Listen to Q&A on Soundcloud here: https://soundcloud.com/collaborativescience/morten-ostergaard
Morten Ostergaard is a Danish minister for science and innovation and higher education and as part of the new Danish government has been in office for 2 years. Before that I was a member of Parliament and my own background is Political Science with a Master's degree from the University of Aarhus.
Our society, at least the Western world and maybe even the global society, has been through a very large economic crisis and we've lost thousands of jobs in Denmark, primarily unskilled labor has been out of a job, and therefore we need to reinvent the way that we do business in Denmark, the way that we create the wealth and in turn becomes the welfare that we like in the Nordic welfare models. And, therefore, we need to find new ways of creating jobs where the old ones are lost. This is a fundamental crisis in a country that cannot find its wealth in natural resources that we take out of the ground. We have to create our wealth through the minds and hands of the people that we educate.
First of all, when I've said that the transition we're in is comparable to the transition from the agrarian age to the industrial age, it means that we are fundamentally changing the way we live and the way that we work. And, what we are now is in a period where we've seen a lot of jobs disappear because we are able to produce at lower costs in other parts of the world and therefore we need to to have different kinds of models in order to keep a high level of employment in Denmark. And in an innovation society, of course, knowledge plays a huge role. Transition or constant change plays an important role. And that means that the type of companies we can attract, the type of jobs we can create, will be knowledge-intensive. They will have, perhaps, a short life-cycle and then have to be replaced by something else because as soon as it comes into mass-production, it will be easier to produce in another place.
And, therefore, what we have to do is to do what we do best in Denmark, collaborate across disciplines, reinvent ourselves, take a stab at the challenges that are not only facing our society, but also major parts of the global community and create our opportunities out of using some of that innovation DNA that is inherent in our way of working and our culture. And using that to try and see if we can solve some of these societal challenges that are challenging us, but also challenging people in other countries, and therefore representing a business opportunity.
What is the challenge with collaboration?
In a society like the Danish society, which is relatively small and is a society based on a very large public sector and a model where we take pride in the fact that there is a high level of equality, we also have to use that to our advantage when we are trying to create new opportunities to create jobs where the old ones are missing. And all of the societal challenges that are driving innovation all over the world are characterized by needing a cross-disciplinary approach to finding a solution. We cannot just develop a new drug to face all our lifestyle diseases. We cannot defend ourselves against climate change if we don't understand what happens in peoples' homes. And, therefore, we have to get people who ordinarily have been in their own little cubicle working with people with the same backgrounds as themselves, get them out into the open and working together to develop new solutions to the problems that we're facing. I think that there's a strong Danish tradition for social innovation. Also, when we're in a transition within the agrarian age and towards industrial society, we've used education and enlightenment as an answer to crisis because we have always had to create our own wealth.
And that has show itself in new forms of organizing ourselves. Small farmers organizing themselves to get more out of the products they could do on their farms. Workers uniting to get better labor conditions. And now scientists or innovators collaborating across disciplines to take a stab at these societal challenges. First of all, I think that perhaps sometimes scientists tend to overemphasize the importance of the allocation of means towards bibliometrical data. Actually, very few means are distributed in that way. But there is a paradox in the fact that cross-disciplinary research gets a lot of attention but not a lot of recognition. This was also part of the discussion that we had on the European level during the Presidency where we were negotiating the architecture of the new Horizon 2020 program within the EU. We ended up creating a special emphasis within the program on cross-disciplinary research. And I think that also in many aspects a lot of our institutions are also realizing that they have to do more.
Our Council for Strategic Research is now giving awards to the best cross-disciplinary projects. The University of Copenhagen has diverted means targeted toward cross-disciplinary projects. So I think we're seeing a transition in that area as well. But we still need to have more focus when it comes to publication and recognition of results stemming from cross-disciplinary research.
Well, first of all, Horizon 2020 is the world's largest collaborative research program. I think it's one of the strong suits of the European Union that we have decided to look at ourselves as one knowledge area and that from North to South, East to West, we agree that that's part of the growth strategy for Europe. And, therefore, we have to take part in it because it represents opportunity for us, opportunity to gain funding with a very large program, but also to gain knowledge of other research communities or interesting companies in the rest of Europe, networking with scientists and the business community from all over Europe. And thirdly, because all of the money in the Framework Programmes from the European Union are distributed only by assessing the quality of the projects and the people behind them. So, by emphasizing on our uptake of European means we are also focusing on our quality in comparison with the rest of the European Union.
And, therefore for me, setting a high target and expectation on our ability to get funds from Horizon 2020 is actually setting a high target on quality of the research.
ESOF [EuroScience Open Forum] is a recurring event, perhaps the largest research event in Europe. With ESOF 14 we are trying to see if we can open up the research world to the rest of the community. We are trying to bridge the gap between the researchers and the communities they do their research in. And we're trying to bring researchers together. So the name of the game of ESOF 14 is collaboration between researchers, but also between researchers and the communities and the citizens who fund so much of their work.
What is your take on these open DIY science environments? And should we start to rethink the patent system if it's stalling innovation and collaboration (which is what these small communities are trying to do -- catalyzing more people to become involved)?
I think that it's really intriguing and interesting what can be done when you open up your processes and invite people to join in instead of regarding them as competitors and I think we should find ways of seeing if we can support even more development in that area because so much of our research funds are allocated through competition and perhaps sometimes this is in itself an obstacle to more collaboration and working across institutions and disciplines. What I'm primary focusing on is the question of open access which means that we want to make sure that we are also frontrunners when it comes to opening up the results of the research. Perhaps even at some point the data behind the research.
The nature of research is that we stand on each other's shoulders. That there is a high level of transparency so that another researcher in preschool can repeat some kind of an experiment and hopefully reach the same result. That's inherent in research. We have to see if we can embrace new ways of developing a new generation of researcher collaboration and perhaps even start reconsidering if some of our funding is an obstacle in that sense. What I'm first and foremost concerned with is trying to see if we can be part of the countries and the environments that are pushing ahead with open access because that's where I think that we can do most good in a short perspective to see if we can actually get a sentiment going on more openness and more collaboration.
Do you have any advice for the next generation? People wanting to be researchers right now -- having to choose which half they're going to take?
First of all, I think young researchers should really embrace open access and the whole line of thought behind that -- the open source tradition we know from the ICT community. I think it's much more in line with how we traditionally and over hundreds of years have considered science. And, therefore, in many ways it's actually back to basics and I hope that that could be a new trend. But secondly, I would like to really encourage people to not only just work with people of the same background as themselves, but try to see if we can develop new fields of collaