This is well put. Any thoughts on the political feasibility today of universities pushing for new gov’t grant programs with commercialization as the focus? Seems like a way for a university or consortium of them to make the best out of this type of pressure
I suspect that the push would be better coming from outside universities. Universities overpromised and then mostly failed to deliver commercialization and economic impact once already (there is a long story there). Universities will certainly need to supportive of and be a part of that message, but I think the push should come from the innovation community more broadly.
As I remember things from ten years' back, academic researchers did a poor job convincing the Harper government that their research wasn't biased and driven by politics. Perhaps working on improving their storytelling could improve their chances this time around.
Aside from economic impact, I think in regards to reduced academic funding the overall impact will be positive for intellectualism. Making it more competitive for grants and demanding higher quality of research in an over saturated field.
In my experience that's not how it works out in practice - more competition is not as strongly correlated to higher quality as you would think. It is more about the storytelling than science. More on these issues in a previous post: https://www.caninnovate.ca/p/disincentivizing-academic-fraud
This is well put. Any thoughts on the political feasibility today of universities pushing for new gov’t grant programs with commercialization as the focus? Seems like a way for a university or consortium of them to make the best out of this type of pressure
I suspect that the push would be better coming from outside universities. Universities overpromised and then mostly failed to deliver commercialization and economic impact once already (there is a long story there). Universities will certainly need to supportive of and be a part of that message, but I think the push should come from the innovation community more broadly.
As I remember things from ten years' back, academic researchers did a poor job convincing the Harper government that their research wasn't biased and driven by politics. Perhaps working on improving their storytelling could improve their chances this time around.
Storytelling is key to everything in this debate - though speaking as a scientists, it certainly helps when the story is backed by data.
Aside from economic impact, I think in regards to reduced academic funding the overall impact will be positive for intellectualism. Making it more competitive for grants and demanding higher quality of research in an over saturated field.
In my experience that's not how it works out in practice - more competition is not as strongly correlated to higher quality as you would think. It is more about the storytelling than science. More on these issues in a previous post: https://www.caninnovate.ca/p/disincentivizing-academic-fraud