The role of human agents in facilitating clinical and translational science

The fundamental problem confronting policymakers who desire to facilitate the development of clinical and translational science (CTS) comes in bringing people with disparate interests, vocabularies, cultures, goals, and so forth together for a common purpose. A variety of roles have been suggested for individuals who may play key parts in this overall process: opinion leaders, change agents, boundary spanners, structural hole brokers, and, finally, collaborative knowledge brokers. This essay will systematically review these key roles; focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of each to illustrate their part in approaches to solving this problem. The implications of this perspective will be discussed in terms of the role that human agents can play in facilitating CTS.