Leland Hartwell* 
 

An Open Space event serves as catalyst to create pathways for integrating separate research disciplines. 
 

 I have been practicing the esoteric art of yeast genetics for 30 years. Geneticists search for mutant organisms in which a gene has become defective, and from the consequences we reason what role that gene plays 
in the cell. 

 Repeating this process over and over again has led to a sophisticated understanding of the yeast cell. About ten years ago it became apparent that yeast genes and human genes are very similar. Often a human gene can 
substitute in a yeast cell for the yeast gene. This means that most of what we have learned about yeast applies to human cells and to human disease. For example, the genes that control cell division are often altered in cancer cells, and yeast is teaching us a lot about cancer. Which brings me to Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC). 

 I moved to FHCRC about a year ago because I am interested in how we are going to understand human biology and disease. Part of the understanding will come from the basic sciences, from people like myself who study yeast or fruit flies or worms. We also have to find out directly what human genes do, which comes from the clinical sciences. In the clinic we find the direct consequences of gene mutation in the human. But even that 
is not enough. To understand human biology we also have to understand the diversity of the human population, which requires population or public health sciences. I believe the next decade will see a synthesis of the basic, clinical, and population sciences that will lead to a new understanding of human biology and disease. 

 How and where will the synthesis take place? Few institutions are strong in all three disciplines. But FHCRC is, and that makes it an ideal environment for the synthesis. However, there is a problem. The disciplines of basic, clinical, and population sciences in our medical institutions have developed independently for decades. They have distinct cultures. The values, paradigms, methods, and vocabularies are all different. The training programs for students are separated, and few students are trained in more than one discipline. This means that there are very few individuals capable of making the synthesis even when the methods and data enable it, because there are almost no scientists who understand all three disciplines. 

 We need to change the culture so that people from different disciplines understand one another, collaborate, and train students together. This would generate a new breed of students who see how all three discplines 
contribute to understanding a problem, students who are capable of making the synthesis. 
 

The Retreat 
 

I came to the FHCRC with the idea of facilitating communication between the disciplines. My first act was to have an Open Space retreat on "Integrating Basic, Clinical, and Epidemiological Sciences to Understand 
Human Biology and Disease." People asked, "Who would the speakers be? What would be the agenda?" I told them there would be no list of speakers and that they would create the agenda. Most of my colleagues were very skeptical. Nevertheless, 120 faculty, students, and staff from all four divisions attended a two-day retreat. All of the senior leadership at the Center were there. I had been advised not to invite the adminstration but 
did nonetheless. They turned out to be key participants. 

 The moment of truth comes on the first morning when people are invited to stand up, write what they care about on a piece of paper, and annouce it to their colleagues. I lay awake the night before wondering if anyone 
would stand up. Not to worry. Right away there were half a dozen people writing out their messages and queuing up to speak. To give a flavor of the session here are some of the topics: 
 
 Specific ideas for joint mentoring 

 Can we set up an effective cross-divisional seminar/ course series? 

 Creating an information environment to facilitate and stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration 
 
 One center versus four competing divisions 
 
 Attitudes and respect across divisions 
 
 Creating a nonbureaucratic administration that is supportive, simple, and coordinated 
 
 How will this new way to organize our science help us communicate better with the public? 
 
 Myelodysplasia-opportunites for collaboration among divisions 
 
 How will we know when we are making significant progress in this endeavor? 
 
 I began to see the magic of Open Space. Here were more than 100 busy people, few of whom would have shown up for a one-hour meeting on any one of these topics, spending two days discussing them. Something profound happens to our sense of commitment when we stand up in front of our peers and announce what we really care about. 
 

Cross-Disciplinary Initiatives 
 

A number of cross-disciplinary initiatives have taken root in the six months following the retreat. The graduate and postdoctoral students organized a seminar series that meets once a month and moves around to different divisional sites. One student presents his or her group's work, and students from other disciplines interrupt with questions about why the speaker thinks that way and does things like that. 

 One of the themes to emerge at the retreat was that people did not know what those in other divisions were doing-and they were interested in finding out. In response, our librarian, Eve Ruff, intensified her efforts to get web pages on the Internet for each laboratory. 

