From Idlis to Innovation: Why Understanding Different Disciplinary Modalities Matters
- Lakshmi Srinivasan
- Aug 18
- 7 min read
Why do students graduate into jobs they aren’t prepared for?
Why do corporate teams get stuck when challenges cut across silos?
Both point to the same gap: we’re still teaching and working in disciplinary boxes. In today’s world, this isn’t just a curriculum issue—it’s a direct hit on employability, innovation capacity, and an institution’s competitive edge. Graduates need to be job-ready, teams need to innovate faster, and organizations need to adapt to disruption more seamlessly. There is budding research that points to these modalities contributing to greater employment success [1].
To design corporate teams, strategies and educational programs that truly deliver on this future-readiness, everyone —managers, leadership, deans, faculty, and students—must clearly understand the distinctions between multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity, and trans-disciplinarity. Though it sounds obvious, you’d be surprised how often these terms are misunderstood or used interchangeably. So, let’s break them down. And since I love food (who doesn’t?!), I'll explain using some Indian favorites.
Before we begin, we can think of these different modalities or approaches as getting more and more intermixed between disciplines and subjects of expertise - from disciplinary, multidisciplinary to trans-disciplinary. So, the natural question, if trans-disciplinary is highest on the ladder, isn’t the only thing we need to know and operate from? Not necessarily. Different approaches are required for different needs - just like you don’t call an electrical engineer to fix a light bulb or a mason to build a bridge, various scales and complexities of issues demand various scales of engagement and resolution.
Multidisciplinarity
If you are from India, consider the menu of a Udupi Grand or Sri Sangeethas, both restaurants happily offer a selection of meals which may include idli/sambar and also, fried rice. While both dishes come from different cuisines, they are offered by the same restaurant. Jack in the Box is an iconic American fast-food chain that famously offers both hamburgers and tacos on the same menu. This reflects two distinct cuisines—American-style burgers and Mexican-style tacos—presented side-by-side, without blending them into a hybrid dish.
This is exactly the essence of a multidisciplinary curriculum: multiple distinct disciplines (cuisines) coexist in one project or educational experience (menu) without integration.
For Industry: For example, a company may bring together specialists from marketing, finance, and engineering to work on a new product. Each team contributes from its own domain, but the work streams remain largely separate—marketing handles campaigns, finance handles budgets, engineering handles development.
Why and when is multidisciplinarity relevant and important?
Access to Specialized Knowledge: Ensures every function contributes expertise without diluting disciplinary strengths.
Efficiency in Division of Labor: Useful when a challenge can be broken into clear, parallel tasks.
Scalability: Makes it easier to expand teams or onboard new members without requiring deep cross-training.
Broader Perspective: Having multiple disciplines present prevents blind spots in decision-making, even if they don’t fully integrate.
For educational institutions: For example, an institution may offer separate modules in design and finance. While these subjects are taught independently rather than in a shared classroom, students benefit from the opportunity to explore both, expanding their learning “menu” and satisfying diverse intellectual appetites.
Why and when is multidisciplinarity relevant and important?
Breadth of Learning: Gives students exposure to diverse fields before specializing.
Career Readiness: Builds “T-shaped” professionals with depth in one field and breadth across others.
Early Exploration: Especially valuable in foundation years or general education when students are still finding their direction.
Contextual Awareness: Helps future specialists understand the wider social, ethical, and cultural dimensions of their work.
Interdisciplinarity
An interdisciplinary approach brings together expertise from different fields to work on the same project, initiative, or classroom. For instance, if a team were to design an app for financial investments like “Kite” by Zerodha or “Interactive Broker”, the approach would need to integrate learning about trading/investing, user experience, behavioural design and web/app interfaces.
One of my favourite dishes ever, Gobi Manchurian or Cauliflower Manchurian is an Indian invention at the intersection of two cuisines - Indian and Chinese. From Chinese cooking, it borrows soy sauce, vinegar, ginger–garlic, frying technique and from Indian cuisine, it borrows cauliflower (gobi), spices, chili, and the love for bold masalas. Similarly, tex-mex tacos are not just Mexican tacos and American food sitting side by side on a plate. Instead, Mexican culinary methods (corn tortillas, chili, cumin, salsa) are combined with American influences (ground beef, cheddar cheese, sour cream, lettuce). Most importantly, both dishes are recognisably connected to both cuisines they borrow from, by the flavour palette. This is another thing about interdisciplinarity, the disciplines retain their identity to a certain extent in this approach.
For educational institutions:
Why and when is interdisciplinarity relevant and important?
Deeper Problem-Solving: Integrates methods and insights across fields to tackle complex challenges.
Innovation Driver: Sparks creativity by blending perspectives (e.g., design + finance, tech + psychology).
