Academic Transition Towards Issue Driven R & D

Saturday, 15 February 2014
Water Tower (Hyatt Regency Chicago)
Jan Staman , Rathenau Institute, The Hague, Netherlands
Academia are in a process of reinvention on two levels; legitimacy and efficacy.  Issues which are at stake are the future of higher education as a public good and the framing of the global marketplace, research for (wicked)societal issues, filling the gap between research and innovation and the sources for innovation, the freedom of research as an argument for autonomy and the highly self-referential character of the research communities, research budgets  and the balance between natural sciences and the humanities,  academia, evidence based policy  and  science for policy, and not at last the perversities in the current research system. In the Rathenau Instituut the department for science system assessment looks at these issues and most of the topics you will find in detail on www.rathenau.nl.

In this presentation we will elaborate new pathways between academia, industry (innovation) and the grand societal challenges.

We will discuss amongst others topics as

The promising relationship between basic research, design sciences and economic sciences

The relationship between policy goals, financial frames, interdisciplinary research  and novel partnerships

Empowering (governmental) research institutes for policy making, standard setting, monitoring and enforcement