Disruption underpins future readiness

Future readiness and disruption are linked in two ways. First, we can anticipate more frequent and more impactful disruptions to social and ecological systems given the rates of social and ecological change being experienced. Future-ready organizations and systems must build resistance and resilience to these disruptions (Word Economic Forum 2022). Second, there is a growing call for better understanding of how these unprecedented times are resulting in the cascading effects leading to system failure. This is propelling demands for new ways of research and learning that break traditional barriers and are integrative and action oriented (ex. Bradbury et al Reference Bradbury, Waddell, O’Brien, Apgar, Teehankee and Fazey2019; Barry 2021).

Disruption in research and practice is recognized by its success in introducing new ideas and approaches, asking fundamental questions that break the status quo, and pushing inquiry in new directions (Callier Reference Callier2019). The ability to bring together traditionally distinct information and disciplines for disruptive purposes is an ever-growing expectation in universities, businesses, and governments (Halloun Reference Halloun2020).

A disruptive One Health agenda involves more than just integrating human and animal healthcare systems for better disease control. It should foster systems of inter-dependent and mutually supportive actions to promote health and resilience of people, animals, plants, and ecosystems today and in the future. Without transformation to collectively address root causes of health and resilience, we will continue to battle new crises as they emerge.

Despite accumulating evidence of the need for disruptive intersectoral approaches, there remain questions of how to operationalize this in policy and practice. Opportunities to transfer this idea into the radical changes and practical solutions have often been missed, neglected, or discouraged. As seen in medical education (Dyche and Epstein Reference Dyche and Epstein2011), when education, hiring and evaluation emphasize the mastery of facts and skills, researchers tend to be drawn toward producing known answers and away from developing innovative or game changing solutions. Competitive pressure can further encourage attention on predictable and readily publishable results rather than findings that are innovative and useful (Knorr and Augustin Reference Knorr and Augustin2021). Transformation to deep integration is unlikely to occur if we drive innovation through old ways of knowing and doing.

There has been a boon in publications calling for a better understand of which One Health projects work, how they work, where, and for whom (e.g., Häsler et al Reference Häsler, Cornelsen, Bennani and Rushton2014, Lee and Brummer Reference Lee and Brumme2013, Baum et al Reference Baum, Machalaba, Daszak, Salern and Karesh2017, Khan et al Reference Khan, Rothman-Ostrow, Spencer, Hasan, Sabirovic, Rahman-Shepherd, Shaikh, Heymann and Dar2018). While such publications provide insights and general conditions for more effective work, they have not bridged the need to tailor recommendations to specific working context. Due to the trend towards and skepticism about transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research, scholars have begun to look at the relationships between team structures and innovation or disruption. Based on their analysis of 65 million papers, patents, and software products that span 1954–2014, Wu et al (Reference Wu, Wang and Evans2019) concluded that “smaller teams have tended to disrupt science and technology with new ideas and opportunities, whereas larger teams have tended to develop existing ones.” Small teams disrupted science and technology by exploring and amplifying promising ideas. Wu et al (Reference Wu, Wang and Evans2019) proposed that some types of research require the resources of large teams that demand an ongoing stream of funding which makes them more sensitive to the loss of support that comes from failure which, in turn, reduces risk taking. Xu et al (Reference Xu, Wu and Evans2022) determined that teams with few levels of middle management between leadership and employees, or in certain situations none at all, were more innovative and disruptive than more layered hierarchies. Zeng et al (Reference Zeng, Fan, Di, Wang and Havlin2021) concluded that papers produced by teams with new team members were associated with greater originality and a greater multidisciplinary impact. The career freshness of team members was positively correlated with the originality and multidisciplinary of produced papers. Sugimoto et al (Reference Sugimoto, Robinson-García, Murray, Yegros-Yegros, Costas and Larivière2017) concluded that mobile scholars show the highest impact and that limiting the circulation of scholars between programs or nations damages the scientific system. As a final example, Bercovitz and Feldman (Reference Bercovitz and Feldman2011) concluded that teams composed of members from multiple institutions were more successful and the presence of prior social ties supporting links with external team members positively influenced outcomes. Much of what has been written about building disruptive teams in business management are consistent with what is being described for innovative scientific teams (Table 1). These findings suggest the need to educate people who value diverse ways of knowing, are prepared to be disruptors, and have good collaborative skills and attitudes.

