What the hell is transdisciplinary research?
Frank Wyatt from Enterprising Partnerships has been pushing me to think about transdisciplinary research as he has been helping the Wine2030 Research Cluster a the University of Adelaide refine its business strategy. I like having these discussions with Frank, partly because we come at these issues from different perspectives. Being of the X-generation I am naturally cynical, and so have a deep suspicion of the re-badging of old terms to look like something new and important (eg. ‘Program Logic’ in environmental management), or a fixation with new ways of doing things at the expense of common sense (eg. a fixation by science managers on ‘collaboration’, instead of ‘outcomes’). Nevertheless, I agree with Frank that science managers need to keep encouraging researchers to look beyond their traditional areas of specialty to discover and invent new ideas and understanding.
I see researchers becoming more interested in working across disciplines, working collaboratively and solving real world problems, but not for the sake of it, to discover new things and do things previously unimaginable. They still work alone and on narrow fields of intense specialty, because break-throughs are found there also. If trans-disciplinary research is going to become more widely adopted, it needs to demonstrate its value, and there need to be tools individuals can pick up to quickly adopt their current expertise to new problem solving processes.
Mike Seyfang’s blog on design, thinking and science describes nicely how transdisciplinary science is a substantially difference science than traditional science collaboration. It requires new skills. In a podcast linked to on Mike’s blog, Tamath Rainsford argues that for transdisciplinary science to succeed, we need “specialising generalists”, people who know enough about a discipline to add value to discussions across a number of discipline areas (eg. Wayne Meyer from University of Adelaide can debate eloquently with economics, agronomists, modellers and soil scientists). She also argues that we need to train scientists with new tools so that they can more effectively participate in transdisciplinary research, such as soft operations research, systems thinking, heuristics, philosophy, working in teams, communication, risk management, decision making processes.
I have seen scientists training their students in these tools for the last 5-10 years, and the number who are is growing. Hugh Possingham, now at the University of Queensland, trains his students in these tools, as well as games theory. His research group is one of the most successful ecological research teams in Australia.
Mike list some common themes that emerge from his reading and thinking on transdisciplinary research. Mikes learnings are in italic, followed by my comments in normal txt:
- Play – a key ingredient in emergent behaviour, playing around with stuff leads to interesting possibilities and great questions. Who resources this stuff? The challenge fopr me is that I need to grow the business. Play must lead to tangible results reasonably soon, or must not distract (too much) from going to where the resources are
- Expand – pure reductionist thinking and methods have served us well in the scientific method and will continue to do so. While we are busy learning more and more about less and less, we should take time out to expand our horizons from time to time. Agree, but again, who is encouraging, rewarding and resourcing? Is this why large research programs are successful over small, short term projects. They give people the opportunity to experiment and play?
- Work at the boundaries – one of the key tenets of Transdisciplinarity is to step outside the comfort zone of a single discipline, go beyond collaboration with other disciplines by working at the boundaries. Warning: will expose one to risk and possibly the need to develop new language. (worth it). I’ve seen some of the most exciting ideas for research invented around a table when two specialists meet for the first time. It is beautiful to watch.
- Embrace Risk – learn to fail cheaply and often. You have described my life.
- Open Co-operation – pass it forward, share. The best minds do this. They are not afraid to give ideas away. Because they know they have too many for one lifetime to resolve.
- Swim up-stream and be counter-cultural. I’m not sure this relates to trans-disciplinary science, but it makes old rebels like Mike and I feel smug saying it.
- Trans-disciplinary does not replace traditional research – is an added component. Let’s be careful about telling over-worked, under-paid scientists that they need to throw away their old models and adopt our new great ideas on how they should be doing research. These are new tools to add to the researchers amoury, along with statistics, gell blocks and coffee.
- Speed the Process of Innovation through prototypes, enabling more breakthrough. I have been slow on the uptake on this. I have been resistant to the idea of investing development funds on research, but perhaps if targeted cleverly, will lead to good returns in terms of new business.
Would love to read responses to these thoughts.
Written by Paul Dalby on 1 October 2009
Paul
It is at the boundaries that you find most speciation- you play and you win or lose isn’t that part of the process of natural selection and being able to adjust to a changed environment. The second point is that hopefully with failure you will only make the mistake once, if you make it twice then there is justification for eliminating that work!
Andrew
Yes, but natural selection is a random process. We want to be more directive, to imagine where the new niches might be and explore them using tools that help discover and invent more efficiently. As a “specialising generalist” yourself, you see where new connections might be made, and encourage the discipline specialists to come together because you have an inkling that they might be able to cross-fertilise ideas. It is more akin to breeding that random selection.
The idea of failing cheaply and often is not to fail at the same thing over and over again, but rather is a plea to not spend too much time thinking through all the things that might go wrong, but instead to give it a go and see what happens. Hopefully in an informed and thoughtful way, much like breeders do by crossing the plants with the best traits, to carry on the analogy from before. In government, it is called “adaptive management”. Thomas Edison used this process to invent the light bulb. Mathematical modellers like Holger Maier integrate this concept into algorithms to solve real world problems faster.
Creating ’space to play’ without killing the business or losing focus is hard but worthwhile. Requires long term view and great ‘air cover’ by senior management. Getting this right was the magic of ye olde Innovation Centre.
What is the greatest risk when one takes a transdisciplinary approach?
Traditional science, if I can call it that, works within a set of paradigms and well-established assumptions that are understood by all in the profession. Whenever, anyone violates one of the well-established paradigms, referees quickly jump on you.
When working among disciplines, however, it is possible for researchers to unintentionally step out-side the paradigm without realising it. In economics, for example, the word “efficiency” is assumed to mean efficiency at the margin. In many other disciplines, efficiency measures average efficiency.
To me the greatest risk faced by those involved in transdisciplinary analysis is that they can violate a convention, paradigm or assumption without even realising they have done AND do it in a way that everyone relying on their work thinks that they have not violated it.
In short, trans-disciplinary research may faces higher risks and require the development of different review processes.
Asking two people, for example, to referee a transdisciplinary research paper may be insufficient. One might need to require that the research is reported differently. Anothr approach would be to require that papers are refereed by at least two people from each discpline. This latter approach, however, would discourage trans-disciplinary research.
At the risk of drowning in academic language I offer a further thought. Imagine if you will all of the patterns that emerge, their related values and behaviours, when one moves along the following:
1. Discipline / Multi-discipline / Transdiscipline
2. Mono-cultural / Multi-cultural / Transcultural (or Intercultural)
3. National / Multi-national / Transnational
I am not certain what conventions Mike refers to, however I do know that we are struggling to evolve new world thinking whilst we are constrained to:
1. multi-nation negotiations such as Copenhagen;
2. innovation is constrained to national innovation systems;
3. cultural integration is constrained to multi-cultural patterns
I want to look beyond the obvious, to move thinking outside of the paradigms that constrain us to conventions and to find the intersections of thinking when we step outside.