Integration and implementation sciences (i2S) – Integration and Implementation Insights

Why research needs complexity entrepreneurs

October 6, 2026October 6, 2026

By Gabriele Bammer and Jean Boulton.

authors_gabriele-bammer_jean-boulton — 1. Gabriele Bammer (biography)
2. Jean Boulton (biography)

What is required to improve the understanding of research teams about the complexity encountered when investigating real life situations? How can they effectively embrace the paradoxical, elusive dance―the irreconcilable, intrinsic tension―between order and disorder, form and formlessness, and certainty and uncertainty? What is involved in research better supporting those intent on, or tasked with, acting skilfully in this complex world? Would a new research role―that of complexity entrepreneur―help?

We have coined the term “complexity entrepreneur” as a shorthand way to describe the attributes required to respond effectively in a world that is complex: ie., systemic, patterned and particular to context, and where newness often emerges in ways that cannot be predicted.

In this i2Insights contribution, we outline the key attributes of a complexity entrepreneur, based on Jean’s work. We then briefly describe the contributions of complexity entrepreneurs to research teams tackling complex problems, combining Gabriele’s and Jean’s work. Our aim is to test the water to see if others would also find benefit in distinguishing this newly-coined role of complexity entrepreneur.

Three dimensions of context

July 7, 2026June 30, 2026

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021 — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

By Gabriele Bammer.

In research tackling complex societal and environmental problems, what is involved in taking context into account when aiming for more comprehensive understanding of a problem, as well as research support for policy and practice change so that the problem is better dealt with?

As outlined in my work developing Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S), considering context involves dealing with circumstances at three levels:

social or big picture, eg., the historical, political, economic, cultural, geographical and other circumstances
organizational, especially the structure and culture of the research and stakeholder organisations involved
individual, especially the positionality or identity of researchers and stakeholders.

Each of these dimensions of context has widespread ramifications, affecting:

how a problem manifests and is understood, including what is studied and how, as well as the unknowns considered to be pertinent
what actions are likely to be considered and to have a chance of being successful.

Tenth annual review

January 13, 2026December 16, 2025

By Gabriele Bammer.

This is the tenth annual “state of the blog” review.

What are the major achievements of i2Insights for 2025? What have been the main themes of the contributions made? How do these reflect the aims of i2Insights?

This is the last post for 2025. We’ll be back on January 13, 2026 and already have a number of great contributions to start the new year.

Achievements

We celebrated three major achievements in 2025.

1. Our 10th anniversary

In November i2Insights marked its 10th birthday as a global, comprehensive, living toolkit.

We are particularly delighted that INTEREACH (Interdisciplinary Integration Research Careers Hub) is devoting its 2025-2026 webinar series to spotlighting themes from i2Insights.

i2Insights@10years: Strengthening a global, comprehensive, living toolkit for tackling complex problems

January 13, 2026November 25, 2025

By Gabriele Bammer.

How can i2Insights best capitalise on its first ten years and the wealth of resources contributed from around the world? How can you contribute to strengthening the i2Insights toolkit?

On 25 November 2025, i2Insights celebrates its 10^th birthday as a toolkit to support researchers and educators tackling complex societal and environmental problems, specifically providing tools to understand and address complexity. It sets out to be:

global, with contributions from around the world
comprehensive, tackling all aspects of addressing complex problems
living, continuing to grow and stay up-to-date.

It’s a good time to reinvigorate the aims, strengthen the toolkit and celebrate achievements.

Why interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are not enough for addressing complex problems

April 29, 2025April 29, 2025

By Gabriele Bammer.

As the importance of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research approaches becomes more widely recognised, how can we overcome the danger that they are seen to be all that is needed for tackling complex problems? What are the limitations of these approaches? What else might be required?

My starting point is that improved understanding of, and action on, a complex societal or environmental problem usually requires a number of research questions to be addressed. Different questions require different kinds of research approaches. Let’s illustrate this by considering the following complex problem:

As effort goes into making cities more sustainable, how can we incorporate illicit drug users into a more sustainable city X?

Ninth annual review

January 14, 2025December 17, 2024

By Gabriele Bammer.

This is the ninth annual “state of the blog” review.

As we wrap up another year of i2Insights, what are the key issues to reflect on in our nine year history? What have been the highlights of year nine? What changes are underway or planned?

