a shoe. What we need is the construction of a diversified evaluation system."

Faced with these challenges, Li Xiaoyu did not retreat. Instead, she became excited: "This is exactly what we need! Please use the wisdom in your respective fields to help us redefine these issues."

The ensuing collaboration exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Industrial engineers have designed a "skill-growth" production line, allowing workers to take on more complex processes as their proficiency improves; educators have developed a "multiple intelligence assessment system" so that every child can discover his or her own strengths; and urban planners have proposed the concept of a "15-minute community life circle" to truly integrate mental health services into daily life.

What surprised Li Xiaoyu most was that the foundation team's expertise proved valuable in another way during this process. When engineers discussed how to reduce the pressure on the production line, psychologists provided research on human attention and fatigue cycles; and when educators designed new assessment systems, theories from developmental psychology became an important basis.

When a profession is no longer an isolated island but a bridge connecting continents, the possibilities for innovation become endless.

Three months later, initial results began to emerge.

At that manufacturing company, employee satisfaction in a pilot department on a new production line increased by 40%, and product quality actually improved. At the pilot middle school, students demonstrated unprecedented creativity and initiative through diverse assessment methods like project-based learning and growth portfolios.

More importantly, this cross-disciplinary collaboration has produced a remarkable "spillover effect." Urban planners involved in the project were inspired to include a community mental health service station in their new district planning, while industrial engineers brought the concepts of human factors engineering back to their own research fields.

At the project celebration party, Moyu looked at the group of people in front of him who came from different fields but were working towards the same goal, and whispered to Li Xiaoyu:

"Remember our first small office? Back then, we thought we could change the world with psychology. Now I understand that real change comes from acknowledging our limitations and proactively reaching out to a broader world."

Li Xiaoyu nodded, her eyes scanning the conference room. She saw psychologists discussing optimization of human-computer interaction with engineers, and education experts explaining the development needs of young people to urban planners. These people, who might never have met in their lives, sat together because of a common goal.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, “perhaps the next mission of our foundation isn’t to provide more psychological services, but to become a hub connecting different fields, allowing change to happen simultaneously at every point in the system.”

Outside, the wind still bit hard, but inside the lab, it felt like spring. In this space that broke down disciplinary barriers, everyone brought their own unique wisdom, just as streams merged into rivers, ultimately flowing toward the vast ocean.

Li Xiaoyu knew this was just the beginning. In this complex world, no single discipline could solve systemic problems alone. But when she saw people from diverse backgrounds sitting together, engaging in passionate discussions toward a common goal, she believed the answer lay in these wall-breaking conversations.

The question itself is interdisciplinary, and the answer should not be confined by disciplinary walls.