 Two faculty members, John Potter from Public Health Sciences and Paul Neiman from Basic Sciences, organized a dual-mentored training program. The idea is that a student would have two mentors from different 
divisions and work on a research problem at the interface of the disciplines. The Hearst foundation donated $ 100,000 to get the program started. 

 A group of students and faculty organized a center-wide cancer course that interweaves speakers and subjects from the three disciplines. A faculty member in clinical sciences has arranged for students in the basic sciences to accompany clinicians as they make their rounds with patients on the bone marrow transplant ward. Some minicourses, workshops, and lectures have also occurred. 
 

Maintaining the Energy 
 

In the last six months the energy at the Center seems to have shifted, at least among some people, from polite skepticism to enthusiastic participation. Now the issue is, How do we keep fanning the flames? To effect significant change within the culture many people need to become leaders, and the community needs to maintain an ongoing dialogue. Bert Hopkins, a student in the Antioch University leadership program who 
attended the retreat, puts it this way- How can the organization become a continuous open space? He suggests that the way to achieve this is to incorporate the rituals of Open Space in the daily life of the institution. 

 Hopkin's concept, that the Open Space process uses a number of rituals that are important for empowering people to act on what they care about, suggested that it might be possible to adapt the rituals to circumstances 
other than a retreat, the only format in which I had experienced open space. The issue was to understand the essence of the rituals in a way that could be generalized beyond the stereotyped form they take in an Open Space retreat. Anne Stadler, an Open Space facilitator, suggested that there are five essential rituals: 

 1. Calling the circle. This is crafting and issuing the invitation to all stakeholders for a learning exchange on what has heart and meaning for you and your organization. In our Open Space retreat, I called the circle by announcing the topic for the retreat and by inviting faculty, students, and staff to participate. 

 2. Opening the circle. This involves creating a shared intention. At the Open Space retreat, Anne Stadler asked me to stand up and share why I had chosen the particular topic for the retreat. I told my story- how my 
career had led me to realize that this was now the next step in our science and that I had come to the Center to help realize that goal. Then I asked everyone there to help by taking responsibility for what each of them cared about. 

 3. Marketplace. The marketplace is where human exchange occurs. In an Open Space retreat we create a marketplace for dialogue. People are invited to come to the center of the circle, announce to their colleagues 
what issue they care about, write it on a piece of paper, and paste it on the 'agenda" wall. This act is an invitation to their colleagues to engage with one another in dialogue-about the issue. Everyone who wants 
to announce an issue is invited to do so. Meeting times and places are assigned to topics and most of the one to three days is spent in breakout sessions discussing these topics. Normally, the facilitator and the convener play little role at the marketplace. The results of these discussions are posted on a "news board" so everyone can read the outcomes. 

 4. Reflection. This is the time for sharing learning. At the end of each day at an Open Space retreat the entire group gathers once again in the circle, and each person is invited to speak about his or her experience during the day. 

 5. Closing. A closing acknowledges that we have completed something together. At the Open Space retreat this occurs at the end of the retreat and can be as simple as thanking everyone for being present. At our 
retreat we had a big cake with the logo of the Interdisciplinary Research and Training Initiative. 

 The challenge for me now is to see if these rituals can be used to support an ongoing dialogue at FHCRC. It is relatively easy to translate the rituals into a variety of meeting formats. However, I believe that effecting significant change within a culture of 2,200 employees residing at three different sites will require more than effective meetings and retreats. We will need to find a way to have Open Space be part of a daily culture in which everyone can participate. Who calls the circle? How do we create a shared intention? Where is the marketplace? How do we share our learning and acknowledge our closings? I don't know the answers 
to these questions, but I feel that the formulation of the process in terms of these five rituals will permit us to find a way. 
 

Leland Hartwell is President-elect of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, an American Cancer Society Professor of Genetics at the University of Washington, and a member of the National Academy of 
Sciences. He can be reached at 206-667-5670. 
 

*1 would like to thank Harrison Owen for having the courage to bring the chaos of Open Space to the world of human organization, Bert Hopkins for suggesting that Open Space Technology could be viewed as rituals that are adaptable to other settings, and Anne Stadler for being an ever-present guide through my leadership challenges at the FHCRC and for formulating Open Space Technology in terms of rituals for communication.