Collaboration, and more of it, is often called for across many walks of life, the assumption being that more diverse contributions will improve outcomes and impact. As an innovation researcher with a scientific background, I have always been interested in the role of collaborative activity to successful (or otherwise) research projects. As we are well aware, the development of social capital is viewed as essential to collaboration.

Over the years I have explored what appears to support the building of social capital, particularly when geographical proximity isn’t possible, such as in international collaborations and/or virtual organisations. With Urs Daellenbach, I published a paper on the role of social capital formation to a sense of identification in a virtual research organisation (British Journal of Management, 22(1), 2011, 54-76).

Over ten years later, I find myself as Director of another large virtual research programme, the ‘Science for Technological Innovation” National Science Challenge (NSC), one of eleven New Zealand NSCs, launched since 2016 (www.sftichallenge.govt.nz). As an experiment in how to build collaborative, inter-disciplinary, mission-led projects co-designed with industry and Māori (New Zealand’s indigenous population), those same social capital notions have underpinned many innovative processes that SfTI has developed.

I will first describe these new or adapted processes and their social capital platform, and then chat with Tristan about those SfTI experiences of the last 6 years.