132 Int. J. Organisational Design and Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2012

Copyright © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Lessons learned and future directions: designing for multidisciplinarity in collaborative innovation networks (COINs)

Christine Miller Graduate Program in Design Management, Gulfstream Centre for Design, Savannah College of Art and Design, 3116 Montgomery, Savannah, GA31402, USA E-mail: cmiller@scad.edu

Abstract: This paper describes lessons learned through participation in the collaborative online innovation networks (COINs) seminar, a multidisciplinary collaboration involving global virtual team (GVT) projects. The paper is a narrative case study based on insights gained through four COINs seminars. Lessons learned suggest a need for explicit learning objectives that prepare students beyond the use of technical platforms and tools. Significant opportunities for learning are rooted in the multidisciplinary and multicultural context of the seminar and the interactions that occur between GVT members. The case underscores the importance of social learning as a means of identifying and understanding the mechanisms that facilitate or inhibit collaboration at the team level. Insights from the seminar have led us to think about how the linkage between social learning, collaboration, and the knowledge sharing challenges encountered by multidisciplinary global virtual teams might be integrated into a theoretical framework to guide the development of explicit learning objectives.

Keywords: multidisciplinary collaboration; knowledge domains; collaborative innovation networks; COINs; design; pedagogy.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Miller, C. (2012) ‘Lessons learned and future directions: designing for multidisciplinarity in collaborative innovation networks (COINs)’, Int. J. Organisational Design and Engineering, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp.132–148.

Biographical notes: Christine Miller completed an interdisciplinary PhD in Anthropology and Management from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI where she conducted an ethnographic study of process formalisation and the relationship between innovation and formalisation at a Tier One automotive supplier. Her research interests revolve around how sociality and culture influence the design of new products, services, processes, and technologies. She studies technology-mediated communication within groups, teams, and networks and the emergence of collocated and technology-enabled collaborative innovation networks (COINs). She is a Professor of Design Management at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). She participates in several working groups that foster multidisciplinary practice and is a founding member of the COINs conference.

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This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Evolving design/reframing perspectives: the role of COINs in the evolution of a discipline’ presented at 3rd International Conference on COINs, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, HyperWerk Institute for Postindustrial Design, Basel, Switzerland, 8–10 September 2011.

1 Introduction

Issues related to collaboration are among the most frequently discussed topics in organisations today. Multidisciplinarity, the practice of drawing on knowledge from multiple disciplines where each discipline contributes but remains separate, is on the rise (Choi and Pak, 2006). Enabled by advances in information technologies the trend toward collaboration and collective problem solving- situations in which people from diverse backgrounds apply creativity and intelligence to identify and address critical problems- is occurring on a much larger scale than ever before (Gloor, 2011). The value of collaboration across disciplines is gaining recognition (Benkler, 2006; Gloor, 2006; Sawyer, 2007; Sigelman, 2009); however, empirical studies of the processes involved in executing successful multidisciplinary projects and in building multidisciplinary teams, particularly in the virtual environment, are only recently beginning to emerge. Lessons learned in one context or on one project might not be directly applicable to others. Rather than a formula or checklist, organic social processes such as collaboration are realised by nurturing a culture that allows for social learning: open sharing and experimentation within a specific context. This is particularly important when the work involves collaboration across multiple disciplines. What are the conditions that are best suited for social learning specific to multidisciplinary virtual collaboration and how might we create them?

This paper presents a narrative case study of the COINs (collaborative online innovation networks) seminar, an experiment in multidisciplinary collaboration involving global virtual team (GVT) projects. The seminar includes teams from MIT Sloan School of Management (MBA), Savannah College of Art and Design (design management), Witten University (business administration), the University of Cologne (informatics), and Aalto University (software engineering). Students work in self-organised teams and engage in trend analysis, prediction, and viral marketing using web mining and dynamic SNA tools and methods, while gaining valuable insights about global virtual collaboration and about themselves as members of multidisciplinary GVTs1.

