Nurturing innovation, or why we need to kiss more frogs

Sir John O'Reilly, VC, Cranfield University, promises to touch on a number of different topics, seemingly randomly. Which is a handy excuse for a blogger - any randomness that follows was 'im, not me. Sir John is speaking about rebooting UK HE, from the perspective of the VC of a wholly postgraduate STEM university (he gives yet another definition of the M in ST(E)M - in this case, management).

He starts by noting that, in recent news stories, "students" and "higher education" have almost entirely meant undergraduate - even HEPI's Higher Education Supply and Demand document was focussed on undergraduate demands and provision. HEFCE funding per student fell substantially through the 1990s, despite the government's recognition of the importance of the knowledge economy, and we now know that several universities will begin charging high-end fees from next year. Only undergraduate students can access the Student Loans Company's "favourable" arrangements; what will the climate be for postgraduate students?

Sir John uses Langton's Ant to demonstrate emergence, as a cipher for the complexity of the higher education system: a simple algorithm at the heart of a complex system that generates unpredictable behaviour and unintended consequences. For example, the line between teaching and research is convenient but arbitrary, and the two are symbiotic - weaken the research base, and the teaching will be poor. But likewise: weaken the teaching base, and the research will be poorer.

Drawing this together, Sir John asserts that the changes in funding of postgraduate education may have the unintended consequence of weakening the research output of our universities - which in turn will weaken innovation, which will in due course weaken the economy. "The princess and the frog" can be used as metaphor for knowledge transfer; to find a prince, you have to kiss a lot of frogs. We must be careful not to disrupt inappropriately the research and innovation agenda and our ability to address it in England. "We are in the business of kissing frogs, to ensure that the future generation has its princes of wealth creation." As Jane Harvell, one of UKSG tweeters puts it, "all this is not news for us working in HE, but it does need saying, and is best said by a Vice Chancellor."

"Today's value-add is tomorrow's commodity": sustainability through adaptability

The world changed, says Kevin Guthrie, when we began to use the same tool to search for "fish and chips in Torquay" and "acute lymphoblastic leukaemia". The speed of innovation and the growth of new products is "unimaginable" (cue lots of stats about growth of Hotmail, Facebook, YouTube etc). But if what goes up must come down, do we need to plan for a fall? "Today's value-add is tomorrow's commodity" - organisations have much less time to leverage competitive advantage of innovations.

Newspaper publishing can be seen as similar to scholarly journal publishing; similar competitive landscape, economic model, editorial infrastructure. In the digital era, circulation began to decline but revenues were not immediately adversely affected. But stock prices for news companies are now falling (42% in 2007) and ad revenues are falling - even online ads are in slowdown (accounting for less than 10% of newspaper revenues). The marketplace if shrinking/consolidating, and newspapers are limiting their remits (less coverage of "exurban" news) as they cut staff. A grim picture is painted and signed off with some depressing quotes ("Newspapers are f*ed", Buzzmachine).

What happened? Competing channels, substitutes - consider these from our perspective; the same pressures are there in scholarly communication, for example RePEc vs traditional economics journals. Every open-access-idealist start-up tries to use an online advertising model but of course the more ad inventory there is, the less value there is for each platform. With this diminishing revenue base, smaller players will be unable to operate - leading to fewer, larger newspapers.

There are signs of hope: extraordinarily niche local players do seem likely to survive (what could libraries do locally that other organisations can't?); there is "still a lot of money [in the newspaper industry] and what is required is strategic change, not giving up the ghost" (Chris Anderson, Wired). We need to embrace the digital era and improve our processes. We never thought Google would have the impact it has, and we are no longer insulated from change. Publishers continue to have important roles but these too have changed, though still valid for "credentialing" (brands as a stamp of authority for the tenure process).

Despite the similarities, newspapers are different. They are more commercial, more entertainment-related. Scholarly publishing supports a mission-based activity (advancing knowledge through research) and is more tightly connected to its audience. It will be protected from the perils afflicting newspapers by the core value that it adds. We need to embrace technology to strengthen this core. It will become appropriate to outsource non-core functions and to collaborate more effectively through investment in shared resources. The focus needs to be on users, their needs and their preferences - not on "how things have been" but on "how things are going to be".