Tradeoffs or synergies? Interdisciplinary projects for a sustainable agriculture

The main topic this paper addresses deals with the role, the importance and needed competencies a good project manager needs, in order to be able to properly manage an interdisciplinary research project for a sustainable agriculture. The paper addresses also the problem of harnessing individual differences towards unleashing creativity in interdisciplinary teams, as an indicator of the diversity of problems a project manager has to face. Long term interdisciplinary projects in education and research need to go beyond the typical approaches to this problem, that often deal with a superficial level of communication. The Young Types, Personality Adaptations and the Life Script concepts of are being used to illustrate how problem solving requires cooperation of different types, and how the individual differences are shaped by early childhood environment, and then reinforced by later choices in life.