excellence versus reality
TRANSCRIPT
Francesco Sylos Labini
Excellence and reality
Saint Matthew
The age of meritocracy
“The rich gets richer and the
poor gets poorer”
Harvard Here Model
• Harvard operating expenses = 44% founds of all Italian universities
• Harvard has 21,000 students 130,000 euro/student
• Typically EU: 10,000 euro/student
66 Italian universities
Bill
ion
s o
f E
uro
s
Harvard Here Model
High Tc Superconductivity
Nobel Prize in Physics 1987
High Tc Superconductivity
High Tc Superconductivity
High Tc Superconductivity
High Tc Superconductivity
High Tc Superconductivity
High Tc Superconductivity
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Nobel Prize in Physics 1986
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Giant Magneto Resistence
Nobel Prize in Physics 2007
(relevant paper 1988)
Giant Magneto Resistence
Giant Magneto Resistence
Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Giant Magneto Resistence
2010
Graphene
2010
Graphene
Graphene
Graphene
2010
Graphene
Rischio e Ricerca
Rischio e Ricerca
1963
Ideology
Reality
Pro
duct
ivit
y
Competitiveness
Research is risk
Rewarding what is today recognised as excellence is
trivial !
“Reinforce excellence,
dynamism and creativity of
European research"
“ERC funds excellent researchers”
ERC
Nobel Prize
Novoselov, K. S.; Geim, A. K.; Morozov, S. V.; Jiang, D.; Zhang, Y.; Dubonos, S. V.;
Grigorieva, I. V.; Firsov, A. A. (2004). Science 306 (5696): 666–669.
M. Brune, J.M. Raimond, P. Goy, L. Davidovich and S.
Haroche, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59,
1899 (1987)
Research is risk
The real problem is to understand whom to reward today, among the large magma of good quality researchers, and how to pick those who would
become excellent tomorrow !
We conclude that scientific impact (as reflected by publications) is only weakly limited by funding. We suggest that funding strategies that target diversity,
rather than “excellence”, are likely to prove to be more productive.
Research is risk
Co
un
try
Scientific Domain
Specialization
Co
un
tryScientific Domain
Diversification !
Technological leading countries
beyond having the largest production of scientific papers and the largest number
of citations, do not specialize in few scientific domains. Rather, they diversify
as much as possible their research system
Diversification
thus represents the key element that correlates with scientific and
technological competitiveness