In the Future Work Skills 2020 report, the Institute for the Future identified 10 skills that will be vital for success in the workforce for the next decade. This perspective focuses on one of these 10 vital skills: Transdisciplinarity.
Read the full Future Work Skills 2020 report.
What is transdisciplinarity?
- Literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
Why this skill will be vital for workforce success
- In the next ten years we will be confronting a number of highly complex problems—notably climate change, energy constraints, and aging populations. Their solutions will require integration of different sets of knowledge and fluency across multiple disciplines.
- In addition, technologies and data will permeate all aspects of work in the next decade, requiring workers to be versed in the language of data and computation, independent of what work they
are doing. We will see transdisciplinarity—ability to work across disciplines—emerge as a key skill for the workforce of the future.
- Transdisciplinarity will also be valued as a key driver of innovation. Some of the most exciting developments of recent years have come from interdisciplinary practice.
- Biomimicry, a new discipline that studies nature's designs and processes and applies them to solve human problems, is being used to shape architectural design.
- Engineering principles are applied in the development of the new field of synthetic biology, which involves the design and construction of new biological parts, devices, and systems and the re-design of existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes.
Understanding transdisciplinary thinking
- Transdisciplinary thinking goes beyond interdisciplinary teamwork, though that remains important. As writer and theorist Howard Rheingold explains, this skill is really about “speak[ing] the languages of multiple disciplines—biologists who have understanding of mathematics, mathematicians who understand biology.”
- Future workers will need to be equipped to think through different disciplinary approaches themselves.
- A number of organizations including IBM and IDEO are beginning to talk about this skill in terms of a “T-shaped” quality.
- T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skill set.
- The vertical bar of the “T” represents depth in one field—for example engineering, design or biology.
- The horizontal bar represents the ability to collaborate across other disciplines and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than one’s own.
Transdisciplinarity and higher education
- Transdisciplinary thinking presents a clear challenge for higher education institutions. Many are already responding by creating rich transdisciplinary programs that allow people to study and work with specialists across a range of fields instead of being limited to one traditional field.
- For example, Design London—a strategic partnership between the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London—facilitates shared teaching and knowledge exchange among MA, MEng and MBA students.
- In the United States, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California’s San Diego campus brings together researchers from STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) with art, design and other disciplines to tackle large-scale societal problems.
Implications beyond formal years of education
- As human productive life span increases, multiple careers and exposure to more industries and disciplines will become the norm.
- Curiosity and an openness to continual learning throughout life will be crucial enablers of this skill.
Topic: Workforce Preparedness
