Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

Despite the resistance to new boundaries that is offered by some individuals, the
boundaries of an existing discipline, defined for example by its current literature,
show the scope and nature of claims that a discipline makes in a domain. So for
example, social science and medicine claim different knowledge of, and insights into
the issues of the elderly within a given social context. These boundaries provide a
stable jumping off point to explore combined perspectives or, indeed, the generation
of new perspectives. As a new discipline such as gerontology arises, it develops its
own boundaries that become a stable point from which to contribute to interaction
with other organisations, as well as imposing the characteristics of a silo itself.
Membership of a new field provides a community within which social capital can
develop, as the base for new sets of trust relations within a new subnet arises out of a
group of collaborators or interdisciplinary team. These relations might be traceable
through the creation of new literatures, but may also rely on tacit knowledge that can
be acquired only through physical residence within a group. In any case, the evidence
we repeatedly heard was that this takes time. Just as a particular interdisciplinary
enterprise takes time to develop trust among members of a team who have crossed
boundaries to come together, so the evolution of a larger knowledge community takes
time, as new reserves of social capital are developed. This requirement to spend time
together means that new inter-disciplines often coalesce around a particular
geographic locality, perhaps gaining historic identification with the place in which
they arose.
It is an open question whether the subsequent reporting of such newly discovered
perspectives within one discipline or the other will constrain the further development
of such perspectives. There is also the risk that the disciplinary reporting of such new
insights will hide them from other disciplines. How many medical science academics
track the latest social science research in their domains of interest?
If successful, new inter-disciplines develop their own structures, methods and
standards of evaluation. These may follow a lifecycle that results in the creation of a
new discipline, a lifecycle that is comparable to the development of new businesses,
or even of social constructs such as new religious movements:
� They originate as the motivating idea of a new project, addressing a specific
problem
� They continue through the personal commitment of a leader
� They develop as a community of peers who ‘jump ship’ to the new interdiscipline
� They become a fully-fledged discipline whose origins are forgotten (e.g.
biochemistry)
New inter-disciplines, once established, will quickly construct their own criteria of
assessment by which admission to, and advancement within, the elite of their
particular community will be governed.
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