Innovation is widely seen as a key driver of growth. But the public understanding ? and politicians? understanding ? of innovation is na?ve. This has led to short-termism, to manipulation of policy by vested interests in the research community, to chaotic governance of the processes that lead to innovation, to diminished and less sustainable growth and to missed opportunities for societal change.
It is this last point ? missed opportunities for improving how society works ? that is especially troublesome for Progress because of its aim to ?promote radical and progressive politics for the 21st century?. If Progress is not to miss these opportunities, then it should embrace in its membership ? and on its strategy board ? the practitioners, in addition to the theorists, of the innovation process.
The innovation process comprises three steps: research (both basic and applied), followed by development, followed by innovation (where a new tested product or process becomes available).
The importance of the innovation process lies not simply in the end product. The process itself can require the development of new relationships between organisations and people: the innovation process is a laboratory for societal change. Innovation is thus not only the shape of things to come but also of the society to come.
This is not the place to review the history of innovation, except to comment that most histories have focused on the end product, on the new gizmo rather than on the process as a lab for societal change. In my own field of work, the fact is that the first systematic attempt to address the burden of human disease through research was undertaken wholly in the public sector with the formation of the Medical Research Council a century ago. This leading role of the public sector has faced no serious challenge despite the efforts of some exceptionally fundamentalist neoliberals. Hence biomedical research has demonstrated that the public sector is irreplaceable for some things.
Today, the scale of the innovation process has grown so big in many scientific fields that no single nation-state can support the process alone. Consider CERN?s Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva. Funded by 20 European nations, 14,000 scientists, engineers and technical staff from 113 nations were required to shatter the atom and find the Higgs boson. A century earlier, one man based in Manchester with a small support team was what it took to split the atom.
Comparable international efforts can be seen in astronomy ? the EU?s Square Kilometre Array telescope will span the globe ? and in space exploration with the International Space Station and the European Space Agency.
In the field of biology, it took ?2bn spent on 250 leading scientists (plus several thousand others) in seven countries to specify the structure of the human genome. This has been followed up with new international efforts on a similar scale ? all inspired by the goal of solving problems in human health.
Thus research is being transformed from what was a cottage industry into a global enterprise, into Big Science. As with most change, this has met conservative resistance, for example, from researchers whose livelihood is dependent on the small lab and who say their research is better ? even if it is based on the findings of Big Science.
The key organisational features of Big Science include the use of networks and networks of networks; sharing of resources; new divisions of labour arise and may be encouraged; some capacity is centralised; and oversight by government is inevitable not least because the funds involved are no longer trivial. Networks of networks are particularly interesting because of the issues they raise of accountability, autonomy and coordination.
In other words, the key feature of Big Science is that it requires the construction, maintenance and continuous adaptation of research infrastructure. Sometimes the research infrastructure is (or seems to be) a big hole in the ground as at CERN. But, in other fields, the physical infrastructures are necessarily distributed across a country or continent. Here, the research infrastructure comprises the organisation required to sustain ever-changing networks that allow people to exchange ideas, plans, data and things so as to achieve objectives in research leading to development and innovation.
To get a clear idea of the shape of things to come, one is well advised to check the web (invented, as we know, at CERN) to see the plans of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures. From this forum of government science ministers has emerged a consensus to build dozens of research infrastructures across member-states and associated states for both the natural and social sciences.
What has all this got to do with Progress? Well, societal organisation that better allows ?people to exchange ideas, plans, data and things so as to achieve objectives? is what progressive politics and economics is all about. And trying out new forms of organisation to do this is exactly what research infrastructure is all about.
Progress aims to promote radical and progressive politics for the 21st century. It traces its lineage from New Labour to Philip Gould?s ?unfinished revolution?. Gould means there is still work to be done. Progress, I believe, wants to and can contribute to that.
Progressive change needs a vision of the future to gain traction. The work that Gould wants us to finish is the substitution of old romantic visions of progress that inspired rebels down the ages with a realistic vision based on today?s emerging reality. And the fact is that this reality is being test-driven here and now by the motivating force of the knowledge economy ? by the hundreds of thousands of research, development and innovation workers who have ? and need to have ? novel, fit-for-purpose forms of organisation of their world. These workers take as a given that there are usually roles for both the public domain and the private domain ? public and private funding for research, development and innovation workers and the research infrastructures they need. That brings with it obligations on funders to coordinate while leaving the workers free to create. The need for scientific progress has allowed us to put to one side the age-old dispute between public and private, between state and markets. The issue is how to mediate between the two so as to expedite research, development and innovation.
For me, this emerging reality is far more inspiring than any Utopian vision can be. I think our society feels the same ? Danny Boyle?s Olympics pageant hinted at this. All politics ? and especially progressive politics ? has a profound lesson to learn from what the men and women in white lab coats are doing right now: vision can be strategy.
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Martin Yuille is a candidate in the members? section in the Progress strategy board elections 2012. You can find out more about all the? candidates at the dedicated Progress strategy board election microsite
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Photo: LHCb
Labour, New Labour, Philip Gould, Progress, Progress strategy board elections, science
Source: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2012/09/10/innovation-infrastructure-and-the-unfinished-revolution/
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