Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

own right, and its ethical foundations mean that its own methods gain moral authority
over the research practises of other collaborating disciplines.
The public media might be seen as providing a set of structures independent from
those of business, government and academia, but media scrutiny does not appear to be
favourable to innovative interdisciplinary enterprises. The uncertainty of outcomes
that is inherent in innovation, together with the ethical and political drivers that often
motivate interdisciplinary initiatives, make them open to misunderstanding and hostile
critique.
Geoff Crossick 34 relates contemporary media interest to the moral causes that were
understood to underlie public health and other social problems in the 19th century,
both in the development of public health, and the construction of departmental
divisions in government that persisted through the 20th century.
In contemporary media and politics, it is just as likely to be the case that moral
accusations will carry authority in the public arena, rather than evidence derived from
multiple specialist disciplinary perspectives - because those multiple interests do not
have an established professional community to promote them.
In technological innovation, the public are generally cast in the role of users of the
technology. This apparently assumes a consumerist model of innovation. This is
somewhat inadequate as a description of government innovation, as it denies agency
to the public both in conceiving / influencing policy and also in potential
contributions to delivery. It is even more inadequate if we are to recognise models of
creativity in which users help to construct the product (user-led innovation), or where
knowledge is generated in encounters between public and research rather than through
knowledge transfer.
Policy directives encouraging interdisciplinarity present the exchange of knowledge
between researcher and user as a relationship between science and society (the
public). The social sciences and arts often come to stand for the society that must be
consulted in the process of scientific and technology research. For example, the
Council for Science and Technology 2001 report ‘Imagination and Understanding: a
Report on Arts and Humanities in Relation to Science and Technology’ states:
The greatest challenges for UK society – globalization, inclusion (or the development
of a society in which all individuals are or can be included in the process of reflecting
on, participating in, and evaluating change), and the impact of science on society – are
all ones in which the arts and the sciences need each other, and are needed in the
formation of government policy (Council for Science and Technology 2001:14).
And under the Treasury’s Science and Innovation Framework the key ambition of
‘greater responsiveness of the research base to the economy’ combines
interdisciplinarity with the role of the user in a single policy statement: “for
34 Expert witness report
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 59