Communication in the form of ongoing dialogues is needed among producers, users, and program managers. In the absence of such dialogues, suggested one participant, “the S&T community often persists in offering its newest nanoswitches, while decision makers keep asking for old-fashioned hammers, and no one figures out that superglue would do the job at hand better than anything else.” Setting up and maintaining effective user-producer dialogues along the whole “supply chain” from basic research through decision making can impose strains on both scientists and decision makers. One participant explained that carrying out those dialogues in science-based organizations often leads to perceived capture of the dialogue by science, leading to the pitfall of science-push solutions that are irrelevant to action. On the other hand, carrying them out in operational or political contexts often leads to the perceived capture of the dialogue by politics, leading to the pitfall of politics-pulled solutions that are disowned by science. This leads to the important role of program managers and the boundary organizations within which they operate in promoting effective dialogues between knowledge producers and users.

Program managers and boundary organizations that successfully link knowledge with action tend to bridge both the barriers that separate disciplines and those that separate knowledge production and application. Many of the program managers at the workshop either work for a boundary organization or work to strengthen systems for linking knowledge with action that involve other boundary organizations. A few brief descriptions of some of those organizations are included in Box 2-1 as examples. More detailed descriptions of the programs represented at the workshop and how many of them serve as boundary organizations are included in the case summaries in Appendix A.