Radical innovation: crossing knowledge boundaries with ...

are expected to be meaningful to the people whose experiences is being studied, and
may also be personally meaningful to the researchers themselves, but care is taken to
allow all those involved to describe their own experiences in terms that are
meaningful to them.
11.3. Snowball sample
The sampling technique used in this project mirrored the nature of the phenomenon,
by setting out to cross disciplinary boundaries, utilise the interdisciplinary networks of
interdisciplinary innovators, and focus on the individuals who lead and manage this
kind of activity. This was in direct contrast to a previous research project - one that
we found valuable in framing our research - that was carried out by the joint national
academies of the USA (National Academies Committee on Facilitating
Interdisciplinary Research, 2005). That earlier study originated in established elite
traditions (the academies themselves), and set out to survey occurrences of
interdisciplinary research by approaching major corporations and leading academic
institutions to report on their interdisciplinary activities. The result was an
institutional view of interdisciplinarity, which quite naturally mirrored the public
policy concerns and funding initiatives that influence the behaviour of large
institutions. An internal study by NESTA has carried out a survey in the UK that was
closely influenced by this American study, and offers an opinion-survey report on the
perception of benefits from interdisciplinarity in the UK (Harrison 2008).
Our own study did not take either an institutional or mass-opinion approach to the
phenomenon. Instead, we worked to identify those who are regarded by their peers as
being national leaders in interdisciplinary innovation. Starting with a few dozen
people who were already engaged in interdisciplinary research networks (recruited
from contacts of our own team), we contacted each person to ask who they regarded
as national leaders in achieving innovation through interdisciplinary work. Each
person named as a national leader was then contacted in turn, asking them the same
question. In successive rounds, the size of the sample grew in ‘snowball’ fashion. At
the close of the sampling phase, we had made contact with around 450 individuals,
and by the end of the project, over 500. Some individuals were mentioned multiple
times, and some institutions were more heavily represented than others (the
University of Sussex, and Goldsmith’s College, for example). However the goal of
this sampling technique was not to achieve closure around a set of individuals or
institutions who were objectively ‘better’ interdisciplinary innovators. Rather, it was a
way to work through the networks and other channels of influence constituting the
phenomenon of interdisciplinarity and innovation, mapping that phenomenon through
encounters with the people that constitute it.
Most of the expert witnesses recruited to participate in subsequent workshops and
field interviews were identified in the process of the snowball sample. However, we
did not simply focus on those who were best connected, or most frequently
mentioned. We took into account the ways in which people responded to the survey
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