Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

obliquely or in passing as their ‘home discipline’ or ‘native discipline’, somewhat as
though it were a first language or a country of origin.
Our literature review did not find prior discussion of this topic. The literature on
interdisciplinarity tends to assume that disciplinary knowledge is explicit rather than
tacit, can be imparted via formal education, and can be articulated when necessary for
comparison to other disciplines. Nevertheless, in our workshops, and in subsequent
testing of this observation, we find that it resonates with those who often work in
interdisciplinary conflicts, including among people who themselves have moved
among many disciplines, that they feel their first academic training has left permanent
traces that influence their intellectual style, wherever they have subsequently found
themselves.
The existence of personal and tacit disciplinary styles may form a natural limit on
pace of disciplinary change, which could only be generational, if it is primarily the
result of early career experiences. This observation also emphasises the importance of
early career opportunities (although this last is not a point explicitly made by expert
witnesses, all of whom were senior practitioners of interdisciplinary innovation).
Finally, if individuals have disciplinary styles that are unlikely to change, then a
diverse team should include a range of such styles in order to achieve different
approaches to a problem (although such diversity will also result in greater tension
within the team, due to goal conflicts).
6.3. Personality
Many of our expert witnesses had been formally trained in more than one discipline,
but had achieved this through conventional training in each discipline, rather than
through a special interdisciplinary scheme. However, they did not necessarily attribute
their skills at interdisciplinary research purely to formal training. Neither did they
make explicit reference to the kinds of training described as ‘transferrable skills’
components of research degrees. On the contrary, the skills most relevant to
successful interdisciplinary innovation appear to arise from personality attributes,
rather than formal training. The appendix to this report, listing aphoristic advice from
the many expert sources we consulted during this project, includes long lists of such
personal attributes.
6.3.1 Leaders with passion and humility
The success of innovative interdisciplinary enterprises does rely critically on
leadership from people having these personal characteristics. As with all leadership,
the relevant attributes include the need to be a competent and persuasive
communicator, offering both collegiality and charisma. In a research context, personal
curiosity, passion and enthusiasm for the subject are essential attributes of intellectual
leadership. Interdisciplinary innovators are enthusiasts - they are not motivated by an
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