Science, Innovation and all that jazz

This morning's reflections and Monday Forum is loosely linked to innovation, that presently popular topic. As always, feel free to go in whatever direction you like!

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal  (23 October 2015), The Myth of Basic Science, British peer Matt Ridley concludes:

 The perpetual-innovation machine that feeds economic growth and generates prosperity is not the result of deliberate policy at all, except in a negative sense. Governments cannot dictate either discovery or invention; they can only make sure that they don’t hinder it. Innovation emerges unbidden from the way that human beings freely interact if allowed. Deep scientific insights are the fruits that fall from the tree of technological change.

To get to this point, he argues that the old linear model dating back to Francis Bacon now encapsulated in the idea of pure research feeding into applied research into useful technology is misleading. In fact, in most cases, technology, innovation feeds into, drives, science. Technology has, he suggests, become a self-replicating, self-steering system that will give best results if left alone. Politicians should stop believing that innovation can be turned on and off like a tap. Governments should stop funding basic research, do away with patents and get out of the way. This drew a protest from (among others) Don Aitkin - Should the public funding of basic science stop? Don is clearly impressed by the view of Mr Ridley in a general sense, but this was a bridge too far.

Without research, I do not remember when systems approaches first emerged. I do do know that I was arguing in the 1970s that the now popular systems approaches could be fruitfully applied the archaeology and Australian prehistory to provide insights. This followed work that I had done attempting to use economic constructs to analyse Aboriginal economic life, work that seemed to yield fruitful results. However, what we might think of as modern "systems" approaches suffers from severe weaknesses.

With the exception of marxist and some socialist theorists who always wanted to make the evidence fit the model, system approaches were simply another way of analysing evidence. Considering a system as a series of interconnected parts, a systems approach led you to ask questions about possible parts and the relationships between them.  Today, the old normative approach adopted by some on the left has sadly become universal, with the dominant right imposing its own particular orthodoxies on the evidence. It's not just the right of course, for normative systems approaches have become deeply embedded in policy debate. Still, economic models have a lot to answer for in, among other things, keeping thesis and antithesis alive!

Mr Ridley is correct, of course, in arguing that the pure, applied, useful technology model is flawed. To use his own thinking, technology feeds into science, science feeds into technology. It's a system. However, and those involved with systems know this, systems involve multiple flows and interconnections. It seems to me that Mr Ridley wishes to impose his own conclusions on the system. using selective evidence to support his thesis. Damn, thesis and anti-thesis again! 

Network economics focuses on the way networks, systems operate, Network economics suggests that under certain defined conditions, networks will lead to monopolistic or oligopolistic outcomes.We have seen this in the higher technology areas so beloved by Prime Minister  Turnbull. A fair bit of economic and policy analysis has been concerned with overcoming this problem. Apart from recognising the way in which patents can be used to protect market power, Mr Ridley ignores this problem. He implicitly assumes that the technology system will give best results. He does not test this, nor recognise that it may lead to undesirable outcomes such as under investment in basic research. It may not, but the question has to be addressed.

I now turn to another topic, the present conflation between innovation and science and technology. It's deeply embedded, and it seems to affect all our thinking. Certainly it affects Mr Ridley's thinking, even though he is clearly influenced by Adam Smith, surely one of the great innovative thinkers of the 18th century measured by his continuing influence.

In a discussion in one of the comment threads, I suggested that innovation meant change. It's a little more than that, of course. Innovation means something new, something that is outside the current box. It is not the same as productivity improvement, nor of cost reduction, nor of improved efficiency and effectiveness. although all these things may be an outcome. It is also not the same as science or technology. Adam Smith was an innovator, the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter was an innovator. Indeed, the phrase "creative destruction" that he coined has suddenly now become very popular jargon. 

The imposed linkage between innovation and science and technology is an example of the mental blindness created by definitional ambiguity, These ambiguities, the lack of  clarity or of questioning, act as blinkers: they force us to gallop down one track when we might be better on another. Our very obsession with innovation blinds us to the real possibilities of innovation. That is why I have doubts about Mr Turnbull's emphasis on innovation. He does not ask questions, he feeds us his pre-determined answers. 

Finishing by returning to the funding of basic research, during the 1980s I was an active proponent of the need for greater linkages between industry and universities, of the need to effectively commercialise research carried out in the university sector. By the early 2000s, I thought that the focus and process, however imperfectly carried out, had gone to far, far too far. I was particularly concerned with what I saw as the collapse of curiosity based research in all disciplines, not just science. How, I wondered, were new ideas to come through, how were existing structures to be challenged, how were issues to be clarified, when everything had to be justified by outcomes linked to pre-determined questions and measurable results, usually with a dollar sign attached?

Since then the position has got worse, especially but not only in Australia's "top" research institutions. The proliferating buildings and institutes based on special applied research areas are, to my mind, a sign of failure. Staff no longer have freedom to pursue questions just for curiosity. Adam Smith himself was able to think and write because of access to patronage. Very few people have that luxury today.