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THE ACT OF COLLABORATIVE

CREATION AND THE ART OF
INTEGRATIVE CREATIVITY:
ORIGINALITY,
DISCIPLINARITY AND
INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Diana Rhoten, Erin O’Connor and

Edward Hackett

ABSTRACT Csikszentmihalyi (1999: 314) argues that ‘creativity is a process

that can be observed only at the intersection where individuals, domains, and
fields intersect’. This article discusses the relationship between creativity and
interdisciplinarity in science. It is specifically concerned with interdisciplinary
collaboration, interrogating the processes that contribute to the collaborative
creation of original ideas and the practices that enable creative integration of
diverse domains. It draws on results from a novel real-world experiment in
which small interdisciplinary groups of graduate students were tasked with
producing an innovative scientific research problem and an integrative research
proposal. Results show that while bisociative thinking assists in the creation of
original research problems, both disciplinary skills and an interdisciplinary dis-
position are core to the integration of creative research proposals. Extrapol-
ating from the results of this experiment, the article discusses the feasibility of
preparing students for such work and the implications for universities and other
intellectual centers.
KEYWORDS collaboration • complexity • creativity • interdisciplinarity •
sociology of science

Thesis Eleven, Number 96, February 2009: 83–108

SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)
Copyright © 2009 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd
DOI: 10.1177/0725513608099121
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84 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

The idea begins to live, that is, to take shape, to develop, to find and renew
its verbal expression, to give birth to new ideas, only when it enters into
genuine dialogic relationship with the other ideas, with the ideas of others.
Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics

INTRODUCTION
The very act of creation in science involves the combination and recom-
bination of previously unrelated ideas to form original and unconventional
assemblages (Hebb, 1958; Koestler, 1964; Simonton, 1988). While it is possible
for novel assemblages to emerge from the permutation of ideas within a single
discipline, it is increasingly believed that the creation of new scientific know-
ledge – creativity – is enabled and accelerated by fusing ideas from multiple
disciplines: ‘The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures
– of two galaxies, so far as that goes – ought to produce creative chances.
In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the break-
throughs came’ (Snow, 1964: 6).
Faith in the alchemic powers of interdisciplinarity to generate creative
opportunities and thereby yield transformative discoveries has led philoso-
phers, policy-makers, and pedagogues alike to argue for ‘interdisciplinary and
collaborative research [as] the norm rather than the exception’ (Bement, 2005).
It is said, for example, that cross-disciplinary collaboration can ‘liberate a
person’s thinking . . . and stimulate fresh vision’ (Milgram, 1969: 103), create
new thought collectives or paradigms (Fleck, 1979; Kuhn, 1970), open new
spheres of inquiry (Hackett, 2005; Rheinberger, 1997), and boldly challenge
orthodoxy (Hook, 2002). Indeed, examples of interdisciplinary collaborations
are observable in the history of science, and in some cases have led to break-
throughs. Consider, for example, the role of physics in the discovery of DNA
and the rise of molecular biology.
However, while advocates and anecdotes endorse the transformative
potential of interdisciplinarity, few, if any, have tried to expose – let alone
empiricize – the act of collaborative creation and the art of creative integra-
tion that underlie this potential. The process by which individuals identify new
questions or problems and the practices by which they assemble disparate
ideas into new concepts, approaches or paradigms to address them is gener-
ally underspecified. It is seen as ‘a mysterious black box or kaleidoscopic
step’, even by those who believe creativity and interdisciplinarity can be
understood well enough to be taught. Beyond arguing that scientific creativ-
ity is at least partly ‘the consequence of trained skills’, Carl Leopold does little
to elaborate what these skills are, let alone how to cultivate them (Leopold,
1978: 437). More recently, David Sill (2001) has proposed a theoretical model
of interdisciplinarity and creativity; yet he neither tests nor builds it. Thus,
we are left with many aspirational assumptions and theoretical propositions
about creativity and interdisciplinarity but few empirical explanations of what
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 85

many have come to accept blithely as the intuitive leaps, happy accidents,
or serendipitous events that lead to discovery.
In an effort to overcome this challenge, we attempt here to unpack
the black box of creativity and to capture observable steps toward interdis-
ciplinarity. This effort is part of a larger study of the intellectual, social, and
cultural workings and outcomes of the Integrative Graduate Education and
Research Training (IGERT) program. The IGERT program was established in
1997 by the National Science Foundation to meet the challenges of educating
PhD scientists and engineers with interdisciplinary backgrounds to be ‘creative
agents for change’ (NSF, 2002). In this study we used surveys, interviews,
site visits, and social network analysis to examine program design, institu-
tional context, and research outputs. From this work we learned about IGERT
student motivations, interactions, and aspirations. What remained unknown,
however, was if and how the IGERT program impacts student approaches
to cross-disciplinary collaboration and student abilities with interdisciplinary
integration in ways distinct from more traditional graduate programs. To
address such questions, which reflect the IGERT program’s highest goals, we
designed a unique social science experiment along the lines of a ‘charrette’,1
challenging a national mixed sample of IGERT-trained students and tradition-
ally trained graduate students to engage in an intensive exercise focused on
collaborative and integrative research design that transcends traditional disci-
plinary boundaries.
In this article, we begin by establishing our working definition of inter-
disciplinarity and our conceptual approach to the study of creativity. We then
introduce the charrette methodology we deployed to test for the influences
of IGERT training on student approaches to collaborative and integrative
research design. In reviewing the results from the charrette experiment, we
demonstrate the influence of bisociative thinking processes in the act of
cross-disciplinary, collaborative creation as well as the relative importance
of disciplinary skills versus an interdisciplinary disposition to the art of
creative, interdisciplinary integration.2, 3 We conclude by considering the
implications of these results for universities and other intellectual centers
seeking to cultivate creativity and interdisciplinarity in the sciences.

