Interdisciplinary integrated research teams in an academic environment

This paper presents a discussion on the extent to which industrial R&D management techniques can be applied in an academic research environment Working in highly integrated interdisciplinary teams has been shown to provide significant benefits in industrial R&D, yet organisational forms, reward systems and the culture of the academic environment remain a barrier to team working. A group of four research centres at the University of Edinburgh have trialled a new integrated team approach similar to the use of high-performance teams in industrial product development. This has proved a highly effective method of carrying out novel interfacial research, allows groups to address more substantial research questions and generates a truly interdisciplinary research capability for further work. Using this project as a case study has provided an insight into the value of this approach and the specific issues to be considered.