Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

interdisciplinarity as presented to a training session for NESTA Crucible fellows 46 . It
draws attention to the ways in which disciplines may be subordinated to each other,
rather than presuming additive or critical contributions. It also describes the policy
‘logics’ by which social scientists are expected to contribute to technology research,
whether by representing user needs for new product designs, or by providing a model
of social accountability that might protect technologists from more disruptive
critiques. The paper recommends approaches for improved policy support of
interdisciplinarity, which map closely onto our own findings, regarding the range of
possible outcomes, the difficulty of assessing those outcomes in existing disciplinary
terms, and the substantial periods of time over which such enterprises develop and
bear fruit.
13.1.3 Interdisciplinarity in the UK
Griffin, G., Medhurst, P. and Green, T. (2006). Interdisciplinarity in Interdisciplinary
Research Programmes in the UK. Research report from the EC Framework 6 project
‘Changing Knowledge and Disciplinary Boundaries Through Integrative Research
Methods in the Social Sciences and Humanities’ (CT-CIT2004-506013, 2004-7)
Available online from
http://www.york.ac.uk/res/researchintegration/Interdisciplinarity_UK.pdf
Although based on interviews with members of only two interdisciplinary
programmes, this report identifies a number of the dynamics that we have observed.
As we do, they prefer not to define Interdisciplinarity too closely, finding that their
respondents talked more of ‘crossing disciplinary boundaries’ than ‘trans-’ or ‘post’disciplinarity,
and that collaborative research is a fundamental dynamic. The analysis
makes thematically grouped observations with regard to funding bodies, the structure
of programmes, the management of interdisciplinary teams, the research experiences
of those employed in such teams, the personality characteristics of successful
interdisciplinary researchers, and the career structures available to them.
13.1.4 A political critique of the design imperative
Thrift, N. (2006). Re-inventing invention: new tendencies in capitalist
commodification. Economy and Society 35(2), 279-306
This paper offers a rather dystopian perspective on current trends in capitalist
economies, describing a new kind of capitalist zeitgeist resulting from changing
relations between companies and consumers, and the commodification of the
consumer’s own experience in the face of shifts in global economies of
manufacturing. The focus on design as a base for technological innovation results
46 The NESTA Crucible scheme was created subsequent to NESTA contact with the
Cambridge Crucible network, although there has been little further contact between the two
organizations until the start of the current study. This can be a source of confusion.
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 113