According to Gloor (2006, p.4), “A COIN is a cyberteam of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by the web to collaborate in achieving a common goal by sharing ideas, information, and work.” Not all student GVTs do become COINs. Those that do evolve into COINs over the course of the seminar manage to harness the self-motivation of team members and agree upon and channel their energies toward a shared mission and objective. Our experience as faculty who coach and mentor the teams suggests that those GVTs that do become COINs are able to reach a common vision and set of objectives through the development of sharing practices that foster social learning, facilitate collective decision making, and encourage transparency (Gloor et al., 2011; Gluesing, 1995; Gluesing and Riopelle, 2010; Miller et al., 2009). The main questions guiding this narrative resulted from observations of how design students were able to

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articulate and demonstrate the value of their contributions while working with students from non-designers. What strategies do students use, if any, to introduce other disciplines to their tools, work practices, and approach to problem solving? How is it that they learn about the tools, work practices, and problem solving approaches of other team members? Finally, how do successful teams learn to negotiate meaning and collectively work toward a set of objectives?

Lessons learned through participation in four annual seminars highlight the importance of social learning as a key component of the COINs Seminar. Mentoring and observing students during the seminar has led us to think about how the linkage between social learning, collaboration, and the knowledge sharing challenges encountered by multidisciplinary GVTs might be integrated to form a theoretical framework to guide the development of explicit learning objectives. Consequently, another aim of the paper is to identify components of a theoretical framework that can guide further empirical study.

Although the case depicts learning in a university seminar format, there are implications for professional practice (Beyerlein et al., 2001; Gluesing, 1995). A growing number of universities offer courses that provide students with experience in working in teams and on collaborative projects. Some of these schools offer courses that incorporate GVT projects (Miller et al., 2008). The existence of such courses acknowledges the importance of preparing students for careers in which this activity is a part of the professional practice they will encounter. Engaging effectively in multidisciplinary teams at the professional level requires an ongoing awareness of the specific challenges embodied in collaboration between team members from different disciplines since each new project involves a new configuration of people, disciplines, goals, and contexts.

2 Background

Despite growing recognition of its importance, the value of multidisciplinary collaboration has yet to be realised on a large scale. This is especially the case for globally distributed teams, defined as interdependent work groups made up of culturally diverse members from two or more nations who share collective responsibility for decision making and implementation (Cohen and Mankin, 1998; Gluesing and Riopelle, 2010). The additional layers of complexity in virtual environments and the attenuated nature of computer-mediated communication tend to amplify differences. A wide range of factors have been identified as obstacles to multidisciplinary collaboration, including lack of common language, tools, and work practices, concerns over forfeiting disciplinary identities, and loss or dilution of core skill sets (Gluesing, 1995). In addition, the value of any collaborative project is likely to vary between team members making the effort tentative and susceptible to disruption (Miller et al., 2008).

Although collaborative practice is increasing, research on multidisciplinarity remains relatively rare in comparison to other topics (Sigelman, 2009). A recent review of literature on multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity (Choi and Pak, 2006) posits that teamwork involving multiple disciplines is increasingly emphasised in certain fields, for example, in health research, services, education, and policy. However, the authors note that these terms tend to be used interchangeably when they actually have very distinct meanings.

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Multidisciplinarity draws on knowledge from different disciplines but remains within disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinarity analyzes, synthesizes, and harmonizes links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. Transdisciplinarity integrates the natural, social and health sciences into a humanities context and transcends their traditional boundaries (Choi and Pak, 2006).