DEFINING INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND CONCEPTUALIZING

CREATIVITY
In recent years, interdisciplinarity has become synonymous with all
things creative about scientific research. The interdisciplinary imperative has
arisen not from a simple philosophic belief in interdisciplinarity but from the
character of the research problems currently under study (see, for example,
Chubin et al., 1986; DeTombe, 1999; Kahn and Prager, 1994; Klein, 1990;
Nissani, 1997). Some suggest that the intellectual context of 21st-century
science has changed in ways that not only allow but perhaps demand greater
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86 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

cross-disciplinary collaboration and interdisciplinary integration to stimulate

breakthroughs that transcend the orderly puzzles of normal science. In many
fields, it is argued, scholars are confronted with challenges that defy the
formulation of research questions and problems in a traditional disciplinary
format. In some instances this is because the research questions are ambi-
tious and encompassing, implicating several domains in the framing. In others,
it is because research problems are of such increased niche specificity that,
although narrow, they are interstitial, and thus demand the involvement of
multiple subdisciplines. The assumption here is that, given the preponder-
ance of intellectual research done within the separate and distinct disciplines,
there is opportunity for unique and inventive knowledge to emerge across
and between them.
Chemists, for example, can no longer find a significant research topic
that is purely chemical in nature, and are forced instead to draw upon know-
ledge and skills from physics, biology, engineering, or even more distant
areas (Schowen, 1998). Pressing environmental concerns, including the hydro-
logic cycle, ecosystems functioning, global climate change, and sustainable
development, cannot be addressed adequately without collective input from
researchers in agriculture, biology, computer science, forestry, hydrology,
mathematics, resource management, social science, and engineering (see, for
example, Lubchenco, 1998). In the life sciences, it is argued that ‘[f]uture
innovations in the biomedical sciences will arise even faster if physicists,
chemists, engineers, and computer scientists can work shoulder-to-shoulder
with the biomedical scientists’ (Cech, 2005: 1392). The breadth of disciplin-
ary skills and knowledge required to tackle such problems or questions often
exceed not just the limits of intellectual discipline but also of individual
capacity, thus requiring both integration of diverse domains and increased
collaboration between researchers of different fields.
Across the literature, the term ‘interdisciplinary’ is used to refer to a
continuum of possible meanings and activities ranging from an individual’s
orientation toward knowledge acquisition to a system-wide shift in know-
ledge production, with intermediate and variant notions in between. Running
through these diverse definitions, however, is a common thread: interdis-
ciplinarity refers to the integration or synthesis of two or more disparate
disciplines, bodies of knowledge, or modes of thinking to produce a meaning,
explanation, or product that is more extensive and powerful than its consti-
tuent parts (Boix Mansilla and Gardner, 2003; Klein, 1996; Kocklemans, 1979;
Weingart and Stehr, 2000). Furthermore, underpinning its various expressions
are four basic categories of interdisciplinary execution: cross-fertilization,
team-collaboration, field-creation, and problem-orientation. These categories
are not meant to suggest a progression in quality or complexity; they are
simply heuristics to ground analysis in a common language and anchor it in
observable actions. In this article, we are most concerned with interdiscipli-
narity as a collaborative practice, whereby multiple researchers with mastery
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 87

in their distinct fields or disciplines work collectively as a network or team

of individuals to trade and exchange tools, concepts, ideas, data, methods,
or results around a common project or problem. From this perspective, we
understand interdisciplinarity as both a process and a practice by which a
set of purposeful arrangements and a sense of community are established to
iterate and ultimately integrate ideas with others into an end product (Rhoten,
2003; Rhoten and Pfirman, 2007).
The field of creative studies is itself an interdisciplinary venture, engaging
participants from domains across the behavioral, learning, and social sciences
as well as the design, arts, and humanities fields. Within this broad and
eclectic undertaking, a few dominant approaches to the study of creativity
have emerged. Some scholars consider creativity in terms of the abilities and
characteristics of the person(s) engaged in activities such as inventing, design-
ing, and composing (see for example, Barron and Harrington, 1981; Gardner,
1993). Some approach creativity from the perspective of the product, focusing
on the creation of the novel, original, significant thing (see, for example,
Amabile, 1997; Besemer and O’Quin, 1993); while others view creativity in
terms of the process, independent of the character or quality of the resulting
outputs (see for example, Drazin et al., 1999; Ford, 1996). Still others concep-
tualize creativity in terms of the spatial and temporal place: the social net-
works, the cultural conditions, and the institutional bases that facilitate creative
opportunities in the moment (see, for example, Collins, 1998; Csikszentmi-
halyi, 1999).
This basic ‘Ps’ typology of person, product, place, and process offers a
neat if overly simplified way to categorize research approaches to creativity.
As Elizabeth Watson argues, however: ‘It does not attempt to provide a model
for understanding connections between any of these factors of analysis’
(Watson, 2007: 424). More recently, a few scholars, including Simonton (1999;
2004), among others, have tried to conceptualize creativity more as a phenom-
enon, understanding it in terms of the interaction rather than the isolation
of these different factors. Thus, like Simonton, we see creativity in science
as necessarily being about the bringing together of diverse ideas, methods,
and materials to produce novel questions, explanations or solutions, which
is inevitably influenced by the individuals and institutions involved. More-
over, like Sill (2001), we are particularly interested in what this multi-factor
approach to the study of creativity as a phenomenon can tell us about the
promise of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Borrowing terms from Csikszentmihalyi (1999), Simonton (2004) argues
that each individual scientist operates in a specific disciplinary context, which
consists of two essential components – namely, the domain and the field.
The domain is a set of symbolic rules and procedures, techniques and theories,
facts and concepts. The field, by comparison, includes all the individuals
who work with the ideas of the domain, deciding if and when a new idea
or product should be allowed and included. Each scientist during his or her
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88 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

training and education becomes a member of a field and acquires a sample

of ideas from those that define the larger domain. Some will possess a large
supply of disciplinary skills and knowledge – vocabularies, laws, methods,
modes of inquiry, etc. – whereas others will have smaller samples. The disci-
plinary skills and knowledge that each individual possesses are then subject
to the possibility of recombination, with the aim of finding original and useful
interdisciplinary permutations or assemblages (Campbell, 1960; James, 1880).
Whereas Einstein called this process the ‘combinatorial play’, Simonton calls
it a model of ‘combinatorial chance’ (that is, bisociative thinking). Given that
scientists cannot easily know which ideas in the early phases of collabora-
tive creation will yield successfully creative integrations, they must be willing
and wanting to engage in generating different interdisciplinary combinations
and recombinations with others (that is, interdisciplinary disposition), while
relying on internal criteria to evaluate which one will be a promising idea
(that is, disciplinary skill).
Building on Simonton’s model, and drawing from Sill (2001) and Koestler
(1964), we argue, then, that the key characteristics of achieving collaborative
creation and creative integration in the context of science include bisociative
thinking, disciplinary skill, and interdisciplinary disposition. The question is
whether these attributes can be taught and with what approach.

