Why Compete? Collaborate!
22/07/11 17:38 Filed in: GenomeWeb Daily Scan
Submitted by S. Pelech - Kinexus on Fri, 07/22/2011 - 17:38.
It seems like a no-brainer that collaboration is likely to be far more effective than competition, especially when there is a common goal where all participants benefit. For one thing, collaboration requires less overall resources as there is reduced duplication of efforts. For another, it is a lot more enjoyable.
In general, I have observed that the more funding that a research lab receives, the less likely that it will collaborate with other research groups. Moreover, as a research team expands with higher funding, there is even more competition within the same group. In these difficult economic times, it makes sense to fund a greater number of principal investigators with smaller grants. This actually forces greater collaboration to tackle a larger number of important research directions. Such collaborations are natural, fast to initiate and terminate easily when the objectives have been achieved.
In the 21st century, distance is no longer a barrier to effective collaboration. Our company Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation has provided proteomics services to over 1350 laboratories in 33 countries. With spread out funding available for more principal investigators, even more collaborations can indeed be undertaken internationally. However, having government organizations promoting collaborations between specific countries as often happens with trade missions and joint international funding serves political rather than scientific research agendas.
Link to the original blog post.
It seems like a no-brainer that collaboration is likely to be far more effective than competition, especially when there is a common goal where all participants benefit. For one thing, collaboration requires less overall resources as there is reduced duplication of efforts. For another, it is a lot more enjoyable.
In general, I have observed that the more funding that a research lab receives, the less likely that it will collaborate with other research groups. Moreover, as a research team expands with higher funding, there is even more competition within the same group. In these difficult economic times, it makes sense to fund a greater number of principal investigators with smaller grants. This actually forces greater collaboration to tackle a larger number of important research directions. Such collaborations are natural, fast to initiate and terminate easily when the objectives have been achieved.
In the 21st century, distance is no longer a barrier to effective collaboration. Our company Kinexus Bioinformatics Corporation has provided proteomics services to over 1350 laboratories in 33 countries. With spread out funding available for more principal investigators, even more collaborations can indeed be undertaken internationally. However, having government organizations promoting collaborations between specific countries as often happens with trade missions and joint international funding serves political rather than scientific research agendas.
Link to the original blog post.