Teamwork – Page 9 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Theory U: A promising journey to embracing unknown unknowns

November 20, 2025February 25, 2020

By Vanesa Weyrauch

author-venesa-weyrauch — Vanesa Weyrauch (biography)

How can we best live in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world? How can we shift from a worldview that looks to predict and control what is to be done through plans and strategies to being present and flexible in order to respond effectively as unexpected changes take place? How can we be open to not knowing what will emerge and embrace uncertainty as the opportunity to co-create and learn?

One powerful and promising way forward is Theory U, a change methodology developed by Otto Scharmer and illustrated below. Scharmer introduced the concept of “presencing”—learning from the emerging future. The concept of “presencing” blends “sensing” (feeling the future possibility) and “presence” (the state of being in the present moment). It acknowledges that we don’t know the answers. Staying at the bottom of the U until the best potential future starts emerging requires embracing uncertainty as fertile soil.

Transdisciplinary action research: A guiding framework for collaboration

April 4, 2023February 18, 2020

By Steven Lam, Michelle Thompson, Kathleen Johnson, Cameron Fioret and Sarah Hargreaves

authors_steven-lam_michelle-thompson_kathleen-johnson_cameron-fioret_sarah-hargreaves — 1. Steven Lam; 2. Michelle Thompson; 3. Kathleen Johnson; 4. Cameron Fioret; 5. Sarah Hargreaves (biographies)

How can graduate students work productively with each other and community partners? Many researchers and practitioners are engaging in transdisciplinarity, yet there is surprisingly little critical reflection about the processes and outcomes of transdisciplinarity, particularly from the perspectives of graduate students and community partners who are increasingly involved.

Our group of four graduate students from the University of Guelph and one community partner from the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario, reflect on our experiences of working together toward community food security in Canada, especially producing a guidebook for farmer-led research (Fioret et al. 2018). As none of us had previously worked together, nor shared any disciplines in common, we found it essential to first develop a guiding framework for collaboration. Our thinking combined the following key principles from action research and transdisciplinarity:

reflexivity,
participation and partnership,
methods and process, and
integration.

Theoretical framework for open team science / オープンチームサイエンスという考え方

August 11, 2023November 26, 2019

By Yasuhisa Kondo

A Japanese version of this post is available

author yasuhisa kondo — Yasuhisa Kondo (biography)

What is open team science? What challenges does it deal with and how?

What is open team science?

In our experience, projects are commonly disrupted by socio-psychological boundaries, particularly at the initial phase of team building. Such boundaries are often generated by asymmetric information, knowledge, wisdom (wise use of knowledge; Bellingen et al., 2004), values, socio-economic status, and power among actors.

We have developed a theoretical framework that considers open science as an open scientific knowledge production system, which can be interlinked with transdisciplinarity as a driver of boundary spanning to develop a new research paradigm. We call this open team science.

10 tips for next generation interdisciplinary research

April 5, 2022October 1, 2019

By Rachel Kelly

Author - Rachel Kelly — Rachel Kelly (biography)

Can we develop a shared understanding on how to engage in an interdisciplinary setting that will be useful in addressing current and future grand challenges?

Advice provided by interdisciplinary experts from 25 countries, across all continents, and with over 240 years cumulative experience (Kelly, et al., 2019) is combined here into succinct guidance that aims to empower researchers wishing to engage in interdisciplinary endeavors. The ten tips are also summarized in the figure below (focused on socio-ecological researchers).

Using discomfort to prompt learning in collaborative teams

August 15, 2022September 3, 2019

By Rebecca Freeth and Guido Caniglia

authors_rebecca-freeth_guido-caniglia — 1. Rebecca Freeth (biography)
2. Guido Caniglia (biography)

We know that reflecting can make a marked difference to the quality of our collective endeavour. However, in the daily busyness of inter- and trans- disciplinary research collaborations, time for reflection slides away from us as more immediate tasks jostle for attention. What would help us put into regular practice what we know in theory about prioritising time to reflect and learn?

Discomfort sometimes provides the necessary nudge in the ribs that reminds us to keep reflecting and learning. The discomfort of listening to the presentation of a colleague you like and respect, but having very little idea what they’re talking about.

Learning from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research ‘failures’

May 1, 2024August 6, 2019

By Dena Fam and Michael O’Rourke

authors_dena-fam_michael-orourke — 1. Dena Fam (biography)
2. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

What makes interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research challenging? What can go wrong and lead to failure? What has your experience been?

Modes of research that involve the integration of different perspectives, such as interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, are notoriously challenging for a host of reasons. Interdisciplinary research requires the combination of insights from different academic disciplines and it is common that these:

bear the stamp of different epistemologies; and,
involve different types of data collected using different methods in the service of different explanations.

