Innovation as Boundary Spanning
Talk about innovation often cites the importance of thinking and working across boundaries. Dominant discourses on innovation view collaboration between disciplines as beneficial or even necessary to the process of innovation. But other ways of spanning boundaries that reflect "challenging" or non-dominant viewpoints were also suggested: some interview participants suggested that boundaries between experts and laypeople or between organizations and society at large can be broken down through more democratic or individualistic kinds of innovation.
"Expert-Only"
DOMINANT LENS"I think the innovation would be, on creating the pro- the, the product, based on a very novel technology.”
“And out of this emerged essentially, the area of uncertainty quantification that now is at the root in discussion of almost every science [...] to me that’s innovation. Because what happened was, some partnership that was unlikely got created. And out of it came a whole new field.”
The dominant lens of innovation as expert only says that when innovation does occur in individuals, rather than organizations, it's only in the context of individuals with technical or scientific expertise.
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Challenging Lens“Well, I mean I think our lives are always progressing and when new things occur, that's innovative in its own way. So, in my life as a mother and in a new relationship now after being in the same one for many years, that's innovation in its own way.”
The challenging lens disagrees that only experts can innovate. It says that anyone can innovate, and usually ties this particular kind of innovation to democracy and individualism.
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"Transcending Disciplines"
Dominant Lens“I’m trying to pull together diverse ideas from different fields."
“The problems have got to be something that’s bigger than any, one individual, in any one field. So we like to talk about how we’re moving towards transdisciplinarity as opposed to just interdisciplinarity.”
"It's sort of taking some theoretical ideas from other groups that have published these ideas and actually implementing them in a real system and seeing how that behaves in real life"
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Challenging Lens“What came to my mind is gay marriage. Feels really innovative to me because it's so picked-up steam in this country so fast…”
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This dominant lens of innovation says that innovation involves multi-, inter-, or transdisciplinarity, or combinations of categories of knowledge - such as applying the methods of one field to another.
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The challenging lens of innovation does not privilege multidisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity. This appeared in the data through people talking about innovation by listing innovative things that are not multidisciplinary.
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"Organizational"
Dominant Lens“…that Virginia Tech, has very uh strategically decided to build this capability I’m just the lucky one that gets to do it…. they’ve identified a capability that they think is important outside of Virginia Tech and that can, partner and complement in with what they have."
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Challenging Lens“I think that just like modern times has a power that is so much larger than the individual. I think there's that same dynamic with change and innovation that it doesn't always come from the individual, it's just forces that are at play. It's both I think, the individual as well as this gigantic thing that you can't really stop either.”
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This dominant lens of innovation suggests that innovation occurs most often within organizations, not within individuals. This can be seen in the data by people talking about the ways that organizations innovate.
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The challenging lens of innovation suggests that innovation can reside outside of organizations, too. This can be seen in the data by people talking about individuals as innovative, or even (as in the example above) as innovation existing above organizations.
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The Computational Picture
The three images below are dendrograms, which show how frequently words used in interview data appear near each other. Words that typically appear close to each in the data other share a fork that appears on the left side of the image. The three dendrograms are based on samples of different interview data. All of them show that, despite the interview samples' categorization as largely dominant or non-dominant, the individual words used by the interview participants cannot easily be sorted using the same metric.
Dendrogram of key words of interest in "dominant" microinterviews
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words taken from the microinterviews that were categorized as reflecting the dominant ways of speaking about innovation. The words are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). Even though the words in the image are limited to those appearing in "dominant" microinterviews, non-dominant words still appear and are associated with both typically dominant and typically non-dominant words.
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words taken from the microinterviews that were categorized as reflecting the dominant ways of speaking about innovation. The words are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). Even though the words in the image are limited to those appearing in "dominant" microinterviews, non-dominant words still appear and are associated with both typically dominant and typically non-dominant words.
Dendrogram of key words of interest in "non-dominant" microinterviews
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words of interest in the microinterviews that were categorized as showing the non-dominant ways of speaking about innovation. The words are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). This dendrogram shows that even though these are interviews that are non-dominant as a whole, dominant words still appear.
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words of interest in the microinterviews that were categorized as showing the non-dominant ways of speaking about innovation. The words are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). This dendrogram shows that even though these are interviews that are non-dominant as a whole, dominant words still appear.
Dendrogram of keywords in a key informant interview
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words of interest in one of the key informant interviews. In this case, "improve" and "communities" typically appear very close to each other because they share a fork that appears very close to the left side of the image.
The words themselves are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). This shows that many of the dominant or non-dominant words tend to cluster with each other, while words that are neither strictly dominant nor strictly non-dominant can appear anywhere.
The image above shows a dendrogram of key words of interest in one of the key informant interviews. In this case, "improve" and "communities" typically appear very close to each other because they share a fork that appears very close to the left side of the image.
The words themselves are underlined in a different color depending on whether they are a dominant word (red), a non-dominant word (blue), or both (green). This shows that many of the dominant or non-dominant words tend to cluster with each other, while words that are neither strictly dominant nor strictly non-dominant can appear anywhere.