I was surprised to read a recent article published in an Australian magazine, The Conversation, entitled "Research is useless, innovation is gold":
http://theconversation.com/research-is-useless-innovation-is-gold-19160
If you are an active researcher (or striving to be one), the title alone can be off putting. While the argument presented in the article was based on economic outcomes and the ability to turn research into innovation, most researchers would not agree that economic consideration alone is sufficient to decided what is "useful" or what is "useless", especially given that many innovations we now freely enjoy have been borne out of pure, strategic and applied research. In fact, it could be successfully argued that without research, you have nothing to innovate. Is the view expressed in this article a common view or perception of research? Should innovation be a main driver in all our research? Or should this be considered only where relevant or possible? What do you think?
Hi,
It is quite a sensitive topic and may not have a definitive answer, but for sure different view points. In my view, it may not be always true that Innovation and Research go hand in glove. But for sure your statements holds ground as Innovation takes research as input or else they are accidental discoveries of other research work. As Research may not always lead to innovations it could be purely for academic explanations of concepts.
regards
Both are complimentary to each other. If you do not research something, how would the knowledge required to innovate or indeed recognise innovation be derived. Similarly, without forms of innovation, SOME research would be impossible and/or without gain.
I think the argument is that innovation is often easier to market than research, and the gains made by the combined effort are usually recognised in the form of an innovative product or form.
(So its more of a business and marketing argument IMHO rather than one of any validity with respect to its claim that 'research is useless')
All answers are very good, just i want add this sentence as that no Innovation with out research, i mean that Innovation comes from understand your research.
with best regards
I dont agree to the sentence that there is no innovation without research. Because even ideas can be innovative. Hence research is part of innovation. Hence the message I took from the original artical is that the research should be innovation based. Research should ot be done for the sake of getting a publication or a degree, it should be done for the betterment of society and hence innovation...!
A few years ago I met one of the leading manager of o german company which is a large supplier to the automotive industry.
Although the focus of our institute is largely application related, I was surprised that they spend 90% of R&D money on improvement of existing products and processes making them more cost efficient, 5 % on development of new products with existing technology and only 5% on completely new things.
Thus the answer from a objective point of view is definitely yes, but this is only considering the short term effect. So if you want make money quick don't start extensive research but stay with the state of the art.
On the long term research is indispensible for innovation if new materials and new technologies have to be implemented.
Revolutionary changes in technology can wipe out large companies ( think of Kodak) who have not foreseen these radical changes.
I am for Mr. Frank Kern. Research is the base stone for any innovation and any innovation needs some knowledge at first. Innovation is also required if we need to overcome continuous problems we encounter with them during our life. However, to do just research is simple, and to innovate something requires more percise attention to the results and methodologies applied. Research indicates the existent rules and a good researcher discovers a rule and if of some innovation, the researcher applies it as the result of the research done. An innovator sees the overall findings, dives in the subject and finds interrelations and uses all his scientific and rational fanthesies in order to solve a problem that may be ignored by more well-educated and much more experienced Researchers/ Scientists. By the way, Research provides the light for an innovator to see the situation, to find the problem, and to present an innovative solution, and both research and innovation are necessary, complementary, and therefore shall be respected.
Dear friends.
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I'm sorry, but I will say that the article "Research is useless, innovation is gold", was written by someone who ignores the term "R & D" and it is a foolish paper. Dissociate from one another is simply something such ignorance that in the present day any research institute or university that is updated profess such ignorance.
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What the author of the text, Gavin Moodie, do not know yet that what is missing in many countries to transform the research in development is external ambient Countries such as Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, has a historical background to try remove immediate results of the research, and therefore are at the top of the global innovation index.
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Furthermore, I do not know how to make innovation without research , the division between pure research and applied research is arbitrary and incorrect. We simply differentiate research that is made for a broad dissemination and research restricted to unique environments.
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The author in his own text calls attention to the industrial environment of Australia is small and limited, and certainly here is the problem.
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This discourse Technological Innovation versus Research is common in countries that enter a period of pseudo-liberal governments, exactly the case in Australia, where the state intends to reduce their investments to justify its liberal bias..
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Good observation Phillip. But policy advisers are sometimes who decide what is and what is not important. However, they are not always right.
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Phillip & Samuel.
