Industry-driven research

After spending a few years overseas, I am starting to get acquainted again with Europe’s research and developent (R&D) policies and instruments. Some things are very similar to what they used to be in the 90s, while others are new. One of the new things that puzzles me is that concept of industry-driven research.

I’ve been reading a nice amount of white papers, green papers and papers of all colours regarding Europe’s plans and strategies for R&D, including the forecoming 7th Framework Programme. I have also been a bit involved with technology platforms such as NESSI. To round this up, yesterday I spent most of the day attending a seminar on writing R&D proposals for the (current) 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission (EC). And through all these channels, I can see how the EC is making more and more emphasis on having industry drive research.

The idea is the following: a few large European companies from any given sector get together and form a “technology platform”, such as NESSI. One of the first things they do is create a strategic research agenda (SRA), a document that specifies what areas have high research priority, and, in general, what are the research needs in Europe. The EC’s intention, as far as I am told, is to then take these SRAs and design European research policy according to them. Following this scheme, large companies will determine research policy rather than accept it.

Indicators

Over the past few years I have worked in and visited many different organisations, small and large; government, private and academic; IT and non-IT. And I’ve always wondered whether there is a magic formula that would allow me to assess the quality of the work done there from simple pieces of evidence that can be gathered by quick observation.

I have some candidate indicators.

The first one is the up-to-dateness of door name plates. I can understand that an organisation has no name plates on doors. Now, if doors have name plates on them, they must be current. If they are misplaced, misspelled or incomplete, in my experience, that is a good indicator that the quality of the work done there is poor.

Ohmygod, my friend is a rock star

I know I am not the first, but I had to say it: my friend Matt is a rock star. And when he becomes famous and rich I will think of the old days when rootkits were made of bits rather than notes.

Matt and his mates have launched their first video clip. You can find it here.

Even Mark Russinovich is talking about it.