INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTICE OVERVIEW

The work of this program area is the raison d'etre of the Hybrid Vigor Institute. To date, there has been very little focused inquiry regarding the components and factors that drive interdisciplinary projects to success or failure.

The goal of the Interdisciplinary Practice program area, then, is to make explicit what works and what does not work for interdisciplinary research. We will do so by various means, including the development of methodologies and measurements for conducting interdisciplinary work, as well as chronicling examples and case studies and conducting social network analyses on a wide range of projects — in private as well as public sector organizations and universities — which cross disciplinary boundaries.

Our commitment to this program area springs from the knowledge that a new methodology is critical in an era where the complexity of problems has overwhelmed traditional, disciplinary methods for solving them. While the potential for "being interdisciplinary" is enormous, the reality is that few researchers have the knowledge or the tools to approach a problem using interdisciplinary methods — even given the ubiquity of global networks which now allow researchers to connect, rather than protect, the knowledge they produce.