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If the majority of scholars (there was no word researcher) of the past as, Gregor Mendel, Albert Einstein, Claude Navier, Leibniz and hundreds more of them, if their studies depended on funding to be decided by bureaucrats as Gavin Moodie, would probably have been barred by submit proposals completely useless!
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Would be more important at the time to develop a wheel carriage more comfortable for locomotion of kings and queens.
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There really is something to be said for pure research, done only for the purpose of furthering our understanding of how the world works. That sort of work might inspire other researchers to take those "academic" discoveries in new directions, unlocking more secrets of the universe. Then, at some point, someone will figure out a way to convert some part of that knowledge into a useful application. Not every research project needs to directly link to a product or innovation. Someone has to lay the foundation for future innovators to stand on when they test their ideas. Look at gorilla glass, which is now super famous for use in flat-screen TV's and cell phones. It was invented in the 1960's by accident while a research team was studying the effects of varying the composition of their glass. Nobody knew what to do with it then, but in the past decade it has literally made it possible to have the world at your fingertips every time you play with your i-phone.
If it wouldn't be for fundamental research, people interested in things which at first sight do not lead to innovations and increases in economical relevant parameters, we would still have no Internet, no electricity but extremely innovative candles....
The entire process of technological development should be seen as a generation contract.
In the first generation pure and "useless" research leads to discoveries of fascinating theories and a better understanding of not yet explainable observations. Take as an example the quantum mechanics.
A second generations can build on this foundation and will do research into possible applications which not necessary are needed by society. Indeed very often new techniques and methods are uniquely developed to solve pressing problems in fundamental experimental research.
The third generation, several years even decades later, see applications from the second generations as a innovative way of solving everyday economical relevant problems. Again, take the laser - you will find it everywhere in your household and in many industrial processes. Innovations based on fundamental at first useless research finally lead to society changing innovations.
Leave away the first generation you won't get the others.
Hence, no innovation without research.
And even more important, no innovation without society based fundamental research, because the risks for a competing enterprise to invest serious amounts of money into research of the first generation are not bearable.
Dear Suresh.
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As the bird migration was a question that did, we do not really know details. The only information that I know was reading a press release from an experience in crustaceans where researchers reversed the magnetic field (do not know how they did it) and crustaceans reversed the direction of migration.
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Soon I am open to explanations, and if anyone knows any reference on the subject would be extremely grateful.
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Now as your last explanation I totally agree, there are numerical models without calibration, if your presuppositions are flawed, as the amount of water vapor in the upper atmosphere, modelers should return to their work tables, modify their assumptions and wheel-them again.
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I do not understand what is the logic of a model that is based on incorrect assumptions continues run them to see if nature changes. Would insist that something is wrong models ranging from autistic or magician behavior .
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The interpretations of archaeologists about prehistoric drawings is that they were made to attract hunting, it seems that modelers are acting as a man-of-Neanderthal.
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Research is the way toward innovation. If innovation is obtained without any research attempts, it should be called "Lucky strike".
Thorough research is the most important and easiest way to final success in the form of innovative solutions.
You can even tell this thesis differently, emphasizing the importance of time. The search for innovative solutions should not (can not) be accelerate. All experiments require proper expenditure of time (hence - the financial investment). The most common cases of the does not meet expectations by "final product" of scientific research, are related to the desire for quick success.
Finally, this means, that ACCURATE RESEARCH are more important than QUICKLY REACHED INNOVATION.
It's a ridiculous article, and a ridiculous premise.
There are however issues specific to Australia, which I believe are not recognized or at least misdiagnosed in this article.
Specifically - whereas Australian research is world class, the commercialization side of things is more often than not hapless. There are a number of reasons why it is so, in part the strongly risk-averse business culture of Australia, in part entrenched interests and old boys networks which are extremely loath to avail themselves of competent albeit outside help, and the related willful ignorance of business realities overseas (in much bigger markets than the domestic market could ever be), and in part the well-meaning but often very counterproductive system of grants - the federal and local governments running all kinds of assistance schemes to entrepreneurs, which leads both to the development of a mendicant, business-remote mindset on the part of entrepreneurs, and to undue delays (whilst Australian entrepreneurs sit on their haunches waiting for the grant monies to come through) whereas their competitors, in the US and elsewhere, hustle and often end up being the first past the posts, in world innovation markets where speed is of the essence.
