scientific breakthroughs

by Kenneth Rudich    

Part 1 explored the what and why of interdisciplinary studies: how it differs from disciplinary thinking, and its usefulness for unearthing insights that might otherwise remain elusive.       

This post looks at specific examples to reveal its relevance beyond the classroom.           

a benefit to science       

Interdisciplinary studies have been used to chart new frontiers in science.  The
field of cognitive neuroscience, for example, combines cognitive psychology
and neuroscience.       

According to Harvard Professor Howard Gardner, cognitive psychology
attempts to study the mind  — that is, how humans engage in mental manipulation. 
Neuroscience, on the other hand, studies the brain — the actual neural activity
that occurs in the cranium.  He characterizes the former as being like the
software in a computer and the latter as more like the hardware.           

The difficulty associated with trying to combine these two fields of study  
may not seem readily apparent to those unfamiliar with the core intellectual
differences that separate them.  For a scientist, however, these differences
can make this challenge somewhat akin to the problem of trying to fit a
square peg into a round hole.  To this day, says Gardner, “…the integration of
the two disciplines is by no means complete;” and he concedes that many
scientists have chosen to remain rooted in their home discipline rather than
attempt to negotiate the intellectual leap that is necessary to facilitate such work.                     

But there are scientists who have been able to make the intellectual leap and
combine the two into one domain of study known as cognitive neuroscience.
Through their work, they have gained a better understanding of the 
relationship between the mind and the brain.  They believe these findings will
bode well for future advancements in science and medicine.   

back down to earth  

The same objective of combining different perspectives has been translated into
other practices as well.       

One involves open-source thinking, particularly as it pertains to product and process
development.  A notable example of this is the development of computer software
via an open-source model, which relies on a community-based approach for enhancing
the capabilities of a software application.  This differs from the centralized approach of a
company formulating the software entirely in-house; rather, open-source decentralizes
the development process by taking contributions from outsiders.  This tapping of diverse
perspectives has yielded a development process that is both rapid and effective.       

Another example, called knowledge brokering, has been transforming the way global
companies develop new products.  It has led to the coining of the term “open innovation.” 
Professor Corey Billington and co-author Rhoda Davidson define it as “a systematic
approach to seeking external ideas from people in a variety of industries, disciplines,
and contexts and then of combining the resulting lessons in new ways.”  Basically, it
boils down to borrowing ideas from others who have faced and solved similar challenges
elsewhere; and then adapting or re-purposing those solutions to fit the task at hand.            

other applications for interdisciplinary studies

The challenges do not have to be large and formidable to make interdisciplinary
studies a fruitful alternative.  Training people how to think and interact in this manner,
sometimes referred to as lateral thinking, can make a material difference in almost
every form of enterprise.        

Consider the current needs of the labor market, for instance.  Employees who
perform higher value work, what economists call tacit interactions, can also use the
benefits derived from an interdisciplinary approach to thinking.  Such interactions
typically involve the ability to manage non-routine tasks – like sizing up a complex
situation and then making context-based decisions for correctly handling it; or
mobilizing loosely coupled teams of people with different backgrounds, skills and
expertise into a fluid workflow; or promoting a cycle of continuous improvement
and rapid innovation within a work process.  Many workers fall into this category,
not the least of which include managers, sales people, customer service
representatives, and more. (To read more about the current labor market,
see “The Current State of Future Workforce Needs.”)
 
In reality, the expanded view of an interdisciplinary approach can help all
individuals gain a fresh perspective, even in areas traditionally known for
specialization.  Professor Richard Florida cites the emergence of a “creative
class” of workers — comprised of scientists, engineers, university professors,
poets, novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, architects, designers and
others for whom creativity is essential to their livelihood — as the barometer
of where things are going.  The task of the creative class, says Florida, is to
“produce new forms or designs that are readily transferable and broadly useful
– such as designing a product that can be widely made, sold and used; coming up
with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many cases; or composing music
that can be performed again and again.”  Inspiration born of a larger vision or
broader understanding can give such specialists a leg up for translating their
knowledge into creative outcomes.           

summary

It is evident we have arrived at a time in history where there is ample room for
interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary studies to stand
alongside the conventionally standard practice of disciplinary studies, without
one necessarily crowding another. Each will serve a purpose, and all will
contribute to the benefit of the greater good.  

