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Austrian social scientist Helga Nowotny was president of the European Research Council between 2010 and 2013. Now a professor emerita of ETH Zurich and author of The Cunning of Uncertainty (Polity, 2015), Nowotny discusses the growing pressure to capitalize on academic research, and how countries can get it right in the absence of a universal recipe.
In science as in politics, most people agree that transparency is essential. Top journals now require authors to disclose their funding sources so that readers can judge the possibility of bias, and the British Medical Journal recently required authors to disclose their data as well so that experts can run independent analyses of the results. But as transparency becomes the standard, many academics are resisting the trend without pushback from their universities.
Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley live by the motto of “Fail fast, fail often." Scientists would do well to likewise embrace failure.
In the fiercely competitive world of drug discovery and development, secrecy is no longer as important as it once was.
A look at novel methods to improve measurement of innovation and growth in the modern economy.
Billionaires are funding lots of grandiose plans. Welcome their ambition
Royal Society's President, Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, on the key principles to guide the future of UK's research.
For every characteristic of uberisation, there is a parallel in the world of research. This raises the question of whether research was "uberised" before Uber even existed?
Supporting Europe's innovators through open innovation - 2014-2019
Op-ed: Big US companies could use patent licensing to throttle EU startups.
A 2002 law in Norway that ended the country's long-running practice of giving academics 100% ownership of their intellectual property and adopted a U.S.-style system caused the per capita number of patents from academics to drop by 53% in the next 5 years.
Government-funded research is behind any significant new product
The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) gets poor grades from the European Union’s financial watchdog.
Big-name scientists may end up stifling progress in their fields
In this paper we explore the effectiveness of selected research and innovation policies among EU countries.
Professor Matthew Wallenstein wants to bring what he has learned as an entrepreneur to his colleagues in academia.
Apple announced today the launch of CareKit, a new open source software platform that allows people to develop their own health care apps.
The contest is another milestone in AI as Lee Sedol, Go's best player, is defeated again
The fascinating story of the discovery of nuclear fission began with an error that earned Enrico Fermi (see picture) a Nobel Prize for the apparent but incorrect discovery of the transuranic elements. Careful repetition and extension of the experiments finally led to the correct interpretation by Hahn, Meitner, Strassmann, Frisch, and Bohr as an effect from nuclear fission of the “small impurity” of (0.7 %) contained in natural uranium.
The success rate of discoveries would be improved if we could find out how to innovate.
Scientists can be stubborn. They can use their gravitas to steamroll new ideas. Which means those new ideas often only prevail when older scientists die.
An analysis of the essential tension identifies institutional forces that sustain tradition and suggestions of policy interventions to foster innovation.
Unique companies invest early and often to develop technology from the ivory tower.
Turning research grants into loans risks stymieing successful industry
Essay triggers lively arguments over how basic science should be funded.
Would we be possibly be better off without any patents at all?
Please, European universities, stop playing in the second league when it comes to fundraising. Go out and ask your alumni for resources to help you build the next Stanford.
We collected some of Switzerland's most exciting technology startups and ranked them by the amount raised, headcount, and how cool and original they are.
Poor countries often complain that their best minds are draining away—and for the most part they are right. The poorer the country, the larger the proportion of inventors who push off.