TEACHING INTERDISCIPLINARITY AND CREATIVITY

Carl Leopold noted 30 years ago: ‘The world community recognizes that
progress in the arts, in the professions, and in science and technology relies
exquisitely on the creativity of the people in these professions’ (Leopold,
1978: 436). Given that much of traditional science is about extracting objec-
tive information and seeking simplification for understanding, it is still gener-
ally easier and more efficient to advance one’s scientific career by presenting
(and re-presenting) artifacts of disciplinary work. While there are indi-
viduals with ‘creative attitudes’ (Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi, 1964: 125) in
the sciences who are impelled to seek complexity and to discover alterna-
tive ways of understanding, a critical challenge is how to prepare and support
such individuals who often find themselves drawn toward interdisciplinarity.
In the United States, federal agencies like the National Science Founda-
tion and the National Institutes of Health are investing hundreds of millions
of dollars to reform graduate education and training programs in ways that
prepare students for new modes of cross-disciplinary collaboration and inter-
disciplinary integration (Martin and Umberger, 2003). One of the most expan-
sive and deliberate of these efforts is the Integrative Graduate Education
Research and Training (IGERT) initiative. Implemented in 1997, the IGERT
initiative is designed specifically to meet the challenges of educating PhD
scientists and engineers in multidisciplinary backgrounds with the goal being
to ‘catalyze a cultural change in graduate education for students, faculty, and
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 89

institutions by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and

training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends
traditional disciplinary boundaries’ (NSF, 2002).
The IGERT initiative espouses a distinctive model of graduate education
that aims explicitly to develop scientists and engineers capable of working
across disciplinary boundaries, focusing on problem-oriented research, collab-
orating well in teams, and engaging broad audiences. There are approximately
125 campus-based IGERT programs in the United States today, each organ-
ized around an interdisciplinary research theme deemed appropriate for
doctoral-level research (for example, hybrid neural microsystems, marine
biodiversity). Within the theme, IGERT students earn their PhD in a major
field of study, while gaining exposure to other cognate fields vis-à-vis partici-
pation in various research-based education and training activities. Based on
the voluntary application and extremely competitive stipend, IGERT programs
draw highly qualified students who have self-selected into interdisciplinary
training.
Root-Bernstein showed that it was the scientists trained in an unusual
way who tended to be the most inventive (Root-Bernstein, 1991). In a similar
vein, we wanted to know if students trained in the IGERT program are more
collaborative, integrative, and therefore creative than their colleagues trained
in more traditional graduate programs. In short, is the IGERT program pro-
ducing ‘creative agents for change’ per its aspirations (NSF, 2002)?

Research Methods
A standard approach to understanding scientific creation or creativity
has been to examine scientific products, typically publications. As Merton
notes, however, the ‘scientific paper or monograph presents an immaculate
appearance which reproduces little or nothing of the intuitive leaps, false
starts, mistakes, loose ends, and happy accidents that actually cluttered up
the inquiry. The public record of science therefore fails to provide many of
the source materials needed to reconstruct the actual course of scientific
developments’ (Merton, 1968: 4). Moreover, the lack of methods for judging
interdisciplinary education and measuring its direct impacts on student
learning is one of the biggest obstacles to advancing interdisciplinarity (Klein,
1996; Lattuca, 2001). Most approaches tend to focus on single measures or
reductionist strategies and are not well suited to capture the interaction of
cognition, skills, and disposition in cross-disciplinary collaboration and inter-
disciplinary integration. Given the shortcomings of available methodologies
to address our interest in the IGERT program’s impact on the phenomenon
of creativity and the dynamics of interdisciplinarity, we designed our own
novel social science approach by marrying experimental and observational
methods as well as sociological and psychological perspectives.
Our approach was modeled after the ‘charrette’ process, which chal-
lenges students to solve a collaborative design problem within a fixed period
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90 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

of time and to then present their work to fellow students and faculty in a
critiqued presentation. The principal aim of the charrette was to comparatively
observe the collaborative processes and evaluate the integrative products of
graduate students trained in IGERT programs versus those in more traditional
departmental programs. In addition, to capture the intervention effects of
graduate school versus innate traits of students, we also compared students
in the first two years of graduate school with students in later years of
schooling.
Like the IGERT programs themselves, we anchored the charrette in a
thematic area appropriate for graduate research – environmental and eco-
logical sustainability. The charrette involved a nationally recruited sample of
48 students – half from IGERT programs, half from traditional graduate
programs – of varied geographic, disciplinary, and institutional origin. From
this sample we formed eight groups of six students. As shown in Table 1,
groups were homogeneously composed of IGERT or non-IGERT and Junior
(years one or two) or Senior (years three and beyond) students, but were
heterogeneous in their inclusion of students from the life, physical, and social
sciences.
Students were assigned to their group and work room when they arrived
on site. In addition to computers and office supplies, each room was also
equipped with a video camera that recorded activities at the table, three
microphones distributed around the table to capture discussion, and a trained
observer who kept notes. All student groups received the same collaborative
research design challenge on the first night, and were given 2.5 days to pro-
cess the problem as well as produce a seven-page proposal and 20-minute
presentation. While the collaborative processes were documented and evalu-
ated by observers, the integrative products were scored and reviewed by a
panel of experts. In addition to providing written evaluations, experts rated
the proposals according to 15 aspects, using common criteria and five-point
scales (1 = poor to 5 = excellent), which we adapted from the work of Veronica
Boix Mansilla and her colleagues (2008).4

Table 1 Schematic design of charrette

I II

IGERT Non-IGERT IGERT Non-IGERT

JUNIOR Group A Group B Group E Group F

(1st and Mariculture Lawn Group Estuary Group Salmon Group
2nd year Group
students)

SENIOR Group C Group D Group G Group H

(3rd year + Riverine Potable Water Urbanization Nutrient
students) Group Group Group Group
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 91

BISOCIATIVE THINKING, DISCIPLINARY SKILLS, AND

INTERDISCIPLINARY DISPOSITION
Julie Thompson Klein writes that ‘interdisciplinarity is neither a subject
matter nor a body of content. It is a process for achieving an interpretative
synthesis, a process that usually begins with a problem, question, topic, or
issue’ (1990: 188). For the purposes of the charrette and the desire to study
cross-disciplinary collaboration and interdisciplinary integration, each of the
groups was given the same problem prompt:
Ecosystem services of various sorts (e.g. purification of air and water,
mitigation of floods and droughts, detoxification and decomposition of wastes,
pollination of crops and natural vegetation, partial stabilization of climate,
soil fertilization, maintenance of biodiversity, and such) are vital for the lives
of humans and other species as well as for the continued viability of eco-
systems. However, considerable evidence is accumulating to suggest that
changes in climate, land use, and other human activities may be altering the
performance of ecosystems and the services they deliver. Your challenge is
twofold. First, pose a scientific question concerning the interaction of human
activities and one or two specific ecosystem services. Then, propose the best
‘next generation’ research plan to analyze this question in two strategically
chosen geographic sites that have comparatively different levels of human
activity. . . . Your proposed research should be novel and original in both
the approaches it deploys and the insights it yields.
As mentioned above, data were collected both on group processes
through trained observation and on group products via expert evaluation.
We begin the discussion of the charrette results by looking at the experts’
assessment of the student groups’ research proposals and presentations on
the dimensions of originality, interdisciplinarity, and disciplinarity.
Expert comments about the proposal which rated highly on all three
measures – originality, interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity – used phrases like
the following in their review of the proposal: ‘relatively unique framework’,
‘compelling problem for society’, ‘strong conceptual model’, ‘disciplinary
methods and techniques . . . are very strong’, ‘good interdisciplinary thinking’,
‘well-motivated [and] carefully justified’ and ‘provocative and clear presenta-
tion’. By comparison, expert comments about the proposal that rated poorly
on all three dimensions offered comments such as: ‘group was clearly enthusi-
astic, broke with mainstream,’ ‘proposed study was original [but not] . . . well
posed,’ ‘not convinced that it addressed an issue of the highest scientific
and/or societal urgency,’ ‘picked an overstudied system,’ ‘proposal is too rigid
in its approach,’ ‘naïve expectations,’ ‘dominant role of one group member,’
and ‘presenters had [difficulty] in stating the problem, in identifying the hypo-
theses, and in describing the broader impact.’
Three of the top scoring proposals on ‘originality’ were Groups A and
E (both Junior IGERT) and Group D (Senior non-IGERT). In keeping with
David Bohm’s view that creativity within science is not simply about a ‘differ-
ent take’ on an already existing problem or about addressing the ‘lacunae’ of
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92 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

an already-existing issue (1996: 16–17), ‘originality’ of the group proposals

was assessed on the basis of whether it innovated new ideas, approaches,
and topics. Although all three of these groups identified a topic related to
some aspect of water, each took up very different concerns and approaches
to the topic: Group A – the ‘Mariculture Group’ – focused on ‘human food
supply and ecologically sustainable mariculture’, Group D – the ‘Potable Water
Group’ – on ‘human impacts on ecosystem regulation of potable water’, and
Group E – the ‘Estuary Group’ – on ‘natural disturbances, human use and
estuary resilience’. In addition, each group took what might be called a
coupled natural-human systems approach to their particular water-related
problem. As shown below, the narratives of expert reviews reveal this coupled
conceptual framework, which melds social with natural sciences and frames
the problem within a new set of relations, to be the primary factor explain-
ing their mutually high ranking on originality. Moreover, in groups where
this framework was achieved, the observers’ notes on and the videotaped
segments of the groups’ brainstorming at the stage of idea generation clearly
evidence processes indicative of bisociative thinking.
Interestingly, on the dimension of interdisciplinarity, both the Estuary
Group and the Potable Water Group were top scoring while the Mariculture
Group was not. Experts were asked to rank proposals based on the degree
to which the stated problem and the research approach was interdisciplin-
ary, integrative, and synthetic. Specifically: (1) Does the proposal draw from
different disciplinary literatures relevant to the proposed study? (2) Does the
proposal address a holistic topic and present an integrated framework to
approach that topic? (3) Is there a sense of balance in the overall composi-
tion of the proposal with regard to how the disciplines are brought together?
Proposals that scored highly on this aggregate metric of interdiscipli-
narity were generally deemed not just inclusive but integrative, and as having
successfully generated an approach that actually metabolized the different
disciplines presented in their frameworks. This differs from saying that the
groups avoided allocating topics or tasks by discipline. For example, the work
patterns of the Potable Water Group, though rated highly for interdisciplinar-
ity, very concretely divided the tasks of the group between natural and social
scientists, as well as by discipline and skill within those categories. As we will
show, the key to integrative work may lie less in overt procedures thought
to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration than in the disciplinary pieces that
ultimately comprise the whole. Thus, whereas the Estuary Group was iden-
tified as having an ‘inherently integrative approach’ and the Potable Water
Group was commended for having ‘a conceptual model of interactions
between land use, water quality and human perception’, the Mariculture Group
was critiqued for being disjointed and disconnected: ‘the remediation of an
ecosystem service seems only tangential to the economic/mariculture aspects
emphasized in the proposal.’ As we argue below, we believe this difference
in interdisciplinary scores between the Mariculture Group and the Estuary
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 93

and Potable Water Groups is best explained by the fact that the latter two not
only employed a coupled natural-human framework but also anchored their
approach in a complex dynamic that served as a mechanism of integration.
Again, on the dimension of disciplinarity, both the Estuary Group and
the Potable Water Group were top scoring while the Mariculture Group was
not. Experts were asked to rank the proposals according to the degree to
which they represented disciplinary soundness in both problem and approach:
(1) Is the proposal well-grounded in disciplinary works that are relevant to
the proposed study? (2) Does the proposal accurately and effectively use
disciplinary knowledge? (3) Does the proposal accurately and effectively
propose the use of disciplinary research methods?
In the reviews of both the Estuary and Potable Water groups, experts
pointed to disciplinary methods and techniques as the ‘strength’ and ‘founda-
tion’ on which the proposal was built rather than constrained. In these groups,
we will argue, it was the disciplinary-driven but interdisciplinary-shaped
worldview of dynamic complexity that both enabled the collaborative process
and led to the integrative proposal. We turn now to the observational data
to reveal more about the act of creation and art of creativity that explain these
scores and comments.

The Act of Creation – Brainstorming an Original Problem

Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi (1964) suggest that the most important
part of creativity may be the framing, discovery, or envisioning of the creative
question to be answered or problem to be solved. And, indeed, negotiating
and constructing shared understanding around a problem, question, or issue
is inherently collaborative as well as creative (Miell and Littleton, 2004). In
discussing approaches to problem-solving and applying the work of Koestler
(1964), Scott and Bruce (1994) identify two primary styles: bisociative and
associative. Whereas bisociative thinking involves combining separate domains
without rules in order to encourage new connections and innovative out-
comes, associative thinking is about building upon ideas, habits, and logics
of a single domain. One style is not better than the other, and arguably in
order for creative processes like brainstorming (Osborn, 1953) to yield scien-
tifically rigorous outcomes, both types of cognitive processing are required:
bisociative in order to generate original ideas, and associative in order to
evaluate and refine those ideas (Finke et al., 1992). That said, and as our
data suggest, premature evaluation during the idea generation stage of the
creative thinking process can inhibit creativity (Kilgour, 2006). To demon-
strate the role of bisociative and associative thinking in generating original
problems, we contrast the Estuary Group, the Potable Water Group, and the
Mariculture Group with the Salmon Group (Group F, Senior IGERT).
According to the observer’s field notes, the Estuary Group approached
the idea generation or problem identification phase of the charrette exercise
by setting out to ask a ‘big theoretical question.’ To do so, the group began
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94 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