Related Posts:

Creativity Management: The Value of Tacit Knowledge

interdisciplinary

by Kenneth Rudich

What does interdisciplinary studies actually mean, why have these programs become so pervasive in academia, and what is their connection to the real world?
 
Academic programs constructed around the concept of interdisciplinary studies have recently gained considerable traction in higher education.  Nor does the trend end there.  Similarly new and equally afoot are terms like multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies, with each striving to carve out a niche in its own right.  All three appear poised to have a substantial impact on what we study, how we learn, and how we work.
 
This does not mean to suggest the age-old practice of engaging in disciplinary
studies will go away anytime soon, however.  To be sure, it almost certainly
never will.  Instead, it will remain intact and continue to function much as it
always has, right alongside these newer approaches.  The underlying expectation
is that each form of academic inquiry will make its own unique contribution
to our overall understanding of, and knowledge about, the contemporary world
in which we live.   

what’s the difference between disciplinary and interdisciplinary?

A discipline focuses on burrowing deeper and deeper into a specific area of
study, ever trying to extract more information about it, usually while paying
little attention to its relationship with anything else.  Like snowflakes, no two
disciplines are exactly alike in design.  Each represents a small fragment
of the bigger reality that surrounds it.  The goal is to develop a large degree
of expertise about a very very small area of specialization.
 
Harvard Professor Howard Gardner couches it this way: “…disciplines are separate
for a reason; traditionally, at least, one did not need the same skills to study
physics that he or she needed to study biology, for example, because the two
disciplines were geared to ask and answer different questions, and used
different methods.”
 
As one enters the realm of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and
transdisciplinary studies, almost the exact opposite occurs.  In this case, the
goal is to actively seek out and explore interrelationships among the
disciplines as a way of better understanding the world-at-large .  This trend,
reports Robert M. Diamond, President of The National Academy for Academic
Leadership, responds to the desirability for “integrating knowledge:
synthesizing and reintegrating knowledge, revealing new patterns of meaning and
new relationships between the parts and the whole.”  Emeritus professor James
Brian Quinn characterizes it as “previously unassociated matrices of thought.”
 
Though there are some distinctions that differentiate interdisciplinary,
multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary from one another, all three share the
same objective of forging meaningful links across the disciplines, to discover
insights that otherwise might not — or probably would not –  get noticed.  They
collectively represent a significant shift from the detached thinking of
disciplinary studies to the connectedness of interdisciplinary studies.    

the why of interdisciplinary studies

 As the world marches forward into the 21st century, it faces the reality of
having to wrestle with challenges that have gone from being difficult to
downright complex and intellectually demanding.  Variously described as
multi-dimensional, non-linear, unscripted, or non-routine, these challenges
will impose themselves upon us, and they themselves will be imposing.   

Take, for instance, the present-day embodiment of the sustainability movement.
Arizona State University President Michael Crow defines sustainability as “the
intersection of environmental, economic and societal stewardship.”  The
aspiration is to create a scenario in which these three become jointly
compatible, as opposed to one doing well at the expense of another.    

Achieving true sustainability, on a global scale, will require a comprehensive
effort to reverse an already wayward progression on many fronts.  No one
area of expertise alone can possibly encompass it all.  One idea, for example,
is to stop depleting the earth of natural resources by trading the insidious effects
of extractive technologies for the kinder, gentler touch of renewable technologies.
You may recognize it as “going green.”  Sustainability expert John
Crittenden describes this challenge in even broader terms.  He advocates
the “development of technologies that are ecologically sound, economically
viable, socially just and humane.” 

The mosaic-like complexity of dilemmas such as this illustrate exactly why
interdisciplinary studies have become so prevalent in recent years: because
they provide a method for integrating diverse perspectives that otherwise tend
to stand in isolation from each other.    

Many universities have developed interdisciplinary programs expressly
for this purpose — to give experts from different disciplines a central place for
collaborating on commonly held goals.  The hope is to cover all the angles and
intricacies associated with a given challenge, and thereby take into account the
full sweep of implications that come with any given action or response.  Professor
Helga Nowotny notes, “If joint problem solving is the aim, then the means must
provide for an integration of perspectives in the identification, formulation and
resolution of what has become a shared problem.”  As Professor Francois Tadda
points out, “No discipline knows more than all disciplines.”     

how well has it been working so far? 

