Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

One important role for the public purse is to invest in the public spaces and networks
that can support interdisciplinary activity, and build interdisciplinary innovation
capacity. Recent work on innovation (Lester & Piore 2004), points to the importance
of ‘public space’, not solely in terms of the built environment, but in the sense of
somewhere where ‘conversation’ and network exchanges can take place in an
atmosphere of trust, openness and mutual tolerance. Highly competitive
environments, such as markets, may act as a spur to the later stages of innovation, but
they can be inimical to these earlier, exploratory, interdisciplinary stages.
These ‘interpretative spaces’, which include universities and educational institutions,
industrial districts or milieu, and the publicly subsided creative sector, do not grow up
naturally in market economies and indeed it is often the role of public policy, and
public funding, to create them (Knell & Oakley 2007).
In a similar vein, NESTA, and other public realm agencies, may wish to consider
explicitly funding and supporting the creation of a stronger network of
interdisciplinary innovation practitioners. This project has already put in place some
strong foundations to build on in this respect.
The snowball sampling methods used in this study, used to identify those who are
regarded by their peers as being national leaders in interdisciplinary innovation, has
generated a fascinating first stab at creating a roster of widely respected
interdisciplinary innovators – some of whom were networked with each other already
– many of whom were not.
They are a fledging network in the making that could be usefully brought together to
reflect on the outcomes of this research, and to frame potential projects and
approaches across the commercial and public sectors.
Whether or not this is the right next step – the challenge for public makers is to make
smart interventions that will enhance the UK’s broad based capacity for
interdisciplinary activity.
8.5. Training the next generation of interdisciplinary innovators
As we have already seen – interdisciplinary activity is more of a calling rather than a
career choice likely to lead to easy advancement.
Nonetheless, 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.
Our findings suggest key ways in which such training activity could add real value to
the next generation of interdisciplinary innovators. The focus of future training should
be to give researchers the skills to respond individually to unanticipated problems, or
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