AO: The analysts are worried about “how to produce syntheses within and across research projects that bring together results to have greater impact – so that the sum is greater than its individual parts and partners” (2)
AO: The analysts believe that collaboration is particularly important right now because the “grand, complex, and wicked challenges of today’s world necessitate new coalitions of actors from a wide variety of knowledge and action domains” (1). Nonetheless, they also note that “critically reflecting about potential collaborative synthesis, rather than pursuing it as a good in and of itself” (8) is also very important. The paper is written at the middle of an on-going project so they focus on the “how” of enabling collaborative synthesis rather than just making a case for it or assessing its impacts. The analysts appear to be most interested in how to facilitate collaborative synthesis (rather than just “connecting people”).