Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

where I do not know and like my neighbours, I might have to hire a house-sitter
instead.
A social network is a group of people who know, like and trust each other. This
network therefore embodies economic value, in the form of social capital. In Burt’s
analysis, organisations like companies are social networks, where much of the day-today
work is done by accumulating and employing social capital. In our own analysis,
the notion of the social network can be extended to all those within a ‘discipline’.
Academic disciplines develop social capital among researchers who know and work
with each other. Government departments, companies and other groups of people who
share particular kinds of knowledge also have social capital. This is one sense in
which the boundaries around a discipline are beneficial. As Burt says, they contribute
to ‘closure’, where those within the boundary recognise that they like and trust each
other more than they do those outside the boundary. Boundaries are therefore ways of
generating social capital.
The challenge for interdisciplinary innovation is that, by definition, interdisciplinary
innovation happens through relationships outside of those boundaries. This is
potentially a threat to the integrity of the boundary, and to the social capital that it
provides. Burt describes those who cross boundaries as ‘brokers’, able to connect
networks, or to trade between different contexts of social capital. He describes gaps or
‘holes’ between the bounded networks, and brokers as people able to make network
connections that span those holes. However, it is important to remember that a
completely uniform network, with no holes, is not a desirable goal. Crudely speaking,
social capital is accrued through closure, and social capital is expended in brokerage.
According to Burt’s analysis, innovation therefore relies on maintaining a balance and
tension between brokerage and closure.
Burt’s relatively formal sociological and economic analysis is consistent with the
qualitative findings from our own research, and is a useful analytic frame for our own
findings. Interdisciplinary innovation must take account of both closure mechanisms,
by which social capital is developed, and brokerage activity, by which boundaries are
crossed. Burt suggests that innovators can be identified empirically, by counting the
network connections in an organisation, and identifying those individuals who span
relatively closed networks. He demonstrates experimentally that such individuals do
in fact produce more commercial innovations, and are rewarded for doing so. We are
not certain that our broader view, across all sectors of the knowledge economy, would
benefit directly from this type of measurement. Nevertheless, when recommending
strategies to enable and achieve interdisciplinary innovation, it offers useful guidance.
5.2.2 The implications of social capital
Trust relationships
Because the outcomes of an interdisciplinary enterprise are uncertain, it is necessary
that all stakeholders have confidence in the likelihood of an outcome, in the processes
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 47