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The future is in our hands.
As Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Whatever we may believe is right, at the end of the day economic considerations will drive human decision making in virtually every walk of life. My belief is that we need to ensure that the brightest and the best graduates are able to transition from academic studies into the best jobs in the most potent positions; in government, in research labs, in industry….
To do that, students need to understand what drives the thinking of the people that are their potential employers. Similarly governments need to understand what company CEO’s are thinking with regard to the way they intend to expand their businesses, particularly for those businesses that are the true value drivers of the global economy: science and engineering businesses. Similarly academics need to understand what business wants from its graduates and from its research. The best possible way to ensure that there is a friction free transfer of fundamental research into the market place is for the alumni from the best scientific research labs to migrate into the best businesses and then to pull behind them applied research contracts, the generation of new IP, and the transfer of more students with their own cultural history.
The Transition Research Project aims to identify the needs of industry and to plant the seeds of communication and association between academics and industry in a way that has not been previously undertaken. We hope that industry will embrace it as a move in the right direction – that will be risk free for them and with goodwill, can yield highly profitable results.
This web site is where you can find sufficient information about The Transition Research Project in order to determine whether you would be interested in participating. The specific tab Company Benefits explores specifically what is in it for you. Please look at the bios of the researchers; these aspiring PhD candidates are going to be at the forefront of engineering the changes that will need to take place over the next 20 years or more to meet some of the challenges of society, including energy conservation and storage, biomedicine and more.
If you are looking for the Chris Gilbey blog and business consulting web site please visit Perceptric. If you are interested in my work with Aquahydrex please leave a comment here or at the Perceptric website.
The pilot of this project is running during the first six months of 2012 and is funded by the University of Wollongong.
My associate in the research project is Nicky Martin.
