Processes – Page 29 – Integration and Implementation Insights

Harnessing analogies for creativity and problem solving

November 2, 2023September 13, 2016

By Christian Schunn

What is an analogy? How can analogies be used to work productively across disciplines in teams?

We know from the pioneering work of Kevin Dunbar (1995), in studying molecular biology labs, that analogies were a key factor in why multidisciplinary labs were much more successful than labs composed of many researchers from the same backgrounds. What is it about analogies that assists multi- and interdisciplinary work?

The advice that follows comes from a decade of research involving intensive analyses of hundreds of hours of interdisciplinary science and engineering teams, following the minute-by-minute processes of the teams, and using advanced statistical techniques to look for robust patterns in behavior over time and across teams. In general, our research has shown that creative teams generate twice as many ideas per unit time when they use analogies than when they do not.

So, what is an analogy?

Where are the stakeholders in implementation science?

August 24, 2022September 8, 2016

By Allison Metz and Annette Boaz

authors_allison-metz_annette-boaz — 1. Allison Metz (biography)
2. Annette Boaz (biography)

Should implementation science make more room for consultation, collaboration and co-creation with stakeholders? Would finding more active roles for stakeholders in implementation science be a promising approach to increasing the use of research evidence for improvements in policy and services?

The goal of implementation science is to promote the sustainable implementation of research evidence at scale to improve population outcomes, especially in health and human services. Nevertheless, the mobilization of research evidence on the frontlines of health and human services has been quite limited, especially in public agencies serving the vast majority of consumers.

Who sets the rules around co-creation?

November 29, 2023September 1, 2016

By Lorrae van Kerkhoff

When we talk about co-creation, co-production, and co-design as exciting and productive alternative ways of approaching collaboration, it often doesn’t take too long for the conversation to turn to the challenges. Barriers, roadblocks, and disincentives appear and are lamented, or perhaps we celebrate that they have been overcome in a research-practice equivalent of the triumph of good over evil.

For every project the triumph may look a bit different – from the support an innovative funding agency, to a policy-maker or practitioner who understood the value of research, to the dedication, energy and sheer persistence of people who enjoy working together – the solutions are many and multi-faceted. These achievements should indeed be celebrated, and the lessons from them should be harvested.

But is there more to this story?

Making predictions under uncertainty

August 24, 2022August 25, 2016

By Joseph Guillaume

Prediction under uncertainty is typically seen as a daunting task. It conjures up images of clouded crystal balls and mysterious oracles in shadowy temples. In a modelling context, it might raise concerns about conclusions built on doubtful assumptions about the future, or about the difficulty in making sense of the many sources of uncertainty affecting highly complex models.

However, prediction under uncertainty can be made tractable depending on the type of prediction. Here I describe ways of making predictions under uncertainty for testing which conclusion is correct. Suppose, for example, that you want to predict whether objectives will be met. There are two possible conclusions – Yes and No, so prediction in this case involves testing which of these competing conclusions is plausible.

Why are interdisciplinary research proposals less likely to be funded? (Reblog)

September 5, 2024August 23, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

The first empirical support for a long-standing complaint by interdisciplinary researchers was recently published in the leading journal Nature. The Australian National University’s Lindell Bromham, Russell Dinnage and Xia Hua showed that interdisciplinary research is less likely to be funded than discipline-based research proposals (Nature, 534, 684–687 (30 June), DOI: 10.1038/nature18315).

They cleverly applied a technique from evolutionary biology that examines relatedness between biological lineages, using a hierarchical classification of research fields rather than an evolutionary tree. The relative representation of different field of research codes and their degree of difference were used as a proxy measure for interdisciplinarity.

The results, based on 5 years of data from the Australian Research Council’s Discovery program, are robust and are unaffected when number of collaborators, primary research field and type of institution are taken into account.

What does it mean?

Advice to graduate students on becoming “translational”

February 11, 2025August 18, 2016

By Alexis Erwin

author_alexis-erwin — Alexis Erwin (biography)

In an earlier post on this blog, Mark Brunson posed the questions: How does an ecologist become “translational”? What training is needed to venture beyond the lab or university and to engage with the potential beneficiaries or users of research? Here I offer my own thoughts as someone who started working to “become translational” halfway through a traditional ecology Ph.D. program.

Although the focus of this blog post is on translational ecology and on specific resources for graduate students in the U.S., I suggest the ideas are more widely applicable.

Social science identities in interdisciplinary research and education

September 5, 2024August 11, 2016

By Eric Toman

What does it mean to include ‘a social scientist’ in a team tackling complex problems? Here I focus on complex environmental problems and how biophysical and social scientists work together. I’m curious if social scientists face the same issues in other problem areas, such as health.

