An interdisciplinary approach to industry-based complex problem-solving: sustainable policy solutions to the Malaysian water crisis

This paper focuses on how an integrated or systemic approach is needed to both investigate and connect different kinds of interdisciplinary inquiry and knowledge within and beyond universities to encourage more productive collaboration with the other three ‘macro stakeholders’ - government, business, and the wider community. In this way universities can and should provide a greater leadership role in sustainability, innovation and policy studies. Such a framework is needed to also help to change the view of many that academics should just play a supporting role of providing specialised technical expertise only to the other macro stakeholders. The interdisciplinary and collaborative framework developed here is applied to the on-going water crisis in Malaysia - an exemplary complex problemsolving basis for seeking sustainable policy solutions to diverse challenges. As further discussed, this was applied also in practice to a multi-stakeholder seminar on addressing the difficult policy challenges of the Malaysian water industry and sector.