When Complexity Science Meets Convergence Research Part 1
The Launch
Capturing human stories on the journey
As the “team” person on one of the country’s first convergence research projects, it is my utmost joy to craft and launch the “Conversation Cafe on Complexity Leadership” initiative. It has been a long time coming. The COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the research team has certainly compelled its launch, but it is not merely a reaction to the crisis. This blog series is aimed at capturing the human stories behind a growing team well into their journey.
I am taking such care to tell this story because I have dedicated my career to developing competency for addressing complex challenges. I believe complexity science is the science of the 21st century. I also believe convergence research is the new research paradigm for the 21st century. The application of complexity principles is indispensable for successful convergence research.
As the first cohort of the brand new National Science Foundation — Growing Convergence Research (NSF-GCR)program, we are determined to forge a path for other convergence teams to come.
Our topic is the circular economy. We have nine faculty and 13 students from four different institutes and six different disciplines — chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, computer engineering, economics, anthropology, and leadership. Our task, in a nutshell, is to come up with a new type of polymer that will lead to recyclable thermosets, a new materials tracking system enabled by blockchain, create a general equilibrium model to study the impact on economics and conduct anthropological studies on consumer behavior and social impact.
One hallmark of a complex challenge is that the very nature of the problem we are working on is contested, and sometimes solutions are contradictory to each other. This certainly describes our project: we do not yet have an agreed upon definition of circular economy; as we start out, every discipline has their perspective on the solution.
My role as the complexity leadership person is to model, design and facilitate the convergence process. I see it as dual processes: the co-creation of knowledge for a cohesive circular economy ecosystem, and the team members interacting with each other. To use an analogy: the co-creation of knowledge is like the boat, and the team process is like the wave. If we were not careful with how the team is coming together, the waves could seriously rock the boat — even capsize the boat.
In late April, our principal investigator Dr. Bilec said we had been in the “rumble”, a term populated by Dr. Brene Brown that emphasizes “the messy middle of problem identification and solving”.
I was first introduced to this type of transdisciplinary research project when I was a postdoc working on the National Research and Traineeship program (NSF-NRT) at Clemson University. The topic was resilient infrastructure, esp. in response to catastrophic climate disasters. Similar to the NSF-GCR project, that project had several engineering disciplines, plus computer scientists, social scientists, and mathematicians. The first-year network evaluation showed several discipline based silos in the program. Student interviews revealed that the first line of barriers was a common language — it took more than a year for team members to fully grasp what each other was talking about.
The seed of my interest for developing competency for convergence research was planted then. I came to realize that most faculty are trained on disciplinary based silos, so convergence research takes most researchers out of their comfort zone. They cannot be expected to work on transdisciplinary topics without developing new competencies. It would be like asking a race car driver to become an airplane pilot without the required training.
We have now reached the optimal time to launch the Cafe because we are all ready to roll up our sleeves for work. Six months into the program, our team has passed the “honeymoon period” where we were excited about winning the award, and curious about each other. We have had monthly meetings, presented on research topics, drafted co-authored papers, and engaged in other team building activities.
Three of these six months were spent in the COVID circumstance, which only amplifies the uncertainty in this already uncertain journey. As we “rumbled” along, I am wondering what is the missing ingredient to help the team gel.
The feedback from students collected by Nanda, our wonderful postdoc, really served as the catalyst. Underneath all the questions students were posing, I sensed an anxiety from not seeing through the nature of the beast they are wrestling with.
Complex challenges are difficult.
As Zaid Hassan, CEO of 10-in-10 and lead instructor of Complexity University said, complex challenges are difficult. Humanity as a whole is just starting to learn and practice to respond to such challenges. We are working with conditions that are shifting under our feet. Our problem is not that we are deviating from a map. Our problem is we do not even have a map — even worse, the landscape is constantly changing. We are charting the territory through our work — both in terms of circular economy as a meta-discipline, and in terms of how to work together as a convergence research team.
Some meta-awareness on the journey itself might help. It is time to introduce some conversations on the state of art complexity research.
Below is what I wrote to introduce the Cafe. This Thursday (May 28) is the first session. I am curious to see how it goes. I will do another blog next week.
Convergence is an emerging new research paradigm. The volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) nature of challenges such research addresses calls for new competencies. The “Conversation Cafe on Complexity Leadership” our team is launching is aimed at developing competency for complexity.
The first three topics we will address are:
- Convergence Research: The nature of the beast ( 2:00–3:00pm, Thursday, May 28)
- Deeply personal: Your commitment to circular economy ( 2:00–3:00pm, Thursday, June 25)
- VUCA Psychology: Does uncertainty necessarily invite anxiety? ( 2:00–3:00pm, Thursday, July 23)
During the hour you can expect a light presentation on cutting edge research, followed by rounds of small group conversations, closing with an optional half an hour of deep dialogue on complexity principles.
Note: I would like to thank my colleague Marc Rettig for introducing me to the Conversation Cafe method, which is an adaptation of World Cafe for the virtual environment.
