The paper aims at substantiating that in universities with scarce resources, applied Information Technologies (IT) research is affordable, even in most advanced and dynamic sub-domains. This target is split into four specific objectives: a) to set up a framework for IT research affordability in universities representative for current East-European circumstances; b) to outline a workable approach based on synergistic leverage and to assess the paradigms prevalent in modern artificial intelligence through this "affordability filter"; c) to describe the evolution and the current stages of two undertakings exploiting paradigms founded on emergence (the sub-domains are stigmergic coordination and agent self-awareness); d) to summarise for both sub domains the mechanisms and the architectonics (the focus is on computer science aspects; implementation details will be given in future papers). The results in both directions appear as promising and reveal significant potential for transdisciplinarity. From this perspective, the paper is a call to improved cooperation.