the brainstorming process by trying to isolate, in their words, ‘a good and

broad theoretical question, which would have findings relevant for both
natural and social sciences’ (Student Quote, Field Notes, Group E) rather than
by conducting an inventory of the individual talents and interests represented
within the group. Early in the process, the group considered ‘water’ as a
potential topic because of its capacity to accommodate multiple disciplines.
They rather quickly rejected this concept as flawed, however, asserting that
while it covered a broad range of issues and disciplines, their aim should be
to identify a good question rather than a topic which would take advantage
of everyone’s expertise perfectly’ (Student Quote, Field Notes, Group E). At
the interstices of pure abstraction and empirical comparison, the Estuary
Group shortly thereafter hit upon the concept of ‘estuary resilience’. As an
abstract but observable dynamic, resilience catalyzed a tightly coupled natural-
human systems approach that integrated the ecological and economic domain
areas of the group members. Only after the group had established the
conceptual significance of resilience did it turn to routine operational matters
more typical of associative thinking, such as specifying sites, methods, and
metrics.
Similar to the Estuary Group, the Mariculture Group approached the
problem identification process by brainstorming abstract theoretical concepts.
However, whereas the Estuary Group began by simply seeking to imagine
the broadest question imaginable with no parameters, the Mariculture Group
first took stock of the skills and perspectives of the group, deliberately seeking
a problem that would unite them. It was in the middle of discussing mono-
culture that members of the group found themselves suddenly arguing about
the notion of ‘biodiversity’. While the group had been previously divided
between land and water topics, the catalytic theoretical concept of ‘bio-
diversity’ brought these two domains together in what was again a coupled
natural-human systems framework. By using biodiversity as the linking mech-
anism and relinquishing traditional boundaries between land and water, group
members were actually able to reinterpret and reimagine what is typically
understood to be a land-based problem as a water-based problem. In so
doing, the group transposed the problem of ecologically sustainable food
production from land to water, moving from agriculture to aquaculture, and
ultimately from aquaculture into mariculture to inventively coin the novel
term and frame of ‘aqualogy’ as its problem.
Like the Estuary and Mariculture Groups, the Potable Water Group was
immediately drawn to the overarching theme of water because of its poten-
tial breadth and inclusivity. Also like the Mariculture Group, this group cata-
logued all of the members’ skills and backgrounds prior to brainstorming
possible research problems. In fact, the group did so in order to intention-
ally limit their consideration to ‘overlapping research questions and interests’
(Student Quote, Field Notes, Group D). Indeed, the Mariculture Group ulti-
mately generated a novel and original problem of ‘potable water’, but doing
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 95

so involved numerous topic reiterations and refinements. As compared to

the other high ranking groups, where the brainstorming processes followed
a trajectory from bisociative to associative thinking, the Potable Water Group’s
process is better characterized as mini-cycles of both bisociative and associ-
ative thinking. After several rounds of imagining and refining concepts of
land-use and human perception, the group arrived at the theoretical concept
of ‘potable water’ based on the social science logics that some group members
deemed salient to a ‘good’ research question. Like the two groups above,
this group also framed their problem in the tightly coupled natural-human
systems approach, which we believe engendered high originality ratings for
all three groups.
As a quick point of contrast, consider the Salmon Group, which was
the lowest-scoring group in terms of originality. This group, despite being
Senior IGERT students, approached the problem identification process with
specialist lenses from the outset. That is to say, unlike the Mariculture and
Potable Water Groups which first accounted for group members’ disciplines
and then brainstormed different problems that would accommodate their
intellectual diversity, the Salmon Group chose its topic – the Klamath River
Basin – almost immediately and strictly on the bases of the idea’s capacity
to serve the groups’ disciplinary ‘legitimacy’, ‘expedience’ and ‘applicability’
(Field Notes, Group F). While one student tried to stimulate more discussion
with comments like ‘I’m a big picture person,’ the group’s collective style
was much more reflective of another student’s self-characterization: ‘I tend
to criticize rather than create’ (Student Quote, Field Notes, Group F). Equally
indicative of this group’s more associative approach was another student’s
observation noted that she ‘hesitates to go far outside the realm of know-
ledge, as it will take more time and effort’, while still another argued for
‘keeping close to home’. Not only did the group’s associative approach pre-
maturely commit the group to a problem within the first working hour of the
charrette, it did so in a manner that constrained the group’s approach to a
linear, site-based logic rather than enabling a dynamic, concept-driven frame.
What we see across the three most original groups is a correlation
between a group’s use of theoretical concepts like resilience, biodiversity,
and potability as stimuli to problem identification and their tendency to
demonstrate greater rates of bisociative thinking in the brainstorming process.
Given the assumptions about connections between interdisciplinarity and
creativity, we expected IGERT students would produce more original work
than their counterparts, particularly senior students in the later years of
graduate study. IGERT programs are intended to instill (or reinforce) in
students the proclivity and means to work in new ways – across disciplines,
outside usual academic boundaries, and with greater attention to societal
needs and benefits – and we reasoned that time in graduate school would
enhance such traits. Contrary to these hypotheses, the two Senior IGERTs
were not among the highest scoring groups in originality. In fact, they were
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96 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

the two lowest scoring groups in this metric of creativity. We attempt to

unpack this unexpected finding below.

The Art of Creativity – Combining Disciplinary Skills and

Interdisciplinary Disposition
In this subsection, we focus on the two proposals that scored highest
on originality as well as on interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity: the Potable
Water Group (Senior non-IGERT) and the Estuary Group (Junior IGERT). We
show that while bisociative processes were necessary steps towards gener-
ating an original research problem, insofar as this type of thinking allowed
new combinatorials of domains, bisociation alone is not sufficient to create
an integrated product. Each individual in an interdisciplinary group typically,
whether consciously or subconsciously, works from the perspective of his
or her own discipline(s). Disciplines differ in what events or data are inter-
pretable, what methods they espouse, and what kinds of explanations are
deemed satisfactory. But as Journet (1993) argues, some of the problems in
interdisciplinary interaction result not just from an individual’s inculcation in
a domain but also from his or her allegiance to it. Hence, we were not
surprised to find that those groups which identified a problem that was not
simply abstract but rather one that was inherently dynamic and complex were
more successful in bringing interdisciplinarity to originality.
For over 20 years scientists like the ecologist C. S. Holling and Nobel
prize chemist Ilya Prigogine have contended that a science of complexity is
emerging with fundamentally different features than what is often referred
to as the traditional ‘scientific ideal’ (Abel, 1998). Whereas the core assump-
tions underlying the scientific ideal include reductionism, linear causation,
and mechanistic experimentation with the entity as units of analysis, the
science of complexity is characterized by perspectives such as holism, mutual
causation, and adaptive evolution with the relationship between factors being
the primary unit of analysis. Complexity hinges on the critical interdepen-
dencies, elevates feedback loops, and often relies on multivariate and multi-
scaled models to represent the dynamics of the knowledge therein. While the
science of complexity represents an inherently interdisciplinary view of the
world (Sanders, 1998), executing this paradigmatic shift from reductionism to
integrated synergism depends on the successful representation, verification,
and organization of disciplinary knowledge (Wierzbicki, 2007). As we show
below, then, complexity science is an art that requires the pairing of disci-
plinary skills with an interdisciplinary disposition.
Although the Mariculture Group ranked second in terms of originality,
it scored relatively low on both interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity measures.
We argue this is because although the group’s research problem congealed
around the broad theoretical concept of ‘biodiversity’ and was anchored in
a natural-human systems frame – it was not constructed as a complex dynamic.
Rather than employing biodiversity as a heuristic to ‘understand’ the dynamic
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 97

