Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

expertise might be better utilised. Thus the aim of the consulting intervention was to
address the issue at hand but also to develop the capabilities of the client (for
creativity and for innovation) by exposing them to the practices of interdisciplinarity.
Gunpowder Park now offers a programme of arts and environmental activities, and is
a base and focal point for the activities of LANS in bringing together artists to engage
with social and environmental issues in collaboration with local government. The aim
is to embed arts and culture in planning practice. Their work is design-oriented, and
includes mechanisms of engagement with the public and working with practitioners
drawn from the creative arts with the specific aim of transforming the public realm.
The transformation of locale thus provides the focal point for specific interventions
that bring together an array of stakeholders and the possibility for project based
collaborative relationships between policy makers, artists and members of the local
community.
3.2.3 The university sector
The university (‘higher education’) sector contributes to innovation in two primary
ways - through education, and through academic research. Each of these is internally
structured along disciplinary lines. In the UK, all university students apply for
courses, and are then registered to study, on the basis that they will become qualified
in a particular academic discipline (mainstream examples include degrees in physics,
history, mathematics or philosophy). Professionally-oriented courses have a
curriculum that is developed in consultation with a professional or regulatory body,
and often licensed by that body, to be recognised as offering approved training for
those entering that professional discipline (for example, engineering, midwifery, law
or medicine).
Academic research in the UK is carried out by the same people who teach
undergraduate courses, alongside contract research staff (most often, recent PhD
graduates, ‘post-docs’, who will move later into a university teaching career) and PhD
students. In most universities, research is organised along the same departmental lines
as the undergraduate degree courses, and therefore follows the same disciplinary
boundaries. The majority of academic research in the UK, including grants to PhD
students and the salaries of contract researchers, is funded by the national Research
Councils. These councils are organised along disciplinary lines: Arts and Humanities,
Engineering and Physical Sciences, Economic and Social, and so on. In general,
career academics, and students seeking funding to undertake a PhD, are expected to
apply to the research council that is assigned to the university department where they
teach, or expect to be taught.
In the academic context, the term ‘interdisciplinarity’ is understood to address the
structural problems that arise from these ways of organising teaching, research and
research funding.
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