Five principles of co-innovation

August 9, 2023July 16, 2019

By Helen Percy, James Turner and Wendy Boyce

authors_helen-percy_james-turner_wendy-boyce — 1. Helen Percy (biography)
2. James Turner (biography)
3. Wendy Boyce (biography)

What is co-innovation and how can it be applied in practice in a research project?

Co-innovation is the process of jointly developing new or different solutions to a complex problem through multi-participant research processes – and keeping these processes alive throughout the research.

Our experience has been applying co-innovation as a research approach to address complex problems in an agricultural context, however, the principles apply well beyond agriculture.

Co-innovation is most suited to hard-to-solve technical, social, cultural and economic challenges. Such challenges have no obvious cause and effect relationships, as well as many different players with a stake in the research problem and solution. These include policy makers, industry, community members, first nations representatives and others who are involved in the research as partners and stakeholders.

How to support research consortia

March 31, 2022July 9, 2019

By Bruce Currie-Alder and Georgina Cundill Kemp

authors_bruce-currie-alder_georgina-cundill-kemp — 1. Bruce Currie-Alder (biography)
2. Georgina Cundill Kemp (biography)

A research consortium is a model of collaboration that brings together multiple institutions that are otherwise independent from one another to address a common set of questions using a defined structure and governance model. Increasingly consortia are also being joined in cross-consortia networks. How can connections be made across the institutions in individual consortia, as well as in cross-consortia networks, to ensure that such collaborations are more than the sum of their parts?

During 2014–2018 we were involved in the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), which supported four transdisciplinary research consortia involving more than 40 institutions across 15 countries. CARIAA’s aim was to generate new knowledge and inform efforts that build resilience among vulnerable people living in hotspots of climate change.

Collaboration: From groan zone to growth zone

September 11, 2024May 28, 2019

By Carrie Kappel

What is the groan zone in collaboration? What can you do when you reach that point?

As researchers and practitioners engaged in transdisciplinary problem-solving, we know the value of diverse perspectives. We also know how common it is for groups to run into challenges when trying to learn from diverse ideas and come to consensus on creative solutions.

This challenging, often uncomfortable space, is called the groan zone. The term comes from Sam Kaner’s diamond model of participation shown in the figure below. After an initial period of divergent thinking, where diverse ideas are introduced, groups have to organize that information, focus on what’s most important, and make decisions in order to move forward into the phase of convergent thinking.

Navigating that transition between divergent and convergent thinking is the realm in which creativity and innovation emerge, if we let them.

Improving transdisciplinary arts-science partnerships

March 3, 2026April 2, 2019

By Tania Leimbach and Keith Armstrong

authors_tania-leimbach_keith-armstrong — 1. Tania Leimbach (biography)
2. Keith Armstrong (biography)

Collaborations with scientists have become a major focal point for artists, with many scientists now appreciating the value of building working relationships with artists and projects often going far beyond illustration of scientific concepts to instead forge new collaborative frontiers. What is needed to better “enable” and “situate” arts–science partnerships and support mutual learning?

Our research looked at the facilitation of arts–science partnerships through the investigation of two unique collaborative projects, developed at two geographically distinct sites, initiated by artist Keith Armstrong. One was enacted with an independent arts organisation in regional Australia and the other at a university art gallery in Sydney, Australia.

Idea tree: A tool for brainstorming ideas in cross-disciplinary teams

September 11, 2024March 12, 2019

By Dan Stokols, Maritza Salazar, Gary M. Olson, and Judith S. Olson

authors_dan-stokols_maritza-salazar-campo_gary-olson_judith-olson — 1. Dan Stokols (biography)
2. Maritza Salazar (biography)
3. Gary M. Olson (biography)
4. Judith S. Olson (biography)

How can cross-disciplinary research teams increase their capacity for generating and integrating novel research ideas and conceptual frameworks?

A key challenge faced by research teams is harnessing the intellectual synergy that can occur when individuals from different disciplines join together to create novel ideas and conceptual frameworks. Studies of creativity suggest that atypical (and often serendipitous) combinations of dissimilar perspectives can spur novel insights and advances in knowledge. Yet, many cross-disciplinary teams fail to achieve intellectual synergy because they allot insufficient effort to generating new ideas. Here we describe a brainstorming tool that can be used to generate new ideas in cross-disciplinary teams.

The idea tree exercise

Knowledge asymmetry in interdisciplinary collaborations and how to reduce it

January 21, 2026February 26, 2019

By Max Kemman

How can tasks and goals among partners in a collaboration be effectively negotiated, especially when one party is dependent on the deliverables of another party? How does knowledge asymmetry affect such negotiations? What is knowledge asymmetry anyway and how can it be dealt with?

What is knowledge asymmetry?

My PhD research involves historians who are dependent on computational experts to develop an algorithm or user interface for historical research. They therefore needed to be aware of what the computational experts were doing.