interaction between natural and human factors when addressing the problem
of sustainable food production, the Mariculture Group simply used the
concept to transpose the problem from one application area to another. In
this sense, biodiversity operated as a linear catalyst but not as a complex
catalyst. Consequently, the problem was inclusive in that it allowed for the
input of multiple disciplines, but it was ultimately not integrative as it did
not actually demand grounding in and feedback between the theory, data,
and perspectives of diverse domains. Thus, while enabling novelty, it did
not facilitate deep interdisciplinarity, which the experts noted: ‘The proposal
addresses a compelling problem . . . presents an original concept worthy of
consideration. . . . My primary question is how the proposed study relates to
the problem statement’ (Expert B). And: ‘The team lays out a sound set of
research questions and accompanying hypothesis that are only one level
above what one might expect from a disciplinary team . . . [It] does not rise
to the level of the type of interdisciplinary thinking that can result in a
problem reformulation’ (Expert G).
By comparison, in addition to being original, the Estuary Group and
Potable Water Group proposals were both also considered highly interdis-
ciplinary. We argue that this is because both groups situated their problems,
consciously or unconsciously, in a science of complexity. For example, unlike
the Mariculture Group, the Estuary Group came to the problem of ‘resilience’
based on a goal of understanding a diverse set of interrelated factors. Thus,
rather than seeing ‘resilience’ merely as an abstract concept, the group
deployed it as a complex dynamic to metabolize the ecosystem services of
an estuary (that is, refugia, recreation, genetic diversity, aesthetics) with human
impacts. Similarly, it was the Potable Water Group’s fundamental concern
with the relationships between land use, water quality, human health, and
human perception that led them to the unexpected problem of ‘potable
water’. Not only did the concept of ‘potable water’ bring multiple domains
into contact with each other in the problem statement, but the group’s vision
of the problem as dynamic and its construction of a multi-level, multivariate
research design created a sense of critical interdependence among these
domains and yielded a model of interdisciplinary integration.
Importantly, we think, both the Estuary and the Potable Water Groups
used modeling as a tool to capture and convey the relational structures of
their complex systems. In fact, for the Potable Water Group, the model was
the ‘boundary object’ that integrated the group’s interactions, dialogue and
labor (Star, 1990). The model allowed the group to ‘see’ the problem and
then restructure their perspectives to combine knowledge and skills that were
otherwise previously divided along disciplinary lines. The following vignette
from the group is illustrative in this regard:
Student A: There may be several facets of the study handled by researchers from
different disciplines, but there needs to be connection and interaction between
the various parts and people within the study – between all the multiple layers
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98 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

. . . some experimental, some observational, some qualitative. The study does

not have to follow only one methodology or examine one issue, but there needs
to be connection between the various research questions and researchers.
Student A: Are any of you aware of the conceptual frameworks for integration
of humans into environments? [After naming several articles, sketches a model
on the flipchart ] So, using this model, we could develop testable hypotheses
that incorporate other disciplines, a number of hypotheses that speak to a
number of disciplines within one framework.
Following a discussion in which Student B proposes a multidisciplinary approach
with each discipline addressing its disciplinary component of the question,
Student A continues, ‘One of the things we’re trying to do is meld the discipline
so that we’re not working separately. This is part of what the conceptual
framework is meant to do. (Student Quotes, Field Notes, Group D)

Thus, despite the group’s highly disciplinary working style described

earlier, the Potable Water Group held up the idea of interdisciplinarity as an
end rather than a means, and strategically approached modeling to effec-
tively integrate and synthesize the interdisciplinary relations catalyzed by the
dynamic of potable water. Rather than finding these styles and goals at odds
with one another, we argue that it was the very disciplinary rigor of the group
that concretized and enabled the analysis of these interdisciplinary relations.
In the end, it was the strength of the Potable Water Group’s disciplin-
ary components and its ability to envision how these domains and dynamics
linked together that won the experts’ praise:
The proposal was highly interdisciplinary, encompassing basic ecological and
hydrological principles, land use and land cover change, and human social
status and perceptions. . . . This was one of the only groups that explicitly
considered how changes in ecosystem services might influence human well-
being, and how that in turn would affect human behaviors and further affect
changes in ecosystem function. (Expert A)

The experts noted the same strength in the Estuary Group’s proposal,
commending the group for its vision and its well-negotiated balance between
disciplinary and interdisciplinary qualities.
Although the group had trouble connecting resilience, population growth,
refugia and the value of ecosystem services, this was probably the most inter-
esting proposal of all the studies proposed. It was clearly interdisciplinary, and
yet rested on a reasonable disciplinary scientific foundation. (Expert C)
The group selected the relatively unique framework of resilience for their study.
Such a framework offers great strength in that, if treated correctly, it is inher-
ently integrative. . . . The disciplinary methods and techniques brought to bear
on the question are very strong, and there was excellent balance between the
social and ecological components of the problem. (Expert A)

To our minds, the expert rankings and accompanying commentaries

above clearly point to the influence of a group’s interdisciplinary disposition
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 99

in terms of mobilizing a vision of complexity, as well as the importance of

a strong grounding in the relevant disciplinary knowledge and skills to model
that vision. For a model to work, the input knowledge must be verified and
then organized into a structure on the basis of relevance to the situation or
problem in question. On the one hand, knowledge verification comes from
expertise in disciplinary debates, methods, and theories; on the other, know-
ledge organization derives both from intuition about and experience with
combinatorial operations. As Vygotsky argues, ‘it is this ability to combine
elements to produce a structure, to combine the old in new ways that is the
basis of creativity’ (2004: 12). And, in Wierzbicki’s view, ‘constructing success-
ful models that represent relevant knowledge is an art’ (2007: 624).
It is worth reminding the reader that the Senior IGERT groups, those
with advanced interdisciplinary training, ranked in the bottom half (or worse)
in terms of both originality and interdisciplinarity. In these groups, we found
that overt attention to the deliberative procedures for managing interdiscip-
linary collaboration did not facilitate and in fact obstructed the groups’ collab-
orative processes as well as hampered their ability to produce integrative
proposals. The emphasis on the procedures of interdisciplinary collaboration
was greatest in the Senior IGERT Group B, the Lawn Group, which was the
lowest-ranked group in all categories. While the group explicitly called for
the integration of proposed ideas, they did so as part of an ongoing discourse
about what constitutes an original, integrated and interdisciplinary question,
and as part of an overused recourse to rules and strategies (for example,
voting, turn taking) for collaboration to generate such a question, rather than
as part of charting any intellectual course for actually combining the various
propositions of the group. In short, the group’s self-conscious concern with
performing interdisciplinary collaboration overshadowed, even occluded, its
ability to demonstrate any disciplinary talents. Thus, it seems that while the
Lawn Group displayed the actions one might think should accompany collab-
orative creation (that is, extensive discussion, visible representations), they
seemed to lack both the interdisciplinary disposition to imagine an integra-
tive product and the disciplinary skills to construct one. As the observer notes
recount:

