Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

13. Appendix C: Further reading
13.1.1 Report of US National Academies
National Academies (U.S.). Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research,
Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (U.S.), National Academy of
Sciences (U.S.), National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine (U.S.)
(2005). Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research. National Academies Press
This book is a major resource and point of comparison for our work, but based on a
survey of interdisciplinary research (IDR) in the USA rather than UK. It does not
have a specific emphasis on innovation (although innovation is an implicit agenda).
The principal driver for IDR is presented as being the need to address problems that
are fundamentally complex, and that cross disciplinary boundaries.
“We are not students of some subject matter, but students of problems.
And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject matter or
discipline.” (Popper, in Conjectures and Refutations).
The book mostly presents case studies and survey results of IDR in practice, without
returning to the question of how and why IDR works. A chapter of definitions does
set out the reasons it might be necessary, but these are open to question, and certainly
differ from UK priorities (the definitional example of public value from IDR is the
Manhattan Project, which introduces political implications that would be considered
controversial in the UK). The methodology of the study can be compared to ours, in
that it included both national surveys and in-depth interviews of IDR leaders.
However, it does not attempt any of the more reflective and re-formulative elements
of our research. The conditions for success in IDR include the establishment of a team
around a problem, support for flexible work, the need for shared facilities, and the
management and career structures that are likely to assist such researchers. The policy
recommendations are to encourage informality, longer grants, collaborative leadership
and support for career development and mobility. They note the problem with
evaluation of IDR, and suggest that engagement with reflective social science might
be beneficial in future – in this respect, interdisciplinary practice in the USA seems to
lag behind that in the UK, as in the work of networks such as Crucible (Blackwell &
Good 2008).
13.1.2 Logics of Interdisciplinarity
Barry, A., Born, G., and G. Weszkalnys (2008). Logics of Interdisciplinarity.
Economy and Society, 37(1): 20-49.
This paper was prepared during the period of the research described in our own
report, and draws on the authors’ previous collaborations with the Cambridge
Crucible network. Barry used this research as the basis for his own advice on
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 112