Innovation Labs to Enhance Collaboration

Building on the science of team science and preliminary work at the Buffalo and Vanderbilt CTSAs, we propose to work with our industry partner Knowinnovation to implement, assess, and disseminate an innovative and promising method for stimulating and nurturing new transdisciplinary research teams across the CTSA Program consortium: Innovation Labs. We will focus on early career investigators, have well-developed expertise, and will benefit from developing transdisciplinary collaborations. This work will further advance the field by taking a strong translational science approach to identify and test "best practices". To accomplish this, we will critically evaluate the impact of Innovation Labs in two preliminary randomized controlled trials (RCTs). In collaboration with NCATs and broad input from the CTSA network, we will develop a clinical and translational research grand challenge focus for each Innovation Lab. A diverse applicant pool of early career investigators invited from every CTSA hub in the consortium will be reviewed, and top applicants will be randomized to a 5-day residential Innovation Lab or "treatment as usual" control group (n=25/group/RCT). Measures of process and outcome will be collected from the application phase through 12-month follow-up and aggregated across the two RCTs. Given the preliminary nature of the work and an emerging consensus regarding the science of team science, primary outcomes will be measures of the depth and breadth of participants collaborative networks and attitudes towards collaboration, which we predict will be enhanced in the Innovation Lab group compared to the treatment as usual control group. We will also gather initial data on the degree to which Innovation Labs result in increased transdisciplinary collaborative output, including grant proposals, publications, and presentations. The significance of this work is clear: We aim to advance clinical and translational science by critically evaluating a potential "best practice" method for catalyzing collaborations and enhancing innovative translational research, a core goal of the CTSA Program. Our initial RCTs target an important segment of the workforce and begin the process of dissemination across the CTSA network, setting the stage for much broader implementation and impact.