The criteria for achieving tenure in academic institutions and a bias against multidisciplinary perspectives in established academic journals and funding agencies also present obstacles to the study of multidisciplinarity. A deeper issue that inhibits successful multidisciplinary practice is a tendency to see the world through the lens of one’s own disciplinary perspective and biases. When this is coupled with a lack of understanding and respect for other knowledge domains and knowledge cultures collaboration is stymied or, in many cases, doomed. A general lack of understanding of other (i.e., ‘foreign’) disciplinary knowledge domains and a general disregard for other knowledge cultures can be considered as a lack of cultural competency, which is broadly defined as the ability to interact effectively with people from diverse cultures.2

These attitudes tend to be learned during the socialisation process that occurs around becoming a practitioner in any discipline. And while they can become increasingly embedded over time, they can also be unlearned through professional practice and replaced by attitudes that embrace attitudes such as curiosity about and respect for other disciplinary approaches and knowledge domains. A very effective way of fostering the attitudes that facilitate multidisciplinary/multicultural collaboration is through cross-disciplinary experiences during the education process. However, the quality of the experience is determined in large part by having explicit learning objectives that focus on opportunities to discuss and explore ways of communicating, organising, and negotiating in multiple disciplinary team environments (Miller et al., 2009).

2.1 The COINs Seminar: an experiment in multidisciplinary collaboration

The later approach emerged in the COINs (collaborative innovation networks) seminar. Faculty members that form the partnership for the seminar agree that the overarching pedagogical goals of the course are:

1 To learn techniques and build and use tools for analysing online communities and networks using social network analysis (SNA).

2 To learn how to work in a creative globally distributed multi-disciplinary and multicultural project team (Gloor et al., 2011).

In the seminar, graduate students from four disciplines – informatics, software engineering, design management, and business – and five universities3 form GVTs to address problems posed by clients from private, public, and non-profit organisations. The move to include designers in the seminar was based on the premise that a diversity of perspectives from multiple disciplines and a mix of ethnic and national cultures have a higher probability of generating the most creative approaches to problem identification and problem solution than would a single or similar disciplinary and/or cultural perspective. This assumption is supported by innovation studies indicating that groups and teams composed of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds (heterophily) tend to produce frame-changing or radical innovation whereas groups and teams characterised

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by similarity of members (homophily) tend to produce incremental innovation (Granovetter, 1973; Rogers, 2003; Sawyer, 2007).

This is not to suggest that heterogeneous teams offer a ‘silver bullet’ for problem solving. Rogers argues that the diffusion of innovation requires that some degree of heterophily be present in the exchange of new ideas. However, heterophilous groups face challenges due to their diversity (2003, p.19). Differences in shared meanings, language, and culture make communication difficult. Issues previously stated, particularly, the lack of understanding of ‘other’4 disciplines, present obstacles to team performance. Knowledge domains with distinct epistemologies, or ‘ways of knowing’, produce belief systems, values, and attitudes that in turn produce culture on both the material and cognitive levels. The resulting approaches to recognising and solving problems, tool making, language, and work practices are central to the formation of identity that distinguish ‘Us’ from the ‘Others’ and serve to establish both explicit and implicit boundaries, markers that define either membership or exclusion (Wenger, 1998). Wenger reminds us that “Building an identity consists of negotiating the meanings of our experience of membership in social communities.” The purpose, benefits, and value of identity formation, for example, the shared understandings, language, tools and worldview that facilitate communication, create advantages, certainly in the case disciplinary identity that is under discussion here. Yet research suggests that identity can also present obstacles that result in rigid adherence to prescribed behaviours, practices, and thought patterns that limit an individual’s ability to recognise and articulate problems, which, in turn, severely restricts the range of possible solution sets (Rogers, 2003). For multidisciplinary teams these limitations pose significant challenges to reaching consensus on mission, goals, and objectives, a process that has been identified as critical to team performance (Gluesing and Riopelle, 2010).

2.2 A brief history of the COINs seminar

The first COINs seminar was conducted in fall 2005. Led by Peter Gloor, research scientist at the Centre for Collective Intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, the first COINs seminar brought together faculty and graduate students from the University of Cologne (informatics) and Aalto University (software engineering) in Helsinki. Although informatics and software engineering are distinctly different disciplines, in terms of the balance between homophily and heterophily (similarity and diversity), the groups shared a similar disciplinary orientation.

Since the launch of the COINs seminar in fall 2005 other partners have joined the course, including design management students and faculty from the Savannah College of Art and Design (2008) and MBA students from MIT’s Sloan School of Management (2010). The addition of two additional partner institutions and two disciplines increased the diversity and the creative potential of the teams, but it also increased the operational complexity, especially given the virtual environment in which the teams work.

