Announcing Our New Program Interstitial Spaces

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally proud to say that Enfad Research is swinging open its doors and reaching out to welcome a network of peers who are passionate about the promise of emerging technology and want to participate in creating connections both intellectually and in business.

We are discovering that different institutions amidst a burgeoning digital economy face strikingly similar challenges – and derive benefit from a mutual exchange of ideas, experience and insight. In this context, we believe that a broad network of peers can do far more than any individual institution working in relative isolation. Increasingly, connectivity matters more and more because the problems institutions need to solve are simply far too complex for any individual skill-set or field to handle. We are also finding that institutions want to be more open to exploit the best ideas available. Innovative businesses who desire to move beyond outdated business practices want to start a conversation that brings together honest views, opinions and the experience of a wide variety of peers. In part in response to this emerging desire for openness, our new initiative has emerged and seeks to reach beyond well- established boundaries by facilitating cutting edge ideas where traditional disciplines, categories and labels interface. We intend for this fusion of ideas, techniques and expertise to provide for the evolution of modern and imaginative methods of insight, in addition to the creation of new areas of endeavour. There is now a growing renaissance of literature supporting such linkages – and at Enfad we are calling this process “Interstitial-Thinking”.  

What is Interstitial-Thinking? 

The word interstitial means "between spaces" and is commonly used to denote "in-betweenness" in many contexts. Interstitial- Thinking is about uncovering the value-space in the interstices between the familiar disciplinary boundaries of business, technology, science and culture. The term connotes a strategy to take on complexity in a collaborative manner by thinking across well-established borders, melding knowledge that reaches beyond today's disciplines and practices. Interstitial-Thinking is an idea – a conversation – not a hard-and-fast-definition — and it's a conversation we ask you to join. Our philosophy is to keep things very low key by letting the right relationships develop over time, enabling participants the opportunity to dip their toes in the process without any pressure or formality. All the while, the give-and-take characteristic of the program allows the network to organically surface and evolve.

The outreach is particularly suited to senior decision makers in academia, commerce, technology and design, as well as to external provocateurs who are fuelled by intelligence, enthusiasm and humour. We are very interested in hearing about the state-of-the-art to expose a wide range of “big ideas” and “big macro themes” that might not be exposed otherwise. We really do believe that the Internet possesses a set of norms and practices that are unique and that should be studied separately from unmediated life. As such, we are looking to encourage new thinking by providing a platform across numerous fields to join these fields together in an integrated, multidisciplinary environment. If you're involved in the digital ecosystem (or if you're curious about how the digital world will impact our lives), you belong in our initiative. If you are interested, please contact:

Raheel Naqvi

About The Interstitial Initiative

Enfad's Interstitial Program is dedicated to building relationships with professional organisations, academic partners, industry partners and government agencies that cultivate the excellences of "Interstitial-Thinking" in the digital age. We extend the reach of our work through this program to include organising involvement with external practitioners and the research community. For more information, please visit http://www.enfad.com. Enfadʼs success with this initiative will be rooted in our ability to collaborate across disciplines. We will look to harness novel – sometimes even unlikely – combinations of people in order to explore the major changes of the day. We will also look to cultivate relationships with diverse groups and seek to advance our own capabilities by engaging with peers who want to take part in frank and open discussions. We feel that aligning research interests with such groups not only extends Enfadʼs knowledge supply chain, but also serves to shape and improve the program's collective goals.