Cultivating a collaborative scientific environment. Fostering productivity and innovation

Science is the greatest invention of humanity that helps us thrive in this ever increasingly unpredictable and complicated reality by making it dance to the predictable rhythms of theories and postulates. I’d even go as far as to say human existence is directly proportional to the scientific advancement of a civilization, which makes it imperative for a rising power like India to develop cultural scientific temperament and a collaborative environment. 

Gone are those days when an apple fell on a scientist’s head, and soon after locking himself up in a room to burn midnight oil, he came up with a world changing idea! Today’s productivity and innovation thrives on ‘collaboration’, a lesson that the tumultuous phase of Covid-19 has already taught us.

An analysis of more than 500 laureates has found, future prize-winners spent their early years working in larger teams, publishing on an average almost double the number of joint papers. Or as one of the study’s authors says, In contrast to the iconic image of lone geniuses making guiding contributions, we find the giants in science in fact show a greater propensity toward teamwork. 

The biggest and the most successful projects are always executed in large collaborations. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for instance, in CERN is well known for being one of the largest international collaborations incorporated to look for fundamental particles. Within 10 years with more than 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories, as well as more than 100 countries collaborated to create this master structure that is uncovering new quantum secrets each day.

Other big collaborations include the International Space Station, the Human Genome Project, the Manhattan Project, LIGO, etc

And if we speak about R&D collaborations in India, According to the DST – Elsevier report on International Comparative Performance of India’s Research Base on India’s research performance, the number of papers from collaboration between Indian universities and industry has actually decreased with a CAGR of -6.1% between 2009 and 2013 compared to a global -3.7% CAGR for the same period.

In order to make our culture more collaboration friendly, we have to focus on 3 major types of collaborations – 

Individual level collaborations – This type of collaboration is the most basic and can be done within colleagues, mentors and mentees, professors and students and even within faculties. This is most basic but can really be very effective as a lot of the brilliant discoveries are done this way.

Organizational level collaborations – India has numerous organizations working in the science domain such as the IIT, IISC, ISRO, DRDO, BITS, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the list goes on and on. Frequently initiated collaborations within these organizations with powerful incentive and recognition structures will prove extremely beneficial.

International level collaborations – Collaborations of independent scientists and organizations with other international scientists and organizations have also been extremely beneficial in the past because it has bought forward the most diverse perspectives, thereby catapulting innovation.

As with other humanly endeavors, collaboration will only be rewarding for teams incorporating people with high Emotional intelligence and social-skills, values that are not generally taught within our educational system. With high priorities given to individual marks, grading and scholarships it is only natural to develop a culture of over-independence. 

Hence, along with creating a scientific enquiry culture, a good part of the R&D fund should also be invested in helping the researchers develop the essential skills of collaboration.

Developing empathy, emotional awareness & proper regulation, social skills and team spirit are the core values that has to be systematically ameliorated among the research subjects so that it becomes only natural for them to not only prefer, but also make the most out the collaborations.

{{{short}}}
{{#more}}
… Read More
{{/more}}

{{/totalcount}}
{{^totalcount}}

Start a Conversation