The structure of the COINs seminar has remained stable over the years5. Students are asked to complete readings covering relevant topics including SNA, swarm creativity, and research papers on dynamic SNA using the tools that are introduced in the course. During the first part of the course all students participate in on site instruction in using the Condor software, a web mining tool used for trend analysis, prediction, and viral marketing projects. In week six of the seminar students self-select the projects that they

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will work on for the remainder of the course. GVTs are formed through the project selection process, creating self-managing COIN-like groups.

3 Literature review

Research and publications from a range of disciplinary perspectives have addressed the challenges of global teams and GVT collaboration (Beyerlein et al., 2001; Gibson and Cohen, 2003; Gloor et al., 2011; Marquardt and Horvath, 2001; Miller et al., 2008). However, research on multiple disciplinary teamwork is limited and available evidence of effectiveness is conflicting (Choi and Pak, 2006; Sigelman, 2009). With the aim of identifying topic areas that might be integrated to construct a framework for further inquiry, this section provides a brief sampling of literature on creativity and performance in multidisciplinary GVTs, the challenges posed by multidisciplinarity and knowledge sharing, and the state of research on multidisciplinary collaboration in design.

3.1 Optimising creativity and performance in GVTs

What are the conditions that facilitate creativity and effective collaboration and performance in GVTs? Research on GVTs composed of members from multiple disciplines is a growing area within organisational scholarship. Gluesing and Riopelle (2010) note that studies have focused on factors that impact team functioning including conditions, team structures, and process of collaboration that have been identified as “building blocks of knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and innovation” (Gluesing, 1995) and on the technologies used by GVTs (Riopelle et al., 2003). They along with other organisational scholars argue that understanding the relationship between these factors and team performance is critical in managing these teams effectively.

In order to evaluate how well various methods (i.e., dynamic SNA, ethnographic and survey research) used to measure team structures, processes and performance aligned in their results, Gluesing and Riopelle conducted an exploratory study that correlated survey data and network data on GVTs. Along with an analysis of survey data6, automated tools were used to analyse both the structure and content of e-mail communication as a means of evaluating team performance. Findings from the study, which included design, informatics, and computer science graduate students, indicated that the ability of GVTs to develop a clear mission and objectives “that all team members could understand and commit to carrying out” was critical in terms of successful team performance. Citing Bell and Kozlowski (2002) the authors note that “organizations that are global in nature” adapt to the shift from production to knowledge-intensive work “and the need for greater flexibility to access knowledge wherever it might be located.”

3.2 Optimising collaborative knowledge networks: the challenge of sharing domain knowledge

The term ‘located’ should not be limited to physical or organisational location, or to specific factual information that might be located in a particular database or accounting system. Rather, location can infer the existence of knowledge in a specific domain (i.e., domain knowledge). For the purpose of this paper domain knowledge is defined as credible, justified, validated explicit or implicit knowledge – information, facts, language,

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descriptions, tool sets, and skills – that is developed by specialist and experts within a particular discipline or human activity7. Because domain knowledge is specific to particular fields it is challenging to communicate to others outside that field. The complexity and ‘ill-structured features’8 (Spiro et al., 1992) of many knowledge domains pose obstacles for communication among members of multidisciplinary teams. The implications for teaching and learning in situations that require multidisciplinary collaboration are significant (Spiro et al., 1992).

Mapping and visualisation are ways of addressing the challenge of communicating domain knowledge and making it more accessible. As advances in information technology has made massive amounts of information available the need to map and visualise knowledge domains has become more compelling. The emergence of multidisciplinary work teams that require knowledge sharing among disparate team member is another factor influencing the attention focused in this area9 (Börner et al., 2003; Shiffrin and Börner, 2004).

