Crisis, what can they tell us research and technological innovations – The Daily

The Laterza publishing house has published a few days ago my book “ Risk and forecasting What can science tell us about the crisis .” Here we advance extract .

To understand how they form new ideas, you need to have in mind that the search engine is powered by the motivations of the researchers, from their > passions and their curiosity. the basic idea of ​​search and its operation, which is too often forgotten not only by outsiders but also by the same scientists and researchers, is well illustrated by the following story. A person begins to search for the key that has lost under a streetlight, “because there is no light.” Look for the key where there is light instead of where you are actually lost, is a favorite pastime of researchers from all disciplines. The research, however, corresponds not to look for the key where there is light, but try to shed light where there is something that deserves to be tried. This is obviously much more difficult and those who It proposes to organize and finance scientific research must take into account that the fundamental role and purpose of scientific research is precisely to shed light where before there was darkness. We consider below two discoveries that have turned on the light, opening the way to some extraordinary technological innovations of recent years.

Along with Peter Grünberg , the Jülich Research Centre, in Germany, Fert has won the award in 2007 Nobel for the discovery of the magnetoresistance giant ( giant magnetoresistance – Gmr ). This discovery is the basis of the amazing increased storage of electronic devices we have witnessed over the past two decades. With this discovery the size of computers and all other electronic devices have greatly reduced , as well as their cost. Who has benefited the most from the discovery of the GMR? The answer to this question is interesting to understand how a discovery of basic research we can actually turn into an application of industrial interest. French and German scientists who discovered the GMR, together with their laboratories, have benefited from the discovery received the Nobel Prize and small returns from the patent rights. On the other hand, the company that first commercialized the technology, IBM has achieved great profits from the sale of hard disk drives and magnetic head based on the effect Gmr. Other manufacturers of hard disk drives, based in the United States and Japan, have been able to quickly assimilate the technology and catch up at IBM. France and Germany , the countries that initially funded the research that led to the discovery, have achieved rather limited benefits due to lack of national companies whose ability to market the GMR effect.

This shows the importance of absorbency of scientific discoveries, both in terms business both nationally, that is, the ability to grasp the scientific innovations and know how to use to then derive the benefits of technological innovation originated thanks to fundamental research. The absorption capacity, as we shall see, is a fundamental element that characterizes the development potential of a company or even a nation. Often emphasis is laid in the artificial division between basic research and applied research, with an emphasis on the second rather than the first, given its importance from an economic point of view. On the contrary, the ability to be able to do basic research to exploit the high-level skills from a commercial point of view it is important to keep distinct. The first is clearly necessary to the second , because if you do not have the expertise to develop cutting-edge basic research may not even include those that occurred elsewhere, and therefore you can not hope to exploit them by a point commercial perspective. These are two distinct aspects, although both are important, they should be considered separately, instead of putting in the foreground, as often happens, the artificial distinction between fundamental and applied research. The economic performance of a nation depends, in fact, how its companies are capable of commercialize research producing new products.

How can a country increase its ability to use the knowledge created by their own scientists or researchers from other countries to produce new products and processes? The short answer is: countries can help their businesses and industries by creating a good environment because the “absorption capacity” is developed.