The European Research Conundrum: when research organizations impede scientific and technological breakthroughs despite targets, money and policy to foster these activities

Thu Oct 29 08:46:09 EDT 2009

Dear David,

no claim is made that we can causally explain or quantify breakthroughs. Yet, it is possible to describe with a good degree of accuracy what organizations look like that have been - repeatedly! - the site of a recognized breakthrough. Also, we can describe what places look like that impede or discourage such efforts.

Rather than thinking about this in terms of revolutions and normal science, what about a very pragmatic approach that revolves, for example, around advising junior scientists where to go? My bet would be that in 'fostering organisations' the job satisfaction of researchers will be much higher than in the miserable places (e.g. compare Rockefeller University to any underfunded university in Europe). Why? Even though we cannot quantify breakthroughs very well and most researchers do not receive the Nobel Prize, we all do have a pretty clear idea about what a conducive working environment is in which you can meaningfully contribute to the progress of science...

One way to go about building more and better knowledge is to describe and analyse the sites at which recognized breakthroughs occur, although this will always have to be historical. Another is to track the experience of those recently awarded flagship grants, and contribute towards removing the organizational obstacles... This is not rocket science, but possibly rather close to what business and management schools do and what is known as organizational restructuring. Yet, I think it would be more than worthwhile.

Best, Chris 

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics on behalf of David Wojick
Sent: Thu 10/29/2009 13:02
To: SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] The European Research Conundrum: when research organizations impede scientific and technological breakthroughs despite targets, money and policy to foster these activities

Dear Chris,

I am skeptical of your claim that "it is known what kind of organizational design is conducive to scientific and technological breakthroughs and that this knowledge could be utilized to drive forward organizational restructuring." (But I have not seen your paper.)

First, I am not aware of any empirical model of breakthroughs that is sufficiently well developed to support such a precise claim. It would require being able to identify and quantify breakthroughs, and I don't think we can do that (yet). How many breakthroughs were there last year? One, ten, ten thousand, a million? I don't think we know, because the concept is still wildly imprecise.

Second, following Kuhn, I would argue that producing breakthroughs is not the job of most scientists, so science should not be organized around this goal. That is, each breakthrough depends upon a great deal of prior work, which must first be funded. In fact I think that this purported "breakthrough race" is based on a mistaken concept of how science works. One can't fund just the breakthroughs. Would that we could, but science does not work that way.

Still it is a wonderful question, which I too am working on. See for example:
http://www.osti.gov/ostiblog/home/entry/leaping_concepts_and_global_discovery

Cheers,
David

David Wojick, Ph.D.
Senior consultant for innovation
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
US Dept. of Energy

Oct 29, 2009 06:50:56 AM, SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU wrote:

===========================================

[SIGMETRICS] The European Research Conundrum: when research organizations impede scientific and technological breakthroughs despite targets, money and policy to foster these activities
Dear Loet,

One could indeed infer that the ERC organizes the power of the European scientific elite - only that the ERC review (by members of that very same elite) heavily criticized the lack of transparency that comes with it, e.g. in the selection of peer reviewers.

The ERC is also a signal that, at the European level, research is now an important issue (even as innovation remains the main focus). And yes, there is a struggle over how large the FP8 budget will be, what 'joint programming' etc. means. Yet, the ERC is part of 'The New Renaissance Dream' whereby Europe seeks to foster scientific and technological breakthroughs. Also, in the past decade the Commission has intervened on the question of university and research organizations and, at least nominally, these organizations have responded by organizing themselves (e.g. EUA, EUROHORCS, EIROfroum) and by espousing a call for restructuring in pursuit or excellence, i.e. new breakthroughs. Also, at the national  level this is an issue, e.g. German Excellence Initiative.

The paper addresses these broad issues and suggests that Europe and the national governments, but above all the research organizations and universities must concentrate on organization restructuring (not targets, money & policy). Minimally they must do this to avoid being left behind by North America, East Asia and India. But also in terms of the articulated European Research Dream - which is shared by many leading scholars (c.f. those organising the ERC or Euroscience or those advising the EC) - the organizational restructuring for more autonomy, more scientific leadership, more mission-oriented flexibility, more intellectual diversity etc. should be the imperative governing their actions.