Shiffrin and Börner (2004), organisers of the Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of Sciences (2003) use the term mapping knowledge domains “to describe a newly evolving interdisciplinary area of science aimed at the process of charting, mining, analysing, sorting, enabling navigation of, and displaying knowledge in order to ease access to information and make the structure of knowledge evident.” The mapping and analytic techniques10 being developed rely on modern computation technology and greatly extend the reach and speed of human efforts. This work is critical in large-scale mapping of knowledge domains in the sciences. As in the development of early digital knowledge management systems, these efforts are primarily based in the technical fields, specifically information technology. On a much more grounded level, the task of developing an understanding of the social processes that facilitate knowledge exchange and synthesis among team members from disparate knowledge domains continues to be more afterthought than intentional. The implications of this trend do not bode well for a knowledge-based economy.

3.3 Communities of practice: CoPs and COINs

Developing techniques for knowledge domain mapping that facilitate communication, sharing, and meaningful interaction on an interpersonal human-to-human level may provide a solution to overcoming the obstacles that continue to plague many multidisciplinary team projects. Wenger’s (1998) seminal work on social learning provides insight as to the ‘nature of knowing’ and communities of practice, defined as “groups of people who share a concern, set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” [Wenger et al., (2002), pp.4–5]. Communities of practice (CoPs) are ‘knowledge-based social structures’ and have existed since the dawn of human-kind. CoPs are ubiquitous. They range from groups of engineers to gang members and soccer moms and can be long-lasting or relatively short-lived.

The definitions of CoPs and COINs are distinctly different, but have in common that both rely on complex social processes for reaching a common goal, sharing a passion, or solving a problem. Both CoPs and COINs have rules of engagement that guide members in how to interact with each other and employ tacit as well as explicit forms of knowledge. CoPs and COINs both require members to have opportunities to engage with

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other members of the group in building common platforms for communicating and working together. This experience enables them to develop the expertise required to successfully reach the goal, solve the problem, or deepen their knowledge on a particular topic. It is this kind of ‘communal involvement’ that is responsible for accumulating the knowledge on which human society exists, and for generating the new knowledge that society depends on for survival into the future. With so much at stake should we be compelled to give as much attention to the social aspects of the collaborative nature of CoPs and COINs as we do to the technology that enables them to proliferate in an increasingly digitally-connected world?

3.4 Designerly ways of knowing

Although much has been written on design and the design process since 2000, limited empirical research has been conducted on multidisciplinary collaboration within the field. Poggenpohl (2004) notes that “Occurring more frequently and with greater diversity among participants, collaboration is an activity without substantial theory or process development in design; it happens in an ad hoc manner.” This may be due in part to the fact that design has been primarily practice oriented and is a relatively new discipline in the academic sense, particularly in the USA (Dubberly, 2011; Poggenpohl, 2008). The current interest in design as a strategic partner in business, expressed by Roger Martin (2007, 2009), Brown (2009), Esslinger (2009), and others, and the increasing popularity of programs in new fields of design such as design management, service design, interaction design, and design for sustainability indicate the need for specific discussions about the contribution of designers in cross- and multidisciplinary work. And while design programs tend to inform student to expect that they will be working on multidisciplinary teams, relatively few courses that are specifically dedicated to experiential learning in multidisciplinary/multicultural contexts, especially in the virtual environment.

Anthropologist Diana Forsythe (1993) wrote extensively about diverse and often conflicting approaches to knowledge from her experience as a researcher in the artificial intelligence (AI) community. Forsythe suggested that the value of exploring disciplinary differences is not achieved by attempting to reconcile disciplinary perspectives, which it can be argued is impossible, but is rather in making such differences explicit (Miller, 2008). While it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide an in depth comparison of disciplinary perspectives and ways of knowing, providing some information about the particulars of design can be helpful. Design as a discipline has only recently begun to develop a core body of research relative to itself. Describing design through its ‘processes and products’ reveals to an extent the knowledge that is embedded in both the activities and problem-solving strategies of designers as well as the knowledge that resides in the artefacts or products they create. Cross (2007) notes that “Objects are a form of knowledge about how to satisfy certain requirements, about how to perform certain tasks” (p.26). Providing insight into design epistemology, referred to as “designerly ways of knowing”, can be helpful in establishing a point at which a dialog can begin about the nature of knowing (i.e., epistemology) within other disciplines. This would be beneficial in moving multidisciplinary practice forward and encouraging research that builds new knowledge about design and collaboration.

