What’s in a name?
By Bette Flagler,
Our newest ministry has set itself a stern test
Put a word like innovation in your name, and you’re making a bold claim. From the moment you hang your shingle on the door, innovation ought to be core in everything you do. Your motto should be: Innovation or bust.
John Kao writes in Innovation Nation, “What I have learned is that innovation—creating what is both new and valuable—is not a narrowly defined, technical area of competence. It cannot be reduced to a single frame of reference, way of thinking, or set of methods. Rather, innovation emerges when different bodies of knowledge, perspectives and disciplines are brought together.”
So as a step in that direction, on the first of February, the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MSI) was formed following the merger of the Ministry of Research Science and Technology (MoRST) and the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (FRST). Being able to coordinate the funding and policy under one roof is a reasonable move; it no longer makes sense to keep people in business units divided by function. The old model was developed with good intentions, but it had turned into a clunky, cumbersome and in many ways impenetrable beast.
Restructuring is disruptive and expensive. The new organisation was announced mid- 2010 and efficiency at both organisations has probably suffered in the meantime. Murray Bain, chief executive of FRST, was named MSI chief executive in October and as of the February launch he was still pulling together his senior team. Other roles will be announced and filled over the next few months. So it’ll be a long year or more before the music stops and the chairs are filled. Whatever MSI does, it needs to do enough of it to make up for the upheaval caused by the structural change.
This new ministry has an opportunity to build an organisation that is efficient and effective, approachable and responsive, and innovative. But what is MSI going to do that is different and better—and more innovative—than what the two agencies did before? MSI has, according to the formal announcement put out by Bain, “an exciting and ambitious mandate from government to help strengthen the science and innovation systems.” But what does Bain mean? What is MSI going to do that is exciting and ambitious? How are we going to know when it has done it?
We are all interested in how science and innovation (and technology—I assume that word got dropped from the name for branding reasons) can be economically helpful and it’s likely the new ministry will put extra emphasis on commercialisation of science and business R&D. But basic science, social science, and science that is good for the environment are important, too.
In Them and Us, Will Hutton writes: “The innovation ecosystem that we need now is a bridge between the activist planning role of the state and the firms and institutions that discharge the innovative functions.”
Indeed, this new ministry has a crucial activist planning role to play. It has the opportunity to be bold to set in place all that is needed for that bridge. I am really looking forward to hearing about how it is going to do this. I can’t wait to learn about its Big Ideas and its vision and how that vision will be realised.
This government, like the one before it, has made science and innovation a strategic and policy priority. But strategy must be followed by finance. Without more resources, it’s hard to take big, bold, bright ideas anywhere. As MSI finalises its strategy and benchmarks, the government must develop a budget that allocates significant resource against that strategy. With sizeable money, MSI can do great and innovative things—without it, we’ve just had a time-consuming and expensive reorganisation.
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