Armbruster, Chris, The European Research Conundrum: When Research Organizations Impede Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Despite Targets, Money and Policy to Foster these Activities. (October 27, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1494534

Best, Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics on behalf of Loet Leydesdorff
Sent: Thu 10/29/2009 08:22
To: SIGMETRICS at listserv.utk.edu
Subject: Re: [SIGMETRICS] The European Research Conundrum: when research organizations impede scientific and technological breakthroughs despite targets, money and policy to foster these activities

Dear Chris,

The situation is very interesting. National research councils
traditionally organize the power of the scientific elite (Mills,
Mulkay) and given the subsidiarity principle this power cannot be
taken away easily by a European organization. The EU therefore in the
1980s decided to focus not on science, but on innovation (Jaques
Delors). The Framework Programmes were defined in terms of the
precompetitive technosciences. This terrain was yet unoccupied by
national research councils.

With the shift of attention to science as central to the
knowledge-base of an economy (e.g., the US program SciSIP, but mainly
China), this arrangement may have to be revised (for economic
reasons). Thus, we are witnessing in my opinion a power struggle
rather than a conundrum. At issue is who controls the allocation of
research funds and to which extend: national research councils or the
EU?

Best wishes,

Loet

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Armbruster, Chris
 wrote:
> Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
> http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> Please find the abstract and the link to a new working paper on the European
> Research Conundrum. Comments are welcome. I would be interested to hear from
> colleagues interested in this issue.
>
> Armbruster, Chris, The European Research Conundrum: when research
> organizations impede scientific and technological breakthroughs despite
> targets, money and policy to foster these activities. (October 27, 2009).
>
> Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1494534
>
> Abstract
> The European Research Conundrum may be described thus: In the interest of
> the European Research Dream, the structure and culture of the research
> organization should be adapted to the mission of achieving scientific and
> technological breakthroughs but, alas, this mission is first overwhelmed and
> then deformed by the existing structure and culture of the organization. The
> conundrum has been highlighted publicly by the high-level review of the
> European Research Council (ERC), which "found fundamental problems related
> to rules and practices regarding the governance, administration and
> operations of the ERC that are not adapted to the nature of modern
> 'frontier' science management." The organization threatens to defeat the
> mission, even though the ERC is new, corresponds to targets, and is well
> funded.
> This paper advances three arguments. Firstly, the prevalent focus on
> targets, money and policy is criticized because it does little to bring
> about the required organizational restructuring while allowing the
> organization to overwhelm the mission, thus threatening a lock-in of ERA as
> second rate. Secondly, it is shown that it is known what kind of
> organizational design is conducive to scientific and technological
> breakthroughs and that this knowledge could be utilized to drive forward
> organizational restructuring. Thirdly, some practical suggestions are made
> how to gather empirical evidence about barriers and challenges in the
> European Research Area by tracking the experience of grantees of European
> flagship programmes in a multiple case-study design, which may be extended
> to innovation systems.
> To also speak to those who think that targets, money and policy should
> remain the focus, the research may be designed in a fashion that
> accommodates alternative and competing hypotheses as to what is conducive to
> or impedes scientific and technological breakthroughs and innovations
> systems.
>
> Keywords
> Scientific breakthroughs, technological inventions, innovation systems,
> European Research Area, European Research Council, scientific excellence,
> research university, research funding, research policy, R&D targets
>
>
> Chris Armbruster
> Executive Director, Research Network 1989
> http://www.cee-socialscience.net/1989/
>
> Publications and working papers available in Open Access
> http://ssrn.com/author=434782
>
>

--
Loet Leydesdorff
Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR)
Kloveniersburgwal 48, 1012 CX Amsterdam
Tel.: +31-20- 525 6598; fax: +31-20- 525 3681
loet at leydesdorff.net ; http://www.leydesdorff.net/
---------------------------------------
Now available: The Knowledge-Based Economy: Modeled, Measured,
Simulated, 385 pp.; US$ 18.95;

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20091029/d72603d1/attachment.html>