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When epistemology within a particular discipline is made specific it is typically with the assumption that it is for internal consumption, intended for those within the field. This tends to be true not only for design, but for most fields since ways of knowing have meaning only for the initiates. With the increasing need to work across knowledge domains it might well become more important to codify the ‘ways of knowing’ that have evolved over time in many disciplines. This includes “the kinds of things that are important to know, ways of knowing them, and ways of finding out about them” (Archer, 1979).

Figure 1 Designer’s representation of a process model

Source: Larimer (2010)

Idea visualisation is one of the hallmarks of design education. While other disciplines tend to rely on text and/or numbers to communicate, designers develop the ability to visualise complex ideas. Real-time sketching and diagramming enhances right-brain activity and allows designers to effectively summarise issues. When visualisation is done in conjunction with groups brainstorming it empowers and extracts ideas from everyone, and can foster collaboration through shared imagery11. Idea visualisation, or what Tufte (1997) refers to as ‘visual explanation’, is a powerful tool that can be employed to facilitate understanding through the use of visual devices like graphics, sketching, mapping, and story boarding. Tufte (1990) explains that “To envision information…is to work at the intersection of image, work, number, and art” (1990, p.9).

Tufte’s statement provides a direction that addresses the concerns expressed in this excerpt from the introduction to the Arthur M. Sackler (2003) Colloquium on Mapping

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Knowledge Domains: It should be emphasized that, although the extraction and organization of knowledge may form the scientific core of this field, the results will be of little use unless the user can understand and interact with the mapping systems. Knowledge typically is organized along many thousands of dimensions, but a map with thousands of dimensions cannot be used effectively by humans. For this reason, domain visualizations and the ability to interact with knowledge and view it from a variety of perspectives play a critical role (Shiffrin and Börner, 2004). Building new knowledge in the area of design and collaboration will likely include exploring the contributions that designers can make to visualising knowledge domains.

4 Lessons learned

A key difference between the COINs seminar GVTs and naturally occurring COINs that emerge ‘in the wild’ is that COINs by definition are self-organising, “made up of groups of self-motivated individuals” whereas the GVTs are formed under conditions designed for educational purposes. Over multiple years of participation in the COINs seminars we know that students do learn about multidisciplinary virtual collaboration even when it is not specifically addressed as a learning objective. However, when the challenges of multidisciplinarity are not explicit in the curriculum, what students learn is up to chance and tends to be based on their personal experiences in their GVTs. Experience is a critical component of learning (e.g., learning through experience to balance design-by-decision and emergent design).

There is a need for structure in experiential learning: having the technical capability to connect designers in Savannah with informatics specialists in Helsinki and software engineers from Cologne is a great step, but is only the beginning in a much longer journey if the goal is to collaborate on a project in which each individual has the opportunity to make significant contributions to the final outcome. For that goal to be realised participants must develop both competency related to technical aspects as well as in the communication skills that are required to function effectively on teams in which multiple functional and disciplinary orientations are operating. There is also a compelling need for students to be mindful of the unique challenges they will likely encounter in working on teams that are both multidisciplinary and multicultural. Training as to how to function effectively on these teams, which are becoming increasingly commonplace, should occupy a central position in the curriculum rather than left to chance.

From the perspective of design management, we have found that there are three critical lessons that students who participate in the COINs seminar must master in order to maximise their contribution and make meaningful connections with other team members:

1 learning to articulate the value of design in relation to the outcome of the project

2 demonstrating the use and value of design practices and tools

3 managing diversity in environments where multiple knowledge domains are in play.

