The elephant in the room: incentivising innovation in research-led Universities and Research Institutions
Universities, and especially Research Institutes in the UK, derive a large proportion of their income from grant funding for research projects. Winning grants is a skill that is honed over many years by researchers, and those that become successful at it are therefore very valuable to these institutions for income generation. It does not make sense for an organisation to ask their most valuable revenue generators to focus on other tasks which might, or might not, bring profit in the future. This leads to the current situation in which it simply does not make sense for Universities and Research Institutions (in the UK) to encourage their research staff to pursue innovation avenues beyond the traditional narratives of scientific discovery.
People commonly confuse research with innovation. Research is primarily aimed at generating new knowledge, which may never be developed into innovation, whereas innovation is defined as the successful delivery of that new knowledge e.g. as a product or a service for social or commercial means.
A recent Foresight report by a Global Panel on Agricultural and Food Systems for Nutrition (GPAFSN) states that the food system is no longer fit for purpose and that urgent action is needed to change how food systems are managed, governed and used (GPAFSN, 2020). Innovation will be a key factor in many of the solutions that are needed for futureproofing food supply and distribution, hence it is imperative that knowledge generation flows through to, and generates benefits for, the end user.
My recent MBA research project identified that the external environment needs to better support the pipeline from knowledge generation to innovation. A clear policy needs to be established at the highest level, accompanied by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and financial incentives, in order to incentivise Universities and Research Institutions to actively engage in innovation. Expectation and incentives for innovation within the agricultural sciences need to extend beyond the individual researcher and consider both institutional and leadership incentives. Addressing the financial cost of institutions diverting researcher time and attention onto innovation will be a key factor for them to put in place strategies for increasing innovation activities within their organisations.
Traditionally, scientists primarily focussed on curiosity-driven questions leading to numerous scientific breakthroughs. However, delivering impact from scientific research has now become an increasing focus with impact and dissemination more commonly becoming a required component of research funding. A question remains as to what extent this impact extends to innovation. Diverting the time and attention of scientists, the main income generators in research organisations onto entrepreneurial tasks comes at a cost. It reduces their focus on revenue raising for science, making it understandable that innovation has not organically filtered through from funding initiatives to institutional KPIs. This demonstrates that the current status quo of funding and working within science is not the optimal mechanism for driving innovation. If we hope for science investment to deliver true innovation new models are urgently needed. These will serve the core purpose of incentivising innovation activities across scales: the individual researchers to the institutions that employ them.
References:
Aradottir, G.I. (2020) Identification of bottlenecks from knowledge generation to innovation in the agricultural sciences. MBA Dissertation, Warwick Business School.
Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition (2020) Future Food Systems: For people, our planet, and prosperity. London, UK.