Scientific silos are holding back collaboration and breakthroughs

In order to break down the limitation bars and start rebuilding an encouraging environment, there should be a stronger collaborative relationship between the private sector and the academic world, says Päivi Törmä.

Between twenty and fourty years ago, scientific research in Europe was a hotbed of innovation with academia and the private sector collaborating effortlessly.  The successful cloning of the first mammal, Dolly, by researchers at the Roslin Institute; the discovery of high-temperature superconductivity, by IBM Zurich-based academics Karl Müller and Georg Bednorz; and the advance of quantized conductance, in two-dimensional electron gas, by a team of Delft University of Technology and Philips researchers,  derived from engagement, and risk-taking, with the support of private enterprise.

Yet, fast forward to today, and the situation is markedly different. Now, our academic institutions and the private sector are, almost exclusively, separate entities when it comes to research. This means some of the world’s most brilliant minds now work in relative isolation and the result is a slew of new findings as limited as the labs that produced them.