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

Thu Oct 29 10:36:49 EDT 2009

Dear Colleagues:

I find the discussion very insightful. I join David in a skeptical approach to the advances we made in organizational structuring for breakthrough or revolutionary innovations in S&T. In my view, we are mixing several inter-related topics. 

One is the metrics of technological innovations, especially revolutionary. For almost three decades many of us have been researching this challenging problem with some, but not conclusive results.Second, we are also looking at the whole issue of inter-disciplinary research, with its human, organizational, political, and cultural barriers. These also extend to funding agencies which are, to a large extent, focused on the disciplinary silos. By the way, this also applies to business schools where we joined the other sciences in creating such disciplinary retreats.

Third, we are mixing another issue of the human aspects of motivation and rewards for scientists in all disciplines, in Academia as well as government prestigious institutes. No matter how we reorganize, unless inter-disciplinary work and acceptance of NIH (Not Invented Here)translate into rewards, promotion and recognition, scientists will continue to immerse themselves in disciplinary problems, to the verification of Kuhn and Lakatos.

Fourth, there is the topic of commercialization of innovations. Ideas and concepts are just the beginning, and the breakthrough aspects many times involve the next step of bringing them to market. In this vein I'd like to add to David's example in the OSTI blog (forest management work on Monte Carlo, that it was the DOE who had a major role in funding the breakthrough work on the Genome.

Best regards,

Elie

_______________________________
Elie Geisler
Distinguished Professor
Director, Center for the
 Management of Medical Technology
Stuart School of Business
Illinois Institute of Technology
565 W. Adams Street
Chicago, IL 60661
Tel:(312) 906-6532

---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: David Wojick <dwojick at HUGHES.NET>
Reply-To: ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics <SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU>
Date:          Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:02:57 +0000

>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
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>
>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:
>
>===========================================
>
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.htmlRE: [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
>
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe):
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>
>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/
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