Collaboration readiness of transdisciplinary collaborations
Author: Eva Kalmar – Science Education & Communication, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Collaboration has become the most supported form of scientific research, funding agencies prefer transdisciplinary international collaborations. Today, scientific inquiry is almost unimaginable without research groups from different scientific domains working together due to the growth of knowledge, high specialization of scientific domains and quickly changing technology. The scientific problems to be solved are complex in nature as are the social aspects of these challenges. The formation of transdisciplinary coalitions may sounds straightforward since we all tend to think that we know what collaboration is or means, but the success of these alliances is not in all cases guaranteed as well as the deployment of science communication processes.
The factors determining the success and effectiveness of transdisciplinary and intersectoral collaborations are spanning across different (personal, interpersonal, organizational, technological and socio-political) levels, making the management of these kinds of projects an ill-defined and complex problem. These collaborations create new expectations, alter roles and shift communication practices for its members. The collaborating partners have to adjust to new social, organizational and management settings, and adopt to the new collaboration-facilitating technologies. Organizations that lack the ability of and adaptive culture of sharing and collaborating have a large potential to resist to these adjustments and adaptation processes, and limit the effectiveness of the collaboration as a whole.
We propose, that next to the technology readiness levels, collaboration readiness levels of research teams, organizations or companies can be measured and needs to be used within innovation processes. In this Idea in progress session, I would like to present our preliminary results of the Science Communication research within the Dutch Blockchain Coalition. A clear example of business to business type Science Communication happening in an uncertain world of an uncertain technology, performed by uncertain engineers, business developers and policy makers in opaque collaboration processes.
The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.
Presentation type: Idea in progress
Theme: Science
Area of interest: Investigating science communication practices