These lessons, which have emerged over the years during which design students have participated in the COINs seminar, can be summed up as articulate, demonstrate, and integrate. After the first year of participation two of the design students visually

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documented their experience and lessons learned (Figure 1), and proposed suggestions for enhancing collaboration among members of the teams. The final element of the poster identifies three components – people, technology, and content – that must be addressed and balanced in order to create a common context within COINs teams (Miller et al., 2009).

The overall performance of design students within the COINs seminar has steadily improved each year. By making the lessons learned in previous seminars explicit the design students have become better prepared to make valuable contributions in team building, project management, and to the final deliverables of the projects. In the sections that follow each lesson is discussed in detail. While they are presented from the perspective of design, they not intended to be exclusive to design practice, but are intended to provoke discussion about how they might be applied in the context of multidisciplinary collaboration in other fields.

4.1 Articulate

This is perhaps the most challenging and complex lesson as well as the most valuable skill in multidisciplinary collaborative work. It requires that students individually define and internalise the skills, processes, practices, and approach to problem-solving in order to clearly articulate to others the areas in which they can provide unique contributions. Learning to articulate the value of one’s discipline is a process that ideally begins early in a student’s education and training and develops as they gain experience through practice. Articulating the value of one’s discipline entails the ability to explain in concrete terms that are meaningful to others what contributions can be made to the project as well as what processes one can bring to facilitate the delivery of a desirable outcome. For the first few years individual design management students addressed this challenge once they were on their respective teams. By the fourth year of the COINs seminar the students realised that establishing a group identity early in the seminar would give other team members an idea of what they might expect from their design counterparts.

The designers who participated in the 2011 COINs seminar experimented by creating a persona for ‘design management’ that was posted along with their individual profiles on the COINs seminar home page12. Drawing on a technique used in design to represent multiple individuals or groups of people who share common attributes (Cooper, 2004), creating the persona was an exercise that helped the students formulate for themselves the essential elements that contributed to their shared identity (Wenger, 1998) as design managers.

Since the persona included a composite of work samples, professional experience, and areas of interest it gave the designers a concrete sense of who they were and what they had done; in other words, a collective identity that they and their soon-to-be teammates could refer to. It made articulating the value that they could bring to the project a much easier task. But it is not enough to articulate the value of one’s skills; they must also be demonstrated.

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Figure 2 Creating a design management persona for the COINs11 seminar (see online version for colours)

Figure 3 Visualisation of lessons learned: COINs 2008 seminar (see online version for colours)

Source: Miller et al. (2009)

4.2 Demonstrate

Until recently, it has been a common assumption that designers are able to make things ‘look good.’ This assumption typically leads to the expectation that designers can provide

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visual enhancements to a project, and that their contribution as a member of a team will primarily be in terms of decoration and style. Unless through prior experience one has witnessed the power of design this expectation is understandable. As the field of design continues to evolve there is a better understanding and articulation of the potential of designers to add value in many other ways.

A deeper understanding of the power of design comes when designers demonstrate the capacity for idea visualisation, particularly, for visualising complex ideas. More than delighting the eye, the visualisation of complexity engages the mind. The figures that follow provide examples of idea visualisation that were created by designers during COINs seminar virtual global team projects.

4.3 Integrate

The final challenge is to learn how to manage diversity in ways that would integrate the contributions of each of the team members. Gloor (2006) describes this process as ‘swarm creativity’: the particular ways in which collaborative innovation networks composed of members that represent multiple knowledge domains self-organise to achieve a particular goal. Figure 4 depicts how the cumulative results of a ten-week GVT project in the 2010 COINs seminar was integrated to create a coherent visual presentation of the teams’ findings. The visualisation incorporates statistical and textual data and a persona which captures the characteristics of target audience.

Figure 4 Representing data: a composite of findings for a COINs GVT project (see online version for colours)

Source: Marticke (2010)

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5 Next steps

Due to advances in information technology it is possible today for groups of highly motivated people to engage in collaborative innovation to achieve common goals. While evidence from empirical studies is limited, it is widely accepted that the most elegant solutions to the problems that face the global community are those that integrate the contributions of members that represent diverse knowledge domains. The question remains, how might we ensure that collaboration within groups and teams comprised of disparate disciplinary perspectives is not left to chance? How might we make explicit the processes that are most likely to enable collaborative innovation within multidisciplinary teams?