Things have improved since my early academic career, when I was often asked to justify why a social scientist deserved a seat at the table when discussing environmental questions. It seemed that even supportive natural scientists were motivated to engage their social science colleagues only to ‘fix’ some type of problem caused by people (e.g., politicians, decision-makers, managers, the “general public”).

While it’s now normal for social scientists to be included, they tend to be lumped together, unlike the biophysical scientists who are differentiated into a range of disciplines with relevant specialization areas.

A process model for teaching interdisciplinary research

September 5, 2024August 9, 2016

By Machiel Keestra

How can we effectively teach interdisciplinary research to undergraduate and masters students? What is needed to encompass research ranging from cultural analysis of an Etruscan religious symbol to the search for a sustainable solution for tomato farming in drying areas? Given that there is no predetermined set of theories, methods and insights, as is the case with disciplinary research, what would an interdisciplinary textbook cover? How can such a textbook accommodate the fact that interdisciplinary research usually requires students to collaborate with each other, for which they also need to be able to articulate their own cognitive processes? Understandably, a textbook for interdisciplinary research must focus in a rather general sense on the process implied in such research.

In teaching more than 15 cohorts of undergraduate and masters students at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies (IIS) at the University of Amsterdam, who are conducting research projects in interdisciplinary teams and with a strong emphasis on empirical research, we have developed an IIS model. This model is arranged in four research phases: orientation, preparation, data (collection and analysis) and finalization. The key tasks in each phase are summarised in the following figure.

Creativity in co-creation

September 5, 2024August 4, 2016

By Annette Boaz

Twenty years ago, at one of the first research workshops I held for stakeholders, a participant from the local community put up his hand and asked when we were going to start making something. I obviously looked confused so he picked up the workshop flyer and pointed to the word ‘workshop.’ “You make things in workshops don’t you?” he asked.

At the time, I took this as a lesson in choosing your terminology with care when working with diverse groups of stakeholders. However, on looking back I wonder if I missed something else. Was I so pre-occupied with my own standard practices of meetings that I failed to see that his comment might have been as much about my ways of working as my choice of words?

Fast forward to our first meeting of the SESYNC Co-creative Capacity pursuit in April 2016 in beautiful Annapolis, Maryland, USA. We are talking about co-creating knowledge for service improvement, but are we about to fall in to the trap of developing ‘business as usual’ approaches drawn from our own professional practices? However, the conversation takes a turn and we are talking about drama, art, dance and (in my case) building with LEGO.

In praise of multidisciplinarity

September 5, 2024August 2, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

What characterizes multidisciplinary research? When is it most appropriate? What does it take to do it well? Multidisciplinarity often gets a bad rap, being seen as less sophisticated than interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. But does it have its own important role in dealing with complex social and environmental problems?

Multidisciplinary research has two primary characteristics:

different disciplines independently shine their light on a particular problem, and
synthesis happens at the end and can be undertaken by anyone.

Unlike interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, there is no attempt to agree upfront on either a problem definition or on how the different perspectives will be brought together.

Art and participatory modelling

August 24, 2022July 21, 2016

By Hara W. Woltz and Eleanor J. Sterling

authors_mosaic_hara-woltz_eleanor-sterling — 1. Hara W. Woltz (biography)
2. Eleanor J. Sterling (biography)

What can art contribute to participatory modelling? Over the past decade, participatory visual and narrative arts have been more frequently and effectively incorporated into scenario planning and visioning workshops.

We use arts-based techniques in three ways:

incorporating arts language into the process of visioning
delineating eco-aesthetic values of the visual and aural landscape in communities
engaging art to articulate challenges and solutions within local communities.

The arts based approaches we use include collage, drawing, visual note taking, map making, storyboarding, photo documentation through shared cameras, mobile story telling, performance in the landscape, drawing as a recording device, and collective mural creation.

The interplay between knowledge and power / La interacción entre el conocimiento y el poder

September 5, 2024July 14, 2016

By Cristina Zurbriggen

An English version of this post is available

La mayoría de los recientes enfoques para abordar problemas complejos no incluyen la dimensión política. Por otra parte, la ciencia política, así como los estudios de política pública y de gobierno contemporáneo han realizado escasas contribuciones al tratamiento de los procesos de toma de decisiones desde dinámicas complejas.

¿Cómo podemos desarrollar marcos innovadores que incorporen la dimensión política? ¿Cómo podemos articular la producción conocimiento considerando también la forma en que pensamos acerca de la política, la rendición de cuentas y la responsabilidad social? En concreto, ¿cuál es la dimensión política del proceso de co-creación de conocimiento y cuáles son las implicaciones de la participación política, la experimentación y el aprendizaje colectivo?