Moving forward globally

A key issue to reflect on in our nine year history is how well i2Insights is achieving its goal of being a global resource. In tackling complex problems through Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S), transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science or other approaches, I have always thought that we have a unique opportunity to advance globally, combining experience from around the world. This would make us different from most disciplines and fields, which were first established in the Global North and then exported to the Global South.

Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) 3.0: An updated framework to foster expertise for tackling complex problems

February 24, 2025April 16, 2024

By Gabriele Bammer

How can researchers interested in tackling complex societal and environmental problems easily find and draw on what they need from inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and a range of other ways of combining disciplinary and stakeholder perspectives in order to bring about improvements? How can the necessary expertise be fostered and supported in a systematic way?

These are the questions that I have been addressing for more than 20 years in considering whether a new discipline – Integration and Implementation Sciences or i2S – could provide a way forward. i2S 3.0 is the third conceptualization of this discipline and the current version is summarised in the figure below.

At this stage in its development, i2S is focused on providing a framework and conduit for sharing concepts, methods, processes and other tools that are currently fragmented across inter- and transdisciplinarity, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and other approaches.

Eighth annual review

January 12, 2024December 12, 2023

By Gabriele Bammer

Which i2Insights contributions inspired you in 2023? What did you learn that was new and how did it help you in tackling the complex societal or environmental problems you focus on? What would you like to see in 2024 and beyond?

One of the delights of curating i2Insights is learning something from every blog post. Another is the personal interactions involved in broadening the global community of contributors, introducing fresh voices and fresh insights, alongside those who are more seasoned contributors.

In this last blog post for 2023, I survey three of the year’s many highlights and what they mean for the operation of i2Insights:

integration and synthesis as an emerging ‘hot’ topic
re-introducing “golden oldies,” ie. tried and tested tools
increasing the number of countries represented by contributors, with an accompanying focus on decolonisation.

Seventh annual review

February 27, 2026December 13, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

This annual end-of-year review presents the highlights from 2022 and examines how i2Insights is progressing in building a global community and a repository for sharing research tools to tackle complex societal and environmental problems.

There is currently no other repository that provides easy access to a range of research tools for addressing complex problems in ways that bring together systems thinking, transdisciplinarity, action research, post-normal science, implementation science, design thinking and many more approaches.

Progress is in the right direction, but the i2Insights team is keen to go further and faster. How can the number of contributions and readers be increased? What would you find helpful for i2Insights to do more of or differently? How can we promote productive discussions on more contributions? If you have thought about contributing but have not, what’s stopping you?

This is the last blog post for 2022. i2Insights returns on January 10, 2023 (Australian time).

i2Insights as a repository

February 27, 2026July 5, 2022

By Gabriele Bammer

How is Integration and Implementation Insights (i2Insights) shaping up as a repository of resources useful for tackling complex societal and environmental problems?

i2Insights has two major purposes:

connecting a community of researchers to each other, and
building a repository or knowledge bank of resources.

i2Insights has set out to achieve both purposes using the format of blog, with short, easy-to-read contributions from researchers located anywhere in the world, and with encouragement to peers to comment. We have sought to summarise these purposes in the tagline for i2S:

A community blog providing research resources for understanding and acting on complex real-world problems

Sixth annual review

February 27, 2026December 21, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

As the blog enters its 7th year, it is time for the annual review of how well it is meeting its aims of:

sharing concepts, methods and other tools for tackling complex societal and environmental problems and acting as a repository of those tools
being a global vehicle for exchange, discussion and network building to strengthen use of those tools.

All the trends are in the right direction, providing impetus to keep expanding the base of contributors and coverage of key topics. If you have developed a relevant tool or use an existing tool in a new way, I would love to hear from you. Comments on blog posts are always valuable. And, of course, feedback and suggestions are welcome.

This is the last blog post for 2021.

What is needed to institutionalise transdisciplinarity?

May 29, 2024August 3, 2021

By Gabriele Bammer

Author - Gabriele Bammer — Gabriele Bammer (biography)

What are the indicators that transdisciplinarity has been institutionalised? How close is it? What still needs to be done to achieve institutionalisation?

Transdisciplinary teaching and research are becoming more common in universities and a range of research organisations. So how will we know that transdisciplinarity is an integral and accepted part of the research and higher education scene, nationally and internationally?

I suggest that there are two primary criteria:

The expertise required to undertake transdisciplinary research is recognized and codified
Acknowledged transdisciplinary experts are given an equal voice with established disciplines when research and higher education policy are made and when funding is allocated.