Real-World Relevance: Mirrors how industries work—most problems don’t fit neatly into one discipline.
Advanced Stages: Especially relevant in higher years, capstone projects, or research when specialization meets collaboration.
For industry:
Why and when is interdisciplinarity relevant and important?
Holistic Problem-Solving: Enables teams to integrate expertise across domains—engineering, design, policy, finance—to address challenges that single departments can’t solve alone.
Innovation & Market Edge: Blending perspectives drives breakthrough products, services, and business models (e.g., fintech combines finance + tech + behavioral science).
Operational Relevance: Reflects how real-world business problems unfold—cross-functional, messy, and rarely confined to one discipline.
Strategic Projects: Especially valuable in innovation labs, digital transformation, sustainability initiatives, and R&D where collaboration across silos is critical.
Transdisciplinarity:
Transdisciplinarity is the trickiest of the lot to define! So, let us get into our food metaphors first! Molecular gastronomy creations, for instance, can’t be pinned to French, Spanish, or Japanese cuisine — they’re entirely new food experiences. In my opinion, an intensely popular food in different parts of the world just might be another good analogy (I could be wrong!) - “Maggi”. It started as a Swiss-German product (instant noodles), as an interpretation of instant Ramen. In India, it contains a flavour packet that packs in distinctly Indian spices. All over the globe, people adapt it to their taste palettes, including veggies, egg, meat, cheese, dairy, and various sauces. Perhaps, the fact that everyone from kids to hostel students to street vendors contributed to its evolution could be equated to transdisciplinary work → transdisciplinary work emerges through the collaboration of many disciplines, individuals’ works, sometimes through community contributions, beyond disciplinary boundaries. It moves beyond disciplines, integrating academic and non-academic knowledge (community wisdom, industry practice, lived experience) to co-create new frameworks.
On the face of it, it very much DOES sound like interdisciplinarity. The primary distinction, however, is that transdisciplinary approaches are often discipline agnostic and emerge from the mindset of solving or investigating a matter at hand. Here, the goal isn’t just problem-solving but transforming how we even frame the problem. This is one of the reasons why many experts say that the world’s contemporary issues need transdisciplinary approaches [2] [3] [4]. For instance, Climate change and sustainability demand more than science alone. Designing adaptation plans requires not just climate modeling but also economics, engineering, policy, and indigenous knowledge—with farmers, local communities, and businesses actively shaping solutions.
Here is another example from the perspective of a pharmaceutical company: Instead of simply creating a cheaper pill, a pharmaceutical company reframes the challenge to “How do we redesign diabetes care?”. This requires more than medicine—it brings together public health researchers to understand lifestyle barriers, behavioral economists to analyze why patients don’t adhere to treatment, designers to reimagine patient experiences, technologists to integrate wearables and apps, policy experts and insurers to enable affordable access, and most importantly, patients and caregivers to contribute lived experiences. By combining these perspectives, the outcome is not just a new drug but a holistic care ecosystem—a subscription-based service blending continuous glucose monitoring, personalized coaching, community support, and insurance coverage. This shift—from product innovation to systemic care redesign—captures the essence of a transdisciplinary approach.
So, what does a transdisciplinary educational curriculum look like?
A transdisciplinary educational curriculum doesn’t just combine subjects—it dissolves disciplinary walls. Instead of teaching design, finance, or policy separately, it frames learning around real-world problems (climate resilience, healthcare access, digital ethics). Students learn by co-creating solutions with communities, industry, and policymakers, integrating theory and practice into entirely new ways of knowing.
For education institutions and industry: Why and When Transdisciplinarity is Relevant and Important?
When problems cross boundaries: Whether in classrooms or boardrooms, challenges like climate change, AI ethics, or public health crises defy disciplinary silos and demand collective solutions.
When lived experience matters: Transdisciplinarity values not just academic or technical expertise, but also the insights of communities, stakeholders, and end-users—essential for socially responsible education and business.
When innovation requires reframing the problem itself: Unlike multidisciplinary “parallel play” or interdisciplinary blending, transdisciplinarity challenges both students and professionals to redefine the question before designing the solution.
When preparing for uncertainty: In higher education, this equips graduates with the ability to navigate unknown futures. In industry, it helps organizations adapt to disruption, resilience, and transformation.
In today’s complex world, no single discipline holds all the answers. Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity each play a vital role, depending on the scale and nature of the challenge. Just as fusion cuisine blends techniques and flavors while preserving distinct identities, these approaches integrate knowledge in ways that enhance problem-solving, innovation, and adaptability. By understanding when and how to apply each, educators, students, and industry leaders can build teams, curricula, and strategies that are not only future-ready but also capable of tackling problems that span disciplines, sectors, and communities.
Want to know more on how to build a robust curriculum or flexible cross-discipline teams?
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