HOW DO ORGANIZATIONS MAKE INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH WORK?

Interdisciplinary collaboration is not only an intellectual challenge. It is an organizational design problem.

People working across fields often operate across multiple departments, evaluation systems, professional communities, and definitions of success. The same structure that creates new combinations of knowledge can also introduce coordination costs, unclear ownership, and competing incentives.

I worked on a mixed-method study examining how interdisciplinary appointments relate to research productivity and innovation pathways at a research university. Because the project uses identifiable institutional data and supports an ongoing manuscript, this public case focuses on the research design and decision value rather than institution-specific findings.

What I did

I helped build and analyze a longitudinal faculty panel integrating multiple forms of organizational and research data:

• Appointment structure and career stage

• Publications and citations

• Grant activity

• Invention disclosure and commercialization activity

I also co-developed the faculty interview guide and participated in the interviews. The conversations explored how faculty experienced cross-unit coordination, resource access, teaching responsibilities, research collaboration, evaluation, and commercialization.

The quantitative analysis identified patterns across different outcomes and career contexts. The interviews helped explain why those patterns might emerge—and where administrative records alone could be misleading.

What I found

Three design principles became especially important:

• Interdisciplinary performance cannot be represented by one metric. Publications, grants, citations, and commercialization capture different pathways and may respond differently to the same organizational structure.

• Context matters. Appointment structure, career stage, and local evaluation systems need to be examined rather than treated as background controls.

• Quantitative and qualitative evidence answer different parts of the question. Panel data reveal recurring patterns; interviews expose coordination mechanisms, informal practices, and measurement gaps.

The purpose is therefore not to label interdisciplinary appointments as universally good or bad. It is to understand the conditions under which cross-boundary work is supported—or made unnecessarily difficult.

So what

Organizations frequently create cross-functional teams, matrixed roles, and interdisciplinary initiatives without redesigning the incentives and evaluation systems surrounding them.

For research and innovation leaders, the relevant question is not simply whether interdisciplinary collaboration works. It is whether responsibilities, resources, career incentives, and success metrics are aligned with the collaboration the organization is asking people to perform.

Cross-boundary talent creates value only when the surrounding organization knows how to recognize and support it.

With Fernando F. Suarez and Nathan Rietzler, Northeastern University. Working paper, 2026.