Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

that they need to move beyond a narrow focus on instrumental outcomes, and broaden
their palette of metrics devoting more resources to capturing informal as well as
formal outcomes, across a spectrum of outcomes, capacity and processes.
8.3. Educating the broader public sector about the benefits of
interdisciplinary innovation
Our expert witnesses, who are very experienced in working with sponsors and
investors from across the academic, commercial, and broader public sector,
questioned the extent to which the broader governmental and NDPB sector have a
well developed understanding of the scope, character and value creating properties of
interdisciplinary innovation.
There is therefore an immediate need to use studies like this and others, and the
network of interdisciplinary innovation practitioners that this study has helped to
create, to build greater understanding of the value creating potential of
interdisciplinary innovation, and the critical success factors required to make it a
success.
NESTA can continue to play an important role here. It is not agnostic about the value
of interdisciplinary innovation, as it funded this study and deploys interdisciplinary
methods in some of its projects and delivery mechanism. We ask NESTA and other
key sponsors of interdisciplinary innovation to work through the implications of this
study for how they frame and support their own programmes and projects, and work
with each other.
8.4. Interdisciplinary innovation is a social activity requiring
creative spaces & network resources
In the accounts of our expert witnesses, a recurrent theme is the importance of
interpersonal relations to the emergence of new forms of knowledge. All too often an
emphasis on product over process in research policy often fails to account for the
ways in which knowledge is generated through interpersonal relations.
One of our expert practitioners suggested (Crossick) that those wishing to support
interdisciplinary innovation should avoid the use of conventional knowledge transfer
instruments in innovation policy and to focus instead on the provision of ‘creative
spaces’ to foster interpersonal interaction.
The more generalized need to provide for explicit capacity building within
interdisciplinary enterprises was consistently identified by our expert witnesses
testimony on their experience of interdisciplinary engagement.
The policy response here could take different forms.
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