As Muataz says, innovation without preliminary research is a chimera - won't happen, except perhaps in the pipe dreams of naive non-scientists.
The article is about a well known problem, over the years called "Research for pure researching". A phenomenon that ramped up for years, especially in Europe. It consisted in the inclination to limit [work, fundings, praxis] to pure researching, especially in public research institutes, causing a low rate of technology transfer.
The natural transition between academic twd industrial world has been held below the useful threshold for a long time — and a controversial issue about patents and industrial property made stagnant the matter.
A certain sensitivity for technology transfer has strengthened only in recent years, pumping into academic systems some new ad-hoc policies oriented to connecting pure research and productive systems.
European policies, for instance, in recent years devoted several programs [such as "Marie Curie Actions"] to enforce such an inseparable sequence that puts Research as a intrinsic precursor to industry and concrete innovation. Someone is trying to overthrow the introvert limit of researchers interested only to increase their bibliometrics.
Innovation, for those who do it independently, is the only means of livelihood.
The ability to achieve the completion in the sequences Research~Production and Production~Social Innovation is so crucial that the inclination to "Research for pure researching" is aberrant.
gl
Dear Chris Ransford.
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Really agree with your interpretation, in Brazil the number of scientific contributions in "peer review" journals has increased significantly, but the number of patents has not followed the same speed. There is the link between scientific innovation and practical application. I think it depends more on the so-called productive sector extremely conservative and even with contempt the new technologies than the academy.
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Here their own public and private universities are trying to break with relative success this gap between the Basic Search technology and creating what is called technology incubators (from the mistakes and successes _ creates this path). There is always the problem of companies using incentives such incubators simply subsidized the development of non-innovative technologies . This is occurring primarily in private universities who use their campi, with public incentives (lower taxes) for simple adaptations of products. It is somewhat difficult to regulate both in Australia and Brazil, but it seems to me is a way. The problem is to find the optimum point between encouragement and pure predatory use of public resources.
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One of the competitive advantage of the U.S. against the rest of the world is not aversion to risk, but I see that the U.S. itself with the so called "professional management" of the big businesses are losing this speed in technological innovation.
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We are dealing more with a mentality problem of the general population than creativity and productivity academia.
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At this point fit the response of Giuseppe, who seems still attached on the notion of "search for searching". I know in Europe (mainly in France) there is no this spirit, yes there is a lack of connection between research and development. I knew a couple cases that scientific technical teams have developed innovative techniques and simply no connection between them and the commercialization of technique, and one of them, a matter of months the machine was patented by other researchers from another country and lost lots of money.
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The "search for searching" is not significant difference between Europe and the USA, what is the missing link between academia and industry! I quoted well early in the discussion several cases of people who developed theories that showed their usefulness decades after the scientific development and certainly these "scientists" envisioned much further the purpose of their studies.
What should we differentiate is good research and bad, discard what you call "search for searching" is extremely dangerous, what is needed is mainly to eliminate the influences of political patronage (nepotism) in scientific boards, yes they it generates bad research!
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The differences are extremely subtle and difficult to assess, but the whole country which is serious about developing their economy has to weigh up the problem.
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Dear Rogerio,
although I do know personally dozens of excellent researchers, and dozens of wonderful products of research; and although I personally participate in the program for a stronger interconnection between the 2 worlds of research and industry [a couple of projects in which I participated were right in the intention to create a more systemic, genetic network], I have to observe that general policies and the cultural attitude they reflect, still suffer from the spectrum of which I spoke : “Research is a pure state, effectual in itself, ontologically”.
Whether this ontological problem is still standing, such as in half of Europe, and certainly in Italy, could be easily observed from the classification systems of Public Research Centers [the same system ranks public subsidies].
In Italy, the recent reform by Mrs. Gelmini, and still the next approved by Prof. Profumo, and now the last one presented by Prof. Carrozza [the latter are 2 cases of Ministers of Research coming from the scientific world themselves], based their ranking mechanism on **bibliometric weight** of the applicants institutes.
That is, it is considered the most prestigious [and takes more public funds] a research Centre that produced more scientific **publications**.
If the concept was worth practical and socially useful, the most recognized and funded should rather be the research Centres with the largest number of **research applications** [projects, patents].
