COMMUNIA Conference 2009: keynote speeches preview (1)

Prof. Fiona Murray (Associate Professor of Management Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship Group, Sloan School of Management, MIT) will focus on “Institutional foundations of scientific progress: implications for collaboration and participation”.
Today's knowledge is exchanged and accumulated within and across both formal and informal scientific institutions (libraries, journals, databases, etc.) that also include intellectual property rules and their licensing practices.
The way we choose to structure these institutions is critical in shaping collaboration and, more importantly, participation in scientific progress. Specifically, if access to knowledge is critical for full participation in scientific research, then the way we shape the rules of these institutions has profound implications for who participates and who is left behind.
The landscape of formal and informal institutions will determine whether innovation and knowledge production becomes truly democratized and is a much more robust and lasting mechanism for ensuring broad participation in science than simply mandating collaboration. There is a variety of quantitative evidence and research projects that do substantiate these claims, thus providing positive implications for scientific progress and the society at large.

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