‘The group was very concerned with interdisciplinarity and making sure each
person brought his/her strengths and expertise to the project. However, each
was not willing to compromise his or her individual discipline’s methods, which
wasted lots of time and prevented consensus. . . . Their presentation was last,
so they spent the entire time passing notes and whispering to each other during
other groups’ talks. They were strategizing what to say based on the experts’
reaction and questions to the other groups. No other group did this. (Field
Notes, Group B)

As we have tried to show, executing the science of complexity, which

represents a fundamentally integrated worldview, depends on cultivating the
art of creativity. Prerequisite talents for such an art, at least in the context
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100 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

of science, include both specific knowledge and skill sets, as well as a certain
disposition or intuition about how to assemble them – what Vygotsky calls
‘combinatorial operation of the imagination’ (2004: 12). While Vygotsky
contends that imagination is the basis of all creative activity and a factor of
experience, he concedes that the integration of ideas depends on one’s
ability to assess the web of potential knowledge available to him/her and is
a matter of expertise (Vygotsky, 1978, 2004). Thus, beyond asking what is
the right balance between disciplinary skills and an interdisciplinary dispo-
sition to nurture creativity, our findings raise questions about if and how
institutions of higher education can ‘teach’ dispositions and worldviews or
intuition and imagination.

CONCLUSION
The sociological imagination . . . in considerable part consists of the capacity
to shift from one perspective to another . . . It is this imagination, of course,
that sets off the social scientist from the mere technician. Adequate technicians
can be trained in a few years. The sociological imagination can also be culti-
vated . . . Yet there is an unexpected quality about it, perhaps because its
essence is the combination of ideas that no one expected were combinable –
say, a mess of ideas from German philosophy and British economics . . . There
is a playfulness of mind back [sic] of such combining as well as a truly fierce
drive to make sense of the world, which the technician as such usually lacks.
(Mills, 1959)

The activities reported here are a small part of a large-scale, multi-level

research project that attempts to understand the impacts of a new model of
interdisciplinary graduate training on its students, faculty, and institutions. In
this article, we specifically asked whether a deliberately structured interven-
tion like the IGERT program can teach creativity and interdisciplinarity. To
do so, we outlined a conceptual model for understanding creativity and inter-
disciplinarity as well as presented the results of our methodical test of that
model. Contrary to our expectations, students with advanced training in the
non-traditional, interdisciplinary IGERT program did not score highest on our
metrics related to collaborative creation (originality) or creative integration
(disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity). In fact, these student groups scored
amongst the lowest. While there is no immediately obvious pattern amongst
the highest scoring groups in terms of stage or type of graduate training,
there are very clear and robust commonalities across these groups in terms
of what the observers reported about their processes and how the experts
ranked their products.
In brief summary, our findings suggest that while bisociative thinking
may be conducive to collaborative creation, it alone is neither indicative nor
predictive of creative integration. Rather, our results suggest that creative
integration depends on the inclination to combine previously unrelated ideas
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 101

into new assemblages as well as the capacity to evaluate the ideas both in
terms of their individual contributions and their relational complexities. Thus,
our findings support the argument that the ability to understand complex
relations among things is the key to generating novel concepts, paradigms,
and approaches in science (Simonton, 1988). In so doing, however, they
clearly demonstrate the combined importance of disciplinary skills and an
interdisciplinary disposition to achieving this level of complex understanding,
or ‘cognitive complexity’.
Cognitive complexity relates to the overall sophistication of one’s inher-
ent approach to thinking and problem-solving as well as her more specific
capacity to observe and evaluate phenomena from disparate vantage points
simultaneously and symbiotically. Those with high cognitive complexity have
not only the preference for but also the competence to view and understand
the world in more complex ways than those with less cognitive complexity
(Hage, 2006). Recently, Rogers Hollingsworth (2007) has introduced the idea
of ‘cognitive complexity’ to conversations about intellectual creativity and
scientific discovery. He argues that: ‘Scientists having high levels of cogni-
tive complexity tend to internalize multiple fields of science and have greater
capacity to observe and understand the connectivity among phenomena in
multiple fields of science. . . . And it is that capacity which greatly increases
the potential for making a major discovery’ (Hollingsworth, 2007: 129). Critical
to Hollingsworth’s argument is his proposed correlation between a scientist’s
level of cognitive complexity and the degree to which she has cognitively
internalized scientific diversity. For us and others interested in promoting
intellectual creativity and supporting transformative discovery, then, the inevi-
table next question is how does one best learn, if at all, to internalize scien-
tific diversity and exercise cognitive complexity.
As Sill (2001) tells us: ‘Many people in looking for ways to teach creativ-
ity direct their focus on freedom, either as freedom to let the subconscious
act, freedom from habits of thought, or both. Unfortunately, the relationship
between freedom and creativity is frequently over-played with far too much
expected from the breaking down of inhibitions along [sic]. Lack of freedom
clearly inhibits creativity, but the presence of freedom cannot guarantee it
because freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for creativity’
(Sill, 2001: 302). Based on the findings here, it is our belief that freedom must
be coupled with discipline, with training in and transmission of concepts,
methods, and standards – the technical abilities – of domains. C. Wright Mills
may be correct that imagination is what sets the scientist apart from the tech-
nician. But, just as freedom is to creativity, technical ability is a necessary but
not sufficient condition for cognitive complexity and the ability to imagine
unusual combinations of ideas.
Arguably, it is this very combination of discipline and freedom that the
IGERT program set out to accomplish. Thus, while we applaud the IGERT
goals, we suggest that its implementation could be adjusted to better achieve
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102 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

