Open for innovation
By: Futures
Tags: ICT, innovation, Research and Development
John Wood, Chair of the European Research Area Board, gives a personal assessment of how research needs to change and adapt to face the future.
The Internet gives everybody the chance to become a publisher. It is now possible for science to reach large audiences, with the potential to eliminate the role of established filters and gatekeepers, such as the traditional peer-reviewed scientific journal.
This also means that science can be easily reviewed, assessed, rated and commented upon by anybody, reinforcing scientific democracy. Poor research might thus be identified more quickly and debunked. The challenge is to create open access systems and ensure that old gatekeepers are not simply replaced by new ones.
Openness should not only mean that research is conducted by networks of excellent researchers moving according to opportunities. Scientific research also has to be more transparent and accountable. There is significant pressure to make scientific data available to the public, especially data collected with public funding or owned by the government. The mood is changing and there is stronger recognition of the immense value that could be generated from reusing such data, overcoming resistance from commercial interests and traditional gatekeeper positions.
This openness does not only relate to rough data and the finished product. It also signifies a new emphasis on the research process itself, rather than the single, perfect new invention. Innovation, new ideas, key scientific findings, increasingly come in unpredictable ways, through the continuous exchange of views between high-level researchers with similar interests, and between people at different levels of the innovation cycle.
Increasingly, in the new open innovation model, innovative products are made public before being finalised, through the so-called permanent beta approach, because such large-scale deployment brings insights that would not be evident in a protected environment. A parallel change is likely to happen in science: results will no longer be solely delivered as a finished product (the publication of a journal or book) but as draft products, in order to enable wider feedback and subsequent improvement, enabled by the sharing of rough data, facilitating serendipitous innovation. This will also help to meet the demand for improved knowledge transfer.
In this new interconnected, globalised world, why should there be a “European Research Area”? Europe’s strength has always also been its weakness: its diversity. The European Union has already created an inner market which allows people from all Member States to interact and trade with each other more easily. If it fully realises the Fifth Freedom – the freedom of knowledge – it has the potential to create a space where cultural diversity can unleash creativity and innovation.
A common tradition
In addition to diversity, Europe also has a strong common tradition of scientific and philosophical discovery. This is manifest in a holistic approach to education and research. Education is not regarded merely as knowledge transfer, but rather as the shaping of a human being as a valuable member of society.
The German word Wissenschaft describes research in natural sciences as well as the arts, humanities and social sciences, and the early modern period has seen the continuous development of all these areas. The European approach to scientific research, therefore, should build on the strength of this tradition.
To enable this, students of the different disciplines will have to be educated in such a manner that they can communicate with each other more effectively. This has to start long before they enter university. Perhaps a greater emphasis on being a European Citizen should be included in schools’ curricula.
Building on the tradition of early modern renaissance people could be one of the great benefits Europe can bring to the globalised world of science.