Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

these disciplines to a subsidiary or supporting role in relation to the sciences, reducing
the complexity of internal debates within these disciplines, and conflating the
participation of the social sciences with the actual social processes that these
disciplines reflect upon (Born 2008, Strathern 2004b).
Below we provide a quick overview of five different domains and scales of
interdisciplinarity. This report deals mainly with the first three, although we deal
separately with the divisions between local and national government, between
analysis and delivery, and between departmental boundaries within government.
� Collaboration between different disciplines within academic institutions.
� Collaboration between a firm’s subdivisions or between different firms.
� Collaboration between academia and business (or other external partners).
� Collaboration across sectors (for example between NGO’s, government, and
business).
� Collaboration between different persons, firms or institutions which extend
across national borders.
12.3. Interdisciplinarity as Innovation
The notion of interdisciplinarity has circulated in academic institutions as long as
disciplines have existed, and has gained increased significance in research policy at
several points throughout the twentieth century (Jantsch 1972, Klein 1996, Klein
1999, Klein 2004, Tress, Barbel, and Fry 2004). However, in the current context of
policy concerns about the knowledge economy, it acquires new impetus from its
association with more general processes of collaboration and networking, and the
engendering of relationships between researchers and users. The NESTA report on
‘Barriers to the realisation of creative ideas,’ for example, emphasises the role of
application in processes of creativity and relates this to interdisciplinarity:
Creativity often involves applying knowledge gained in one situation to
another situation. Therefore, being exposed to a wide variety of
disciplines, ideas and even people, from an early age, is more likely to
develop individual creativity’ (New Media Partners 2002:3).
The Cox Report argues that higher education courses should better prepare students to
work with, and understand other specialists. There is too little preparation of scientists
for the application of research in industry, and too little preparation of creative arts
students for wider uses of skills beyond academia. The report proposes the
establishment of ‘centres of excellence’ that provide multi-disciplinary courses
combining management studies, engineering and technology and the creative arts.
The outcome would be executives who better understand how to exploit
creativity and manage innovation, creative specialists better able to apply
their skills…and more engineers and scientists destined for the boardroom
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 103