them. The IGERT program was intended to ‘catalyze a cultural change in

graduate education’ and ‘produce creative agents for change’. However,
designed as a ‘disciplinary plus’ approach, the program was conceived and
executed in a manner that not only accommodates but reflects the insti-
tutional processes of normal science and traditional theories of disciplinary
knowledge reproduction. As such, those responsible for the program have
not taken their own imaginative, let alone active, leap into a new kind of
educational dynamic that could best metabolize domain expertise with inter-
disciplinary experience. We argue an alternative approach to the current ‘dis-
ciplinary plus’ model, which essentially asks students to inculcate and ally
themselves to multiple domains, might instead engage students deeply in
one area of disciplinary expertise while inviting them to participate in inter-
mittent periods of interdisciplinary exposure.
The important role that separate domains play in the creative process
suggests the need to maintain the integrity of teaching coherent debates,
methods, and theories when seeking to encourage integrative thought.
However, simply transferring skills and techniques is clearly not enough if
we genuinely seek to support creativity and interdisciplinarity. Decades of
research suggest that the creative process is most fruitful when periods of
‘work’ are combined with periods of ‘play’ (see, for example, May, 1975;
Poincaré, 1952). And more recent work contends that cognitive complexity
is enhanced in those who already internalize a proclivity for scientific diver-
sity by engaging in mentally intensive avocations (Hollingsworth, 2007). One
way to achieve this balance between what might be called disciplinary voca-
tion and interdisciplinary avocation is to return the charrette to its original
purposes and to deploy it as an educational opportunity rather than an
experimental methodology. The charrette versus ‘disciplinary plus’ approach
to IGERT training would enable the type of domain immersion that yields
the necessary technical abilities while also allowing for authentic excursions
into scientific diversity and disagreement that would nurture independence
from and imagination beyond strict disciplinary orthodoxies. As an experi-
ence rather than an experiment, the charrette may not be able to ‘teach’
dispositions and worldviews but it will better exercise the cognitive complex-
ity that stems from scientific diversity and drives intellectual creativity.
The results and suggestions presented here should not be taken in any
way as a condemnation of the IGERT program but rather utilized to enhance
its role in the new field of ‘creativity support’ (Wierzbicki, 2007). What we
propose may well require a more radical transformation of higher education,
one that reframes old ideas of knowledge reproduction and validation to
support newer concepts of knowledge creation and exploration – practices
which may not be common to students or faculty of higher education. Thus,
we submit this article as both empiricist and heuristic in nature, written in
the spirit of reporting provocative results and suggesting radical reforms.
Though based on a small sample drawn by self-selection from a population
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Rhoten et al.: Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity 103

with unusual dimensions and formed into groups using a mixture of random
assignment and quotas, our results are substantial in magnitude, consistent
in direction, and robust to reasonable challenges. Hopefully, others will follow
up with similar studies and will subject the findings and views presented
here to critical analysis. It is only through the iterative process of proposing
new ideas and subjecting them to rigorous testing that we may make funda-
mental advances in science (Hollingsworth, 2007).

Acknowledgement
This material is based in part upon work supported by the National Science
Foundation NSF Award 0355353. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recom-
mendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necess-
arily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We would like to recognize
the contributions of our colleagues to the charrette and thus indirectly to this article:
Christopher Bail, David Conz, Sarah Damaske, Ingrid Erickson, Lauren Rivera, David
Schleifer, and Michelle van Noy.

Diana Rhoten is director of the Knowledge Institutions program area at the

Social Science Research Council. Rhoten’s research focuses on the social and tech-
nical conditions as well as the individual and organizational implications of different
approaches to knowledge production. Much of her recent work in this area concerns
the study of interdisciplinary and collaborative practices in science. Examples of her
current work can be found in Science, Nature, and Research Policy. She is also now
co-editing a book entitled Knowledge Matters: The Public Mission of the Research
University. Rhoten’s earlier research takes up comparative analyses of social and
educational policies in North and South America. Publications related to this work can
be found in journals such as Journal of Education Policy and Comparative Education
Review as well as books such as The New Accountability: High Schools and High-
Stakes Testing. [email: rhoten@ssrc.org]

Erin O’Connor is a Research Associate at the Social Science Research Council,

where she began a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in September 2008. In May 2008, she
received her PhD in sociology from the New School for Social Research for her dis-
sertation, ‘The Matter of Culture: An Ethnography of Embodied Knowledge in Glass-
blowing’. Her publications include articles on embodied knowledge, tools, imagination,
and innovation in glassblowing. She is currently writing on interdisciplinarity and
creativity among young scientists and is planning future research on perception and
imagination in the arts, as well as embodied notions of well-being in health prac-
tices. [email: eoconnor@ssrc.org]

Ed Hackett studies the social organization and dynamics of scientific research,

asking how patterns of interaction, leadership, interdisciplinary collaboration, and
other factors influence the production of knowledge. His most recent publications
can be found in Research Policy and Social Studies of Science. He is also co-editor
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104 Thesis Eleven (Number 96 2009)

of The New Handbook of Science and Technology Studies and co-author of Peerless
Science: Peer Review and U.S. Science Policy. He has written on many other aspects
of science, technology, and society, including research misconduct, the scientific career,
science and law, university-industry research relations, and environmental justice.
[email: ehackett@asu.edu]

Notes
1. The word ‘charrette’ translates literally from French to English as cart. The term
was used by the school of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris to
describe ‘an intense final effort made by architectural students to complete
their solutions to a given architectural problem in an allotted time . . .’ (Grove,
1981). The genesis of the term rests in the tradition of faculty assigning design
problems so difficult that only a few students could solve them in the time
allotted before the ‘charrette’ rolled past the drafting tables to collect the
students’ work, completed or not. Today, it refers to an intensive creative
process akin to brainstorming that is used primarily by design professionals to
develop solutions to a problem within a limited timeframe. We proposed the
19th century concept of the ‘charrette’ to fashion an appropriate experimental
test-bed for interdisciplinarity and creativity.
2. In Koestler’s conception (1964), there is a clear distinction between associative
and bisociative thought. Associative thought works within the confines of a
single domain, whereas bisociative thought works at the intersection of distinctly
separate domains. The term ‘bisociative thinking’ or ‘bisociation’ points to the
independent, autonomous character of domains that are brought into contact
and recombined in the creative act (Koestler, 1964; Sill, 2001).
3. John Dewey often used the term ‘disposition’ as a synonym for habit. Like
habits, dispositions are deeply intertwined with cognition and emotion, and they
have a primary role as basic building blocks of all our worldviews and actions
(Dewey, 1922).
4. The original 15 criteria used by the experts to rate the proposals included: intel-
lectual merit, broader impacts, disciplinary literature, disciplinary knowledge,
disciplinary methods, depth, interdisciplinarity, integration, synthesis, breadth,
comprehensiveness, proposal formulation, scientific skepticism, rigor, and orig-
inality. For each criterion at every level of the five-point scale, experts were
given a common detailed verbal description of what was meant by that rating.

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