According to Brian Uzzi, Benjamin F. Jones, and Stefan Wuchty of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management as quoted in Chemical and Engineering News this week http://pubs.acs.org/cen/news/86/i41/8641notw11.html the amount of INTER university collaborations is on the rise in the US and also produces better quality research than INTRA university collaborations or single-author papers. It is apparently a very thorough and complete piece of work.
This is worth thinking about as two things happen around us 1: the financial crunch in North America is bound to put the squeeze on research dollars at universities eventually making it all the more important to utilize our research dollars in the best possible way. 2: Fields of research are interacting more and more and the BEST new discoveries now appear to come from those interfaces between previously quite disparate disciplines of science. Given that research dollars will be shrinking one can only assume that travel to meetings (especially meetings in OTHER disciplines) will be on the decline. So one can reasonably ask "How will intelligent, successful scientists in one discipline meet really successful scientists in another so that the most fruitful sorts of cross-discipline collaborations can develop?"
One answer is provided by services like that which ArrowCan Partners Inc provides. Last year we connected more that 100 scientists in Canada with others in seemingly orthogonal fields of science whom they would not otherwise have met. There is a real need for the scientist turned business entrepreneur who will seek out the best and connect them with others through personalized and trusted introductions. Knowing how important a trend this is helps me to continue this work even in the dead of winter in Canada when travel is not at its easiest.
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1 comment:
Hello Adi:
Here I am visiting your blogs again. I enjoy reading them.
I agree with your comments on Inter vs. Intra collaboration.
In fact, we are working on linkages between North America and Asia universities not only on research but also on cross enrolment and faculty exchanges. The schools benefit from the collaboration and enhancement their position.
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