Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

intellectual approaches. It is not clear, however, that such innovations necessarily
cross disciplinary boundaries themselves. A ‘land-grab’ may result in the description
of a phenomenon as belonging to a particular discipline, which then retains the
resulting rights of investigation and description. One of our expert witnesses who is a
leader in the currently popular field of nanotechnology noted the dangers of such a
land grab for his own work, by describing how chemistry or physics would cast
different but equally constraining perspectives if nanotechnology is classified within
either discipline. Once those constraints are in place, no matter how tacitly applied,
the opportunities for radical innovation seem likely to be reduced.
Problems may therefore be more mobile than theories, but this is only likely if they
originate outside of the university (in industry for example), and if the person bringing
the problem is also open to the possibility that it might become an object of attention
from people wishing to describe it differently. Once constraints on those dynamics are
in place, no matter how tacitly applied, the opportunities for radical innovation seem
likely to be reduced. Nevertheless, a need for innovation can result from abrupt
change (among our expert witnesses, Stephen Allott described his legal response to a
sudden change of scale in the volume of sales contracts being processed at his
company, such that the previous team structure was no longer effective) 8 . Creative
individuals may welcome the constraints that are associated with a specific problem,
as these demand new responses, preventing established routine approaches.
Novel problem-derived constraints can potentially be of any kind, although once
again, disciplines have a tendency to define and establish ownership of their own
particular kinds of constraint, just as much as they own their specific methods and
explanatory frameworks. Individual researchers embrace the exploration of
phenomena that are new (e.g. nanotechnology) or that are believed to have new
implications (e.g. digital technology for society). In these cases the individuals need
to find institutional or working vehicles that enable them to span the typical
constraints of working within a given discipline. Rodden 9 and Baumberg 10 exemplify
different routes within the range of UK approaches to funding interdisciplinary
academic initiatives, but in each case they needed to establish the legitimacy of their
approach relative to their home disciplines.
The greatest advances in research, those that are celebrated in the media and become
the target of public investment, are described as ‘breakthroughs’. This word offers a
clear metaphor that some kind of boundary must be crossed. A scientific
‘breakthrough’ involves the removal of a boundary that limits knowledge. However,
as we have noted, these limiting boundaries have an essential function: they define the
extent and limits of knowledge in a discipline. The spatial metaphor of a disciplinary
boundary encourages us to think that breakthroughs will happen at the edge of a
8 Expert witness report
9 Expert witness report
10 Expert witness report
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 29