6 Conclusions

This paper has presented a narrative case describing lessons learned through participation in multidisciplinary collaboration involving GVT projects that are conducted during the COINs seminar. The lessons learned underscore the importance of creating opportunities for experiential learning in multidisciplinary/multicultural contexts to increasing our understanding of “new organisational design principles and rules” and the mechanisms that facilitate and/or inhibit collaboration. Based on observations and insights gained through participation in four annual COINs seminars, an additional aim of the paper was to identify components of a theoretical framework to guide a cross-disciplinary initiative to develop explicit learning objectives that focus not only on learning technical tools and skills, but also on learning the so called the ‘soft skills’ necessary for developing cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural literacy that are implied by the second objective of the COINs seminar:

1 To learn techniques and build and use tools for analysing online communities and networks using SNA.

2 To learn how to work in a creative globally distributed multi-disciplinary and multicultural project team (Gloor et al., 2011).

As is the case with all innovation, new information technologies cannot in and of themselves deliver on the promise of enhancing human endeavours and of making the world a better place for all living things. Through conscious attention to learning the skill sets required by new information technologies, which include developing the critical social, cultural, interpersonal, and cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing competencies necessary to facilitate successful multidisciplinary collaboration, these tools have a far better chance of achieving their maximum value.

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148 C. Miller

Notes 1 https://sites.google.com/site/coincourse2011/ 2 http://www11.georgetown.edu/research/gucchd/nccc/ The importance of fostering cultural competency has been embraced by some disciplines more

than others. For example, the field of healthcare has developed a large body of literature and evaluative tools in this area.

3 The first COINs Seminar was launched in fall 2005 with students from two disciplines (Information Systems and Computer Science) and two universities (the University of Cologne and Aalto at the University of Helsinki). In 2008 the seminar expanded to include graduate students in Design Management from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Two additional university partners – MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Witten University – have joined the seminar. Interest from other universities has led to a proposal to launch a second seminar.

4 The concept of the ‘Other’ is drawn from the anthropological literature which describes the sense of ‘foreignness’ that individuals experience in encounters with a foreign culture or in contact with individuals from different cultures. The experience of ‘Otherness’ can be disconcerting and confusing. In the broad understanding of culture, ‘Otherness’ can be experienced in encounters with different disciplines or professions.

5 A detailed description of the course structure can be found in Gloor et al. (2011) published in the conference proceedings from the ICSEC 2011.

6 Appendix A of the article by Gluesing and Riopelle (2010) includes the survey instrument used in the study.

7 There are many definitions for domain knowledge. The broadest definition has been applied for the purposes of this paper. Domain knowledge is developed by specialists and experts within the within a particular discipline, activity, or practice.

8 An ‘ill-structured’ knowledge domain is defined “as one in which the following two properties hold: (a) each case or example of knowledge application typically involves the simultaneous interactive involvement of multiple, wide-application conceptual structures (multiple schemas, perspectives, organisational principles, and so on), each of which is complex (i.e., the domain involves concept- and case-complexity); and (b) the pattern of conceptual incidence and interaction varies substantially across cases nominally of the same type (i.e., the domain involves cross-case irregularity) (Spiro et al., 1992). See Spiro et al. (1992, p.60) for examples.

9 The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium (2003) on Mapping Knowledge Domains was held in May 2003 to showcase ongoing developments and explore trends in the future direction of this emerging interdisciplinary field (reference the proceedings of The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium, 2003).

10 Condor software is a tool used for finding and mapping scientific and social networks. Refer to Sorensen et al. (2009).

11 Tufte bases his idea of ‘flatland’ on A. Square’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Abbott, 2010), available on Google books http://books.google.com/books.

12 Reference the COINs11 seminar at https://sites.google.com/site/coincourse2011/, The profile for ‘Design Management’.