ABSTRACT
This chapter gives readers a sense of what the Toolbox experience is about and presents the research orientation of the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (TDI) and how it relates to Toolbox workshops. The chapter opens by characterizing the Toolbox experience in three ways. First, the general features of TDI’s approach and the motivations behind it are identified. Second, the chapter then describes a typical workshop experience for those who work with TDI. Finally, the primary aspects of the experience, viz., the Toolbox instrument, the dialogue, and the co-creation activity, are sketched. After explaining the Toolbox experience, the chapter turns to TDI’s research, which grows out of data collected with teams that participate in workshops. These data support research at three levels: (1) research into the impact of the workshop itself on its participants, (2) research into the conditions that support successful Toolbox workshops more generally, and (3) investigation of the dynamics of cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration more generally.
