Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

6. The Making of the interdisciplinary professional
The perceived value of interdisciplinary research as a basis for innovation has resulted
in public funding for a wide range of interdisciplinary training initiatives, such as
personal development courses, fellowship schemes and on a larger scale,
interdisciplinary masters degree programmes and doctoral training centres. In the
generation of successful interdisciplinary innovators who contributed to our project,
none had had opportunities of this kind in their own training. However, it is useful to
consider the kinds of skill that appear to be particularly valuable in our expert
witnesses’ reflection on their own careers, and the way in which they had developed
those skills.
6.1. Personal qualifications
In conventional disciplines, an established hierarchy makes it very easy for an expert
to enter a new situation with a ‘badge’ of expertise describing a position within that
hierarchy. Expert interdisciplinary innovators do not have this advantage. As a result,
they are likely to present their qualifications in the form of an account of their
personal history.
As evidence of boundary-spanning, this account is often likely to emphasise
differences from those present, rather than commonalities. One expert witness
introduced himself to our social science research team as a computer scientist, but in a
technical context is more likely to introduce himself as a social scientist. Of course,
this claim to an alternative expert perspective can also work as evidence of external
authority, or a licence to criticize (both, in the case of that individual).
Qualification in the professions is especially likely to be mentioned and to carry
weight, both on entry to an academic context (implying practical skills and knowledge
of the ‘real world’ outside the university, in ‘industry’), but also because professional
traditions all have established practices by which multi-disciplinary teams are able to
collaborate on a problem. In our workshops, expert witnesses were most likely to
describe professional design qualifications, though we also had representatives of
engineering, law and business.
6.2. Imprinted disciplinary styles
Individuals often seem to become ‘imprinted’ with particular disciplinary styles as a
result of early life experiences, especially first professional experiences and (for
academics) early experience of higher education. This is not so much a matter of
specific knowledge or disciplinary vocabulary (although vocabulary is also a constant
obstacle). Rather, it is a difference in ways of thinking, manner of approaching a
problem, or the way in which goals are conceived. Expert witnesses referred to this
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