Case Studies

Case Study 1

2. Ability to work in interdisciplinary environments

2.1. Interdisciplinarity

Country	Romania
Title	The case of Amazon’s Open Innovation (OI): work interdisciplinary
Summary	The founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos said: “technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do”. Their focus on customer experience put Amazon in the role of a leader in e-commerce experience, offering marketing solutions for all types of e-commerce business, from start-ups to retail giants. That means individuals who are passionate about being lifelong learners, have the opportunity to connect the curiosity and progress that will drive collective innovation going forward.
Key Issues	Interdisciplinary knowledge encourages creativity. Interdisciplinarians help to mobilize intellectual resources. Interdisciplinarity solves problems that cannot be solved using single approaches.
Description of the case study	Their focus on customer experience put Amazon in the role of a leader in e-commerce experience, offering marketing solutions for all types of e-commerce business, from start-ups to retail giants. The founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos said: “We use high-performance transactions systems, complex rendering and object caching, workflow and queuing systems, business intelligence and data analytics, machine learning and pattern recognition, neural networks and probabilistic decision making, and a wide variety of other techniques.” Amazon spent hundreds of millions on training its employees to develop their competencies in different domains. An interdisciplinary approach involved team members from different disciplines working collaboratively. Interdisciplinary knowledge and research became important in the company because it encourages creativity and promotes important contributions in fields other than one’s own expertise. At the same time, the CEO mentioned “technology infuses all of our teams, all of our processes, our decision-making, and our approach to innovation in each of our businesses. It is deeply integrated into everything we do”. That means individuals who are passionate about being lifelong learners, have the opportunity to connect the curiosity and progress that will drive collective innovation going forward. According to LinkedIn: Amazon is #1 company where Americans want to work in 2022. We can conclude that companies that choose to invest in employee development, with a common purpose, working interdisciplinary, can generate growth of the field in which it works.

Case Study 2

2. Ability to work in interdisciplinary environments

2.2. Interdisciplinary teams

Country	Romania
Title	The case of managing interdisciplinary teams at NASA
Summary	The NASA agency is the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings rate federal employee satisfaction. The agency has a diverse workforce of 20 centres under 18,000 employees who work in specific divisions depending on the activities, not only astronauts, but also physicists, chemists, engineers, electricians, mechanics etc. The agency has NASA HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN which establishes the three priorities across interdisciplinary teams: Recognizing and rewarding innovative performance; Engaging and connecting the workforce; Building model supervisors and leaders.
Key Issues	To demonstrate a team culture and interdisciplinary atmosphere of trust Leadership roles and mission statements to be well established in an interdisciplinary team Employees with different competencies and experiences seek to achieve the same goal
Description of the case study	Surely everyone heard of NASA on numerous occasions. This is the United States Aeronautical Administration (NASA), an agency dedicated to space research and exploration. Over the years it has launched numerous space exploration missions and it is one of the world’s leading agencies in astronomy. Everything that is known about outer space so far has been discovered by this agency due to interdisciplinary teams with different competencies and experience, who seek to achieve the same goal. The agency has a diverse workforce of 20 centres under 18,000 employees who work in specific divisions depending on the activities, not only astronauts, but also physicists, chemists, engineers, electricians, mechanics, biologists, geneticists, doctors, programmers, economists, human resources specialists. The agency has NASA HUMAN CAPITAL PLAN which establish the three priorities across interdisciplinary teams: Recognizing and rewarding innovative performance; Engaging and connecting the workforce; Building model supervisors and leaders. Also, the agency invests in extensive onsite training, and other educational programs to ensure continue grow and expand knowledge and skills besides interdisciplinary education The NASA agency is the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings rate federal employee satisfaction. The overall rankings are determined by the Best Places to Work employee engagement score, calculated by the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group. Sources: https://searchpub.nssc.nasa.gov/servlet/sm.web.Fetch/OHCM-NASA_Human_Capital_Plan-In-Depth_Final-08014014-0444.pdf?rhid=1000&did=1919702&type=released https://bestplacestowork.org/rankings/detail/?c=NN00)