Mission-driven research must have the freedom to be a pirate ship in the innovative fleet
Mission-driven research must have the freedom to be a pirate ship in the innovative fleet
With AAU's strategic focus on being a mission-driven university, the interdisciplinary research projects are a good starting point for further work. Working mission-driven is based on a fundamental understanding and defining a problem in the world that you are trying to solve, often across sciences. This is explained by Lars Frølund, PhD. in strategic collaboration between large companies and research institutions and, among other things, board member of Innovation Fund Denmark and the European Innovation Council (EIC).
Reality does not care how we have defined academic boxes, and therefore real problems do not fit into the academic boxes either. Instead, it is about describing exactly what you want to solve or achieve and then assembling a team capable of working qualified with it
DARPA as the essence of mission-driven research
Lars Frølund highlights DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the US military research and development institution, as one of the absolute frontrunners in mission-driven research. DARPA was founded in the wake of the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, which sent shockwaves through the U.S. government. A plan was therefore quickly drawn up to never again fall victim to such technological surprises. Part of the plan was the establishment of DARPA as a form of pirate ship in the American research and innovation system. From the very beginning, DARPA has been subject to a very high degree of freedom in their work, and to this day this freedom is still crucial to their ability to challenge the existing and support seemingly impossible ideas.
The fundamental principles of DARPA's way of working are the principles of freedom and personal judgment. They get an annual budget of about three billion dollars on average, with a very small share of political earmarking. This freedom in how the money is spent enables DARPA to work with and invest in what they believe with their personal judgment will be the next big breakthrough. DARPA has been recognized for the invention of transformative technologies such as the internet, GPS, Siri, the personal computer and the development of RNA vaccines through investments in Moderna and Curevac, which enabled the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines
Management must dare to let go
The high degree of freedom regarding making all decisions and not least self-regulation in the work is essential in mission-driven research.
To put it bluntly, it is important that you as a leader let go completely and let the researchers work in a completely different and free way than you may be used to. In other words, you have to be ready to do something that many people do not like you to do and be able to tolerate quite a lot of "what are you doing?" from others, for example when a mission needs to be formulated. However, a very precise description of a mission is one of the most difficult, because it requires making some tough decisions. These decisions are often difficult to make because they exclude a considerable number of options and people when seeking a solution, and this is a challenge in Denmark. Generally, we do not like making decisions that disrupts the cozy atmosphere
Launch the pirate ship
Lars Frølund certainly believes that it is possible to work mission-driven in Denmark, but it is difficult as it requires different ways of working with research than we have been used to for many years.
Organisationally, universities can create the framework for mission-driven research to be, so to speak, the pirate ship in the overall fleet of research at the university. But it is important that the pirate ship is allowed to remain a pirate ship that operates in its own way and does not just become a new fleet subjected to strict regulation and reporting requirements
However, it is also a challenge that, according to Lars Frølund, external funding of research is not sufficiently geared to support and prioritise mission-driven research, which typically cuts across sciences. Here, projects such as AAU's interdisciplinary research projects can help lead the way. If you want to explore the mission-driven approach to research to an even greater extent, you need to look in the direction of the frontrunners in the field, he believes.
AAU should reach out to some of those who work mission-driven – such as DARPA. Talk to them about how they actually did it, how to develop a program for a mission, and then try one or a few missions yourself in the first place. This way, you can launch your own pirate ship in the innovation fleet
Lars Frølund
Lars Frølund is PhD. in strategic collaboration between large companies and research institutions. He works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also a member of the Board of Directors in Innovation Fund Denmark and in the European Innovation Council (EIC). He is also a Special Adviser on Digital and Technological Sovereignty to Margrethe Vestager at the European Commission.