Table 1. Selected advice for building disruptive teams; lessons from business management

Agility

Future-ready One Health practitioners must be able to create novel solutions to the ever-changing problems precipitated by accelerating social and environmental change. Agility is the synergistic combination of robustness, resilience, responsiveness, flexibility, innovation, and adaptation (Alberts Reference Alberts2007). Learning agility refers to an individual’s willingness and ability to learn new competencies to perform under first time, tough, or difficult circumstances (Lombardo and Eichinger Reference Lombardo and Eichinger2000). A changing and uncertain future requires people who can respond flexibly to changing situations, who can make informed decisions in the face of change and uncertainty, and who can adapt to rapid change (Ab Jalil et al Reference Ab Jalil, Ismail, Ma’rof, Lim, Hassan and Che Nawi2022). Agility helps learners succeed in situations where they have never been before (Ab Jalil et al Reference Ab Jalil, Ismail, Ma’rof, Lim, Hassan and Che Nawi2022). Agile learners can look beyond what they already know and integrate unrelated pieces of information to gain a better perspective.

Like other transdisciplinary practitioners (Klein Reference Klein2022), One Health practitioners need agile thinking to know where and when to switch on the spectrum of cross disciplinary methodologies appropriate to a given problem. This approach requires a willingness to learn from experience, an openness to being wrong, an acceptance of new ideas and desire to navigate differences in opinions, reflecting on what was learned. Educators must support learners use of past and present experiences to make sense of uncertain situations and apply their skills confidently to novel scenarios.

Convergence

In a world of exponentially expanding rates of new knowledge generation, no person can keep up to date on all information relevant to a problem they are trying to solve. Collective insights of groups have the potential to generate more accurate information or decisions than individuals can make alone, as has been seen in clinical decision-making (Radcliffe et al Reference Radcliffe, Lyson, Barr-Walker and Sarkar2019). Convergence is an approach to the integration of knowledge and ways of thinking to tackle complex challenges and achieve new and innovative and transformative solutions (NAS 2014). Convergence of ideas and knowledge requires relationships and interactions between and among knowledge holders.

Many health problems have traditionally been seen as complicated challenges that should be solved by breaking them down into smaller pieces. Solutions to the complicated problems are assumed to emerge from the solutions to many smaller problems. Teaching and training have tended to build “smaller pieces competences.” Increasingly we are facing complex rather than complicated problems. Complex problems are problems that are difficult to define because different people have differing opinions about the nature and influence of different causal factors. The nature and extent of the problem are messier and more ambiguous; they are more connected to other and often very different problems; more likely to react in unpredictable ways; and more likely to produce unintended consequences. “Hierarchical and silo structures are perfectly designed to break problems down into more manageable fragments. They are not, however, so effective in handling high levels of complexity” (Hansen et al Reference Hansen, Fradinho, Andersen and Lefrere2009).

As a result of the complexity of working across multiple ways of knowing and doing, convergence is both challenging to teach and challenging to do. Transdisciplinary teaching should involve situations where concepts and skills are developed through real-world context that includes the pluralist perspectives of several disciplines and the coordination of activities at all levels when addressing a problem (Bore and Wright Reference Bore and Wright2009). To break silos of learning and doing, education must create conditions to foster transdisciplinary literacy. Learners will need opportunities to roam across disciplines or between different professions. Having the chance to reflect on how their disciplinary framing of a problem affect their openness to innovative or disruptive opportunities will come from examining how their beliefs, judgments, and practices influence their approach to a problem. Such a feat is often a challenge to achieve when educational programs are delivered in purpose-built facilities divorced or distant from other disciplines.

Attention to team building

Anholt et al (Reference Anholt, Stephen and Copes2012) determined that interdisciplinary One Health collaborations are affected by; (i) the characteristics of the people, (ii) the degree to which the task is a shared goal, (iii) the policies, practices and resources of the workplace, (iv) how information technology is used and (v) the evaluation of the results. Personal relationships built on trust and respect were, above all, needed to best assemble the disciplinary strength of the collaborators.

Competent disciplinarians are better able to navigate the complex process of interdisciplinary collaborations when they combine their strong standards of scholarship and large bodies of knowledge with broad interests and imagination. A third-party interdisciplinary knowledge broker who knows where the knowledge could be found can facilitate introductions and help to build effective teams (Anholt et al Reference Anholt, Stephen and Copes2012). Knowledge brokers are needed to leverage lessons learned from past experiences and improve diffusion of innovation by sharing and validating best practices.

Closing the knowing-to-doing gap

All forms of population management are increasingly expected to base their decisions on evidence. The lack of systematic program evaluations or implementation studies leaves decision makers with insufficient evidence to select interventions likely to be acceptable, effective, and sustainable within and across the disparate One Health context.

Effective implementation of health interventions requires people who can account for the variable context of interventions (MacDonald et al Reference MacDonald, Pauly, Wong, Schick-Makaroff, van Roode, Strosher, Kothari, Valaitis, Manson, O’Briain, Carroll, Lee, Tong, Smith and Ward2017). For example, the social, economic and ecological context of the wild animal hunting compared to farming that same species will affect the avenues to prevent disease emergence, to manage risks to other wild populations or political support for interventions even when the same pathogen and host species exist but in different situations. Evidence-based decisions need three types of evidence; (i) evidence specific to the decision-making social and ecological context; (ii) evidence extracted from other settings or situations and (iii) evidence pertaining to the values and expectations of the decision makers and those affected by the decision (Bowen et al Reference Bowen, Erickson, Martens and Crockett2009). Few decisions are made on scientific evidence alone. One Heath decision makers need to be able to distill evidence from research, context, and experience, and use that evidence to inform and improve decisions. Despite widespread support for using evidence in decision-making, there is little consensus on what evidence is, what kind of evidence is most appropriate and how “using evidence” can best be demonstrated (Bowen et al Reference Bowen, Erickson, Martens and Crockett2009).

Understanding the processes through which One Health interventions are effective, and how to spread and sustain effective interventions between locations and over time, will speed the diffusion of innovation and amplify the impact of investments. To do so, we must close the knowing-to-doing gap by systematically training people who can assess which One Health actions and interventions are feasible, acceptable, impactful, equitable, and sustainable within which social and environmental contexts.

Bridging the knowing-to-doing gap using collaborative approaches between knowledge producers and knowledge users can help identify the right questions to ask that will produce credible and trustworthy evidence that can be translated into practical, feasible, acceptable, and sustainable solutions. Further innovation is needed to clarify, reinforce, and magnify locally developed approaches and facilitate their diffusion and adaption to other settings in a timely fashion to create global solutions.

Removing disciplinary barriers

Removing disciplinary barriers is a prerequisite to promote innovative scientific approaches (Aragrande et al Reference Aragrande, Canali, Bouwknegt and Cornelsen2015). Unfortunately, remaining barriers to integration across public, environment, and animal health domains still limit the contribution of One Health (ex. Johnson et al Reference Johnson, Hansen and Bi2018; Asaaga et al Reference Asaaga, Young, Oommen, Chandarana, August, Joshi, Chanda, Vanak, Srinivas, Hoti and Seshadri2021; Humboldt-Dachroeden Reference Humboldt-Dachroeden2023).

If One Health strives to use different types of knowledge production to promote change by not only integrating knowledge from different disciplines, but also by integrating values, knowledge, know-how and expertise from non-academic sources, it needs to be attentive to experience in other transdisciplinary settings. “Transdisciplinary work involves situations where concepts and skills are developed through real-world context that includes the co-existence of perspectives of several disciplines and the coordination of activities at all levels when addressing a problem “(Bore and Wright Reference Bore and Wright2009). To break silos of learning and doing, workplaces must create conditions to foster transdisciplinary literacy.

Expanding the questions

A transformative One Health agenda needs to move beyond discovering what works and why to understanding what works for whom and under what circumstances, but recent work suggests it is not common practice (Gallagher et al Reference Gallagher, Keehner, Hervé-Claude and Stephen2021). Innovation is the process of taking knowledge and making it valuable to stakeholders (Stikeleather and Masys Reference Stikeleather and Masys2020). Knowledge about new threats and risk factors alone will not lead to risk reduction without understanding the factors that can change the trajectory of a socio-ecological system to a safer state. Animal, human, and ecosystem health and resilience need to be built by design and in partnership with those who can influence locally adaptable policies and practices.

Adaptive management of the necessary infrastructure and processes to maximize the impacts of One Health require collaboratively built criteria for success, new capacity to evaluate success and dedicated efforts to systematically understand the enablers and obstacles to turning discovery into health benefits for people, animals, and their shared environments.

Institutional support

Bridging where we are now with where we need to be requires cross-cutting institutional support and investment in transformative ideas, people, processes, governance, and partnerships to adapt and mobilize innovations for resilience and health. Training for game changing One Health requires not only greater investment in conventional disciplinary education, but also in cross-cutting capacities and ideas that will make it easier to see what is working and for whom and to push those lessons throughout the research and policy communities more routinely and effectively. At the heart of this issue is the need to shift to integrated rather than sector-based approaches to achieve multiple objectives and to mainstream concepts of fairness and redistribution of the health resources between people, animals, and settings (Stephen and Parmely Reference Stephen and Parmley2022).