In part 2, I’ll share how these concepts have been embraced in both the academic
world and the real world.  You might be surprised by the influence they have already
had on indviduals and organizations alike.

manage non-routine tasks

by Kenneth Rudich

The labor market is squarely in the midst of experiencing radical change, and it will have a significant impact on future workforce needs.   

For the past thirty years, companies have been realizing tremendous boosts in productivity by reengineering and automating their core processes, then outsourcing everything else.  While early adopters of these practices frequently garnered a competitive-edge by being first, the ability to duplicate these strategies have since made them too commonplace to produce an advantage for anyone anymore, thereby forcing those in industry to seek new avenues for achieving competitive advantage.  This has resulted in an awakening of how important it is to be talent-rich with knowledge workers.   

the higher value worker

According to Bradford C. Johnson and his colleagues James M. Manyika and
Lareina A. Yee, reengineering, automating, and outsourcing eliminate activities
that prevent employees from undertaking higher value work.  For employers,
this has had the dual effect of bypassing the need for certain kinds of employees,
while precipitating a need for another kind of employee, in what might be
characterized as an evolutionary pattern that dates back to the industrial age.
Johnson and group have organized this evolutionary pattern into a progressively
graduated scale of worker categories (the predominant activity of the work
determines the category a given worker falls into):   

•   Transformational workers: extracting raw materials and converting them into
    finished goods, like those found in production jobs;
•   Transactional workers: interactions that unfold in a generally rule-based
    manner and can thus be scripted or automated;
•   Tacit workers: more complex interactions requiring a higher level of judgment,
    involving ambiguity; and drawing on tacit, experiential knowledge, and
    creative capacity.

Today’s most valuable worker belongs to the tacit category, performing what
economists call tacit interactions.  These interactions occur around the need
to get a bead on a complex situation and then make context-based decisions
for correctly handling it.  For instance, managers, sales people, and customer service
representatives may be required to orchestrate activities across an enterprise
network in which the workflow is comprised of both internal and external sources
of labor and resources.   

This is where the modern-day notion of the knowledge worker comes into play.  In
such a fluid environment, the skilled performance of this work is harder for
competitors to duplicate because it rests with the talents and abilities of
individuals to manage non-routine tasks, and to build trust and rapport among
loosely coupled teams of people with different backgrounds, skills, and
expertise.
 
The objective is to mount a collective effort that leads to achieving or
maintaining competitive advantage.  Doing so will rely on the capacity to
leverage opportunities for innovating how the work is accomplished — that is,
to provide added-value (or enrich the knowledge asset) by searching, monitoring,
learning, and devising ever-better solutions.
 
The ultimate is to move past merely orchestrating processes to orchestrating
innovation, wherein each spin on a concept uncovers a new and better way of
doing something, and that realization in turn stimulates another round of
innovation and growth.  In his book “The Free-Market Innovation Machine,”
economist William Baumol of Princeton University argues that this, simply, is
the nature of capitalism: “…innovative activity — which in other types of
economy is fortuitous and optional — becomes mandatory, a life-and-death matter
for the firm.”
 
These management ideas are hardly new or novel, says Scott Beardsley.  After all,
the labor market has always had workers who perform tacit interactions.  “But the
ever-increasing growth in their number and value,” he says, “is driving
companies to adopt such ideas more quickly and deeply.”   

A 2005 report issued by Johnson and his colleagues reinforces this assertion.
They note, “During the past six years, the number of U.S. jobs that include
tacit interactions as an essential component has been growing two and a half
times faster than the number of transactional jobs and three times faster than
employment in the entire national economy.  To put it another way, 70% of all
U.S. jobs created since 1998 — 4.5 million or roughly the combined workforce of
the 56 largest public companies by market capitalization — require judgment and
experience.”
 
They also add, “Workers who undertake complex, interactive jobs typically
command higher salaries, and their actions have a disproportionate impact on the
ability of companies to woo customers, to compete, and to earn profits.”   

individual marketability

As the composition of the workforce continues to expand in this direction,
it becomes evermore necessary for individuals to keep pace with it. 
While knowing something is one form of knowledge, the talent to capably
apply it is quite another.  The latter requires the development of cognitive
skills to go along with the knowing, so as to effect a meaningful integration
of the two.  It’s a matter of continually auditing your own skill set with questions
like what kind of knowledge will keep me current, who needs it or can use it,
how much is needed to remain market competitive, and how can I most
effectively apply it?  

In the end, it’s about satisfying the appetite for a workforce that is
talent-rich with knowledge workers.