Phys.org July 2, 2024
A team of researchers in the UK identified the Laboratory of Molecular Biology’s (LMB’s) management model as the key — it sets a culture with incentives and provides oversight to optimize the interplay between science and technology. By integrating high-risk basic science with innovative technology, the LMB facilitates a knowledge feedback loop that helps the institute to identify promising questions and continuously push scientific boundaries. In the context of economics and management theory, the LMB behaves as a ‘complex adaptive system’. They outlined their findings and encourage research organizations, funding bodies and policymakers to consider adopting a similarly holistic and coherent approach to managing basic scientific research. In short, they should prioritize long-term scientific goals and effectively manage scarce resources; foster economies of scale and scope by promoting complementarities between different areas of scientific research; and create value by establishing synergies and feedback between scientific questions and engineering-based technology solutions… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Biochemist John Kendrew working on a structural model…Â UK, in the 1960s. Credit: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.