Friday, March 1, 2013

Collaboration over Individualism

Graham Haylor says thus :

Robert Frost’s famous poem Mending Wall, an ode to individualism, celebrates the role of good fences in ensuring good neighbourliness, especially where fences protect crops from neighbour’s cattle. Whilst this may be true with forage, the opposite is true for information. Information is not depleted by use, but enriched and rendered more accurate. Research on a particular problem may require a wider range of skills than any single individual, or even a single institution, is likely to possess. Researchers working together to achieve the common goal of producing new knowledge can derive mutual intellectual benefits and social influence from their collaboration. ‘Breaking the fences’ that separate scientists, laboratories, institutes, countries, and disciplines can achieve greater research outcomes. We believe there may be a range of benefits from a Collaborative Research Approach. Such as: sharing of knowledge, skills and techniques; tacit knowledge transfer; learning social and team management skills; sourcing creativity; intellectual companionship; greater scientific visibility; and pooling equipment.

For the full talk go to :  http://www.ifs.se/IFS/Documents/Publications/Breaking%20fences%20may%20make%20for%20good%20neighbours%20in%20collaborative%20research.pdf