Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

interest in securing a conventional career - and the word ‘passion’ occurs regularly
from our expert witnesses and in the literature.
However, a special characteristic of leading interdisciplinary teams is that a degree of
humility and openness is required, in order to recognise and adopt insights coming
from other disciplines. Although charisma and passion are important, a competitive
nature can be counter-productive, and leaders must be able to recognise, accept and
celebrate successes that did not arise directly from their own work or vision.
Some expert witnesses described this as feminisation, and as being in direct contrast
to an ‘alpha male’ style of leadership that is counterproductive in these contexts. The
personality and styles of collaboration that we report are more stereotypically
feminine than those normally found in organisational contexts. This was reported both
in the government sector and in the academic sector, and has previously been
recognised in formulation of strategy for the Cambridge Crucible network (Blackwell
& Good 2008). It may be sufficiently rare in business contexts that we simply did not
encounter it, but may have great potential.
This kind of team leadership should be distinguished from the roles that such leaders
play within organisations, including mavericks, brokers, and boundary spanners.
Within the team, a combination of personality types will also be needed. Eileen
Woods 38 characterised these as visionaries, creatives, managers and administrators.
6.3.2 Brokers
In Burt’s model of social capital in networks, brokers are those who create links
between subnets. Brokerage is a characteristic skill of leaders of innovative
interdisciplinary enterprises, but also an important element of the capacity resulting
from those initiatives, and the qualifications of team members to participate in them
and exploit opportunities.
6.3.3 Mavericks
Mavericks are likely to be those who are involved in day-to-day challenge of the
status quo within their apparent disciplinary affiliation. They do not subscribe to
conventions, and as a result are not regarded by their disciplinary colleagues as ‘real
players’ in that discipline. Their maverick status is, however, central to their own selfimage.
They are skilled, but in ways that do not receive credit within a single discipline. They
must be able to create ‘wormhole’ relationships to alternative networks, even if not
structured as brokerage. They have more holistic approaches to problem description
(described by David Robson 39 as an orientation toward ‘design’). They are likely to be
38 Expert witness report
39 Expert witness report
Innovation and Interdisciplinarity 66