Dive Brief:
- A new paper from researchers at Harvard and Stanford seeks to fill a gap in the research about what makes interdisciplinary teams work well. They argue the importance of paying attention to the way interactions and emotions factor into a type of study that is currently a favorite of funders.
- Inside Higher Ed reports "Shared Cognitive-Emotional-Interactional Platforms: Markers and Conditions for Successful Interdisciplinary Collaborations," published in Science, Technology and Human Values, finds traditional success markers, like citations, are not the key for interdisciplinary researchers in the social, national, and computational sciences.
- Using interviews with researchers in nine networks funded by two institutes and a foundation, along with other research, the authors found 82% of respondents mentioned cognitive factors in defining success of interdisciplinary teams, 77% mentioned interactional markers, and with emotional markers, 58% cited collective intellectual excitement as a key element of a successful collaboration.
Dive Insight:
Funders are looking for interdisciplinary teams to solve the most challenging problems of our time. Understanding what makes them work, internally, is important. The paper from Harvard and Stanford researchers creates an analytical construct for starting that conversation.
Supporting interdisciplinary teams along the cognitive, interactional, and emotional spheres could help colleges and universities foster greater success and set them up for additional funding. When it comes to cluster hiring, which is becoming more common but can be seen as lagging based on its potential, administrators can benefit from understanding the group dynamics necessary to engage in personally and professionally satisfying interdisciplinary research.