The Italian ANVUR agency in that case should not have applied a quotient which - I guess - still reflects a *purist attitude*.
g
Dear Giuseppe.
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I'm afraid to rating committees, especially with mechanisms "Bibliometric weight", because these indices may represent more unemployment outside the academy of certain areas of research than the same efficiency.
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Who is in areas where the academy is the main employer usually has a "Bibliometric" performance better than areas where mobility between academia and the so-called "productive sectors" is greater.
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Currently in Brazil is not as prioritizing productive areas in terms Bibliometric weight but pre-defined areas earlier poor areas as R & D.
This is occurring with strong protest sought after areas.
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I will not cite examples not to disrupt the discussion.
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"Occupation". Here is a factor that could make the difference.
If your research produces more occupation or a better occupation, and a higher rate of social fitness, then the sum of your Research and the subsequent Innovation is the common goal — and it is better then research for pure researching.
In my own view, not all researches lead to innovations since 'innovation' itself is something which is newly discovered. Some of our projects either confirm of disagree with existing facts.
It is inherent in the word "innovation" that it is a money-making activity. Research, on the other hand, is a cultural expression. The usefulness of either depends on which currency you value the most: culture or gold?
@Stefan, I do like Your assertion. There's always somewhere around money. Is science the production or consumption? Poorer countries treat investments in research on such manner to have a quick return on investment, while in developed countries one can talk about fundamental research, long-term research...,...etc!
SIMPLY I would say "There is NO Innovation without RESEARCH " Thats it !!!
In my opinion, unless you have a good idea, you either won't get the money or the people to do the research.
If my understanding of the title is correct mankind should progress - innovations are must - anybody can do research - to innovate is difficult -
Just idea is not enough ultimately you have to do research to make the idea real or to check the feasibility of idea, also.... research is not the business of ANYBODY, No doubt innovation is important, must and worth much, but what I think the way to reach innovations also go Through RESEARCH Obviously. So we cannot ignore the importance of research over innovation.
dear all , only a few are innovators - we are all researchers -
But there are some techniques using those we can try to innovate
In order to enrich the discussion under this thread, I am attaching some good articles about, blogs, discussions...!
http://www.innovation.public.lu/en/ir-luxembourg/decouvrir-ir/comprendre-ir/
http://www.eitictlabs.eu/news-events/blog/article/the-saga-of-research-vs-innovation/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7156/full/448839a.html
https://dontleavecanadabehind.wordpress.com/2011/02/04/innovation-vs-invention/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16036658
Dear Kamlesh J. Singala,
I completely agree with your phrases:
"I dont agree to the sentence that there is no innovation without research. Because even ideas can be innovative. Hence research is part of innovation."
"... the research should be innovation based".
"Research should not be done for the sake of getting a publication or a degree, it should be done for the betterment of society and hence innovation ...!"
Here I see the following sequence: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, INNOVATION.
I would like to give my opinion from https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_can_we_differentiate_Innovation_and_Research_Development
"Of every 10,000 Researches only 100 can be transformed to the Developments, and of every 100 Developments only 1 can be transformed to an Innovation in the market."
In my understanding, Research must be incorporated into Development as part of a whole. In order words, Research should not be in itself but Research must be as "Development-Oriented".
My opinion is also based on the discussions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_dont_developers_use_the_best_research_on_software_development
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Developments_vs_Researches_How_to_reduce_the_Research-Practice_Gap
In conclusion, I want to support the key phrases:
"Research is useless, innovation is gold".
"Innovation is more important than research".
"Innovation should be a main driver in all our research".
Research & innovation have to go side aside. Innovator can not validate his innovation without performing a research (by himself or by a researcher) to test the validity of his innovation. In the medical field, I can not use any new diagnostic medical device (recently invented) & apply it on my patients except after being sure that it was tested regarding its sensitivity & specificity & hence was approved.
Some new articles about innovation!
http://app.info.science.thomsonreuters.biz/e/es.aspx?s=1556&e=1667745&elq=76ac589167fd42e592b5c0d40ce503aa
This is about Responsible Research and Innovation!
Many fine resources, articles and toolkits about the issue. You will discover the emerging vision for how RRI is likely to be implemented in practical terms in the future...
http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c352b9f258b8f1483083d4072&id=4ce157d5ba&e=7dca56050f
In the physical and biological sciences, innovation is a product of basic and applied research.
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