The puzzle is a wonderful metaphor.

But in addition to that, we probably also need an additional way to think about the motive to solve the puzzle. How about rewards (from funders) for institutions willing to simultaneously collaborate AND narrow their missions? If foundations were fund ONLY projects in collaborative ventures, we'd see several kinds of results, not the least of which would be a decline in competition just for the sake of it and an increase in sector thinking. Let's talk more here and in class about what that kind of thinking would be like and what it might yield.

BTW, to clarify: it was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, not the Philadelphia History Museum (formerly called the Atwater Kent Museum) that put forth the idea for a History Center in Philadelphia in the mid 1990s.