Critical Core Skills / Thinking Critically > Transdisciplinary Thinking: Library Resources

Building better ideas: How constructive debate inspires courage, collaboration and breakthrough solutions by B. Kim Barnes Why do teams settle for bad ideas or kill good ones? Popular consultant B. Kim Barnes's unique process of constructive debate shows how teams can create better ideas and outcomes by eliminating obstacles to honest discussion, creativity, and collaboration. In too many organizations, great ideas and unusual solutions can be suppressed, ignored, or attacked. Departments defend their turf, and people choose what is safe over what is better. Bad ideas move forward and good ideas die, which can lead to disastrous results--financial or otherwise. Luckily, there is a workable path out of this dysfunction. Kim Barnes's process of constructive debate shows how to establish conditions that encourage the free exchange, discussion, and development of ideas and eliminate conditions that prevent potentially useful ideas from getting heard. By using this tested model, any company or team can improve outcomes and bring out everyone's best ideas. A constructive debate is one in which a diverse group of individuals can express their ideas, engage others in building on and improving them, explore ideas deeply, and challenge one another's positions in a fair and productive way. In this book, you'll learn a set of behaviors you can model and encourage and a process you can facilitate, lead, or support your client in leading. In this time, where opinions can be tribal and differences can lead to unconstructive conflict, it's important to find ways to build robust ideas through a thoughtful, fair, and inclusive approach.

Contemporary thinking on transdisciplinary knowledge: What those who know, know by Paul Gibbs; Alison Beavis How can we understand what a transdisciplinary (TD) approach might actually comprise of, given its complex and various uses? This book asks the question of leading practitioners in the field of higher education and transdisciplinarity. The emergence of transdisciplinarity has been a response to the often-failed closed-system, discipline-based approaches to solving complex social problems (various reports and definitions may be found in projects reported by the OECD, UNESCO and EU). These failures are often contingent upon disaggregated notions of epistemology and the compounding failures of ontological incongruities that are evident in these discipline-based approaches. Such approaches are not necessarily confined to large, seemingly insurmountable social problems, but apply equally well to issues in educational institutions as workplaces. Transdisciplinary knowledge is in the liberation of new and imaginative understanding of the structured reality of open social systems. It gives rise to generative mechanisms, which are central to relationships of agency and structure.

The creative thinking handbook by Chris Griffiths; Melina Costi More than 82 per cent of companies believe creativity directly impacts results, yet few of us understand how it comes about or how to put it into practice. Some people say that creativity is about thinking outside the box, while others believe it is about being creative inside the box; but what if there is no box? The Creative Thinking Handbook argues that we need to identify and remove the 'box' around our thinking, so we canunlock unlimited streams of creativity for professional and business success. This book offers an integrated system of personalized insights, along with clear, practical tools and strategies - including the tried-and-trusted Solution Finder model. The authors show you how to develop your creative problem-solving skills to make better decisions with an individualized step-by-step strategy. Based on long-term research and testing of the creative thinking process, The Creative Thinking Handbook helps you generate more ideas and find brilliant solutions for any professional challenge.

Developing informed intuition for decision-making by Jay Liebowitz This book examines how to develop the main traits that are necessary to become an "informed intuitant". Case studies and examples of successful "informed intuitants" are a major component of the book. "Intuitant" is someone who has the intuitive awareness to be successful. "Informed intuitant" indicates that the individual/decision maker not only applies his/her intuition but also verifies it through using data-driven approaches (such as data analytics). Some of this work resulted from research examining how well do executives trust their intuition.

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary failures by Dena Fam & Michael O'Rourke (Editors) Unlike other volumes in the current literature, this book provides insight for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners on what doesn' twork. Documenting detailed case studies of project failure matters, not only as an illustration of experienced challenges but also as projects do not always follow step-by-step protocols of preconceived and theorised processes. Bookended by a framing introduction by the editors and a conclusion written by Julie Thompson Klein, each chapter ends with a reflexive section that synthesizes lessons learned and key take-away points for the reader. Drawing on a wide range of international case studies and with a strong environmental thread throughout, the book reveals a range of failure scenarios for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary projects, including: * Projects that did not get off the ground; * Projects that did not have the correct personnel for specified objectives; * Projects that did not reach their original objectives but met other objectives; * Projects that failed to anticipate important differences among collaborators. Illustrating causal links in real life projects, this volume will be of significant relevance to scholars and practitioners looking to overcome the challenges of conducting interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.

Problem solving by Howard Eisner Problem-solving and better thinking skills are among the top skills that employers are looking for. This book presents various methods of problem-solving that can be adapted to any field. It focuses on a set of a dozen new approaches with an ending result to finding better solutions to problems that you may have previously found difficult. The book discusses problem-solving based upon new thinking skills and presents the relationship between problem-solving and creativity. A connection between problem-solving and re-engineering is presented as the book explores the ability to tackle new and difficult problems in all aspects of life. It points you in the direction of how to easily find better solutions to problems that previously were found to be difficult. Target audience is general engineers, systems engineers, scientists, technologists, mathematicians, and lawyers.

Rethinking community through transdisciplinary research by Bettina Jansen (Editor) This book offers the first interdisciplinary survey of community research in the humanities and social sciences to consider such diverse disciplines as philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, disabilities studies, linguistics, communication studies, and film studies. Bringing together leading international experts, the collection of essays critically maps and explores the state of the art in community research, while also developing future perspectives for a cross-disciplinary rethinking of community. Pursuing such a critical, transdisciplinary approach to community, the book argues, can counteract reductive appropriations of the term 'community' and, instead, pave the way for a novel assessment of the concept's complexity. Since community is, above all, a lived practice that shapes people's everyday lives, the essays also suggest ways of redoing community; they discuss concrete examples of community practice, thereby bridging the gap between scholars and activists working in the field.

Transforming teamwork cultivating collaborative cultures by Zimmerman, Diane P.; Roussin, James L.; Garmston, Robert J. In this ground-breaking resource, three experts in the field of education and teamwork each present one of three strands that, when woven together, support teamwork and forge collaborative interactions into a transformative way of working. Drawing on research and practical experience the authors identify strategies and tools that show how to: Build psychological safety, where teams work towards resilient interpersonal relationships; Use constructive conflict as a powerful catalyst for team learning and transformation; Inquire into problems of practice to transform capabilities and produce actionable learning

Unleashing the power of diversity by Bjø Z. Ekelund Unleashing the Power of Diversity provides a clear tool to create a common language across teams and organisations that reinforces positive identity, builds trust towards people and processes, supports innovation and helps make diversity sustainable. The complex problems that many organisations and teams now face are global in scope, including cultural, social and environmental issues. Challenges such as climate change, mass migration and human rights do not respect national borders or sociodemographic groups. In order to solve these complex problems, we need the skills to be able to communicate effectively across the differences that may otherwise divide us. In this ground-breaking book, award-winning consultant and author, Bjørn Z. Ekelund, presents a clear step-by-step approach to communicate with people who have different mindsets, perspectives and cultural backgrounds. It is relevant and applicable across various contexts - within the workplace, inter-professional, across different industries and cultures, and between corporate, governmental and NGO groups. The programme developed in the book, called the Diversity Icebreaker, has been successfully applied across 70 countries and with 250,000 participants. It shows how to break down these barriers and provides a new way to conceptualise diversity across various boundaries, allowing for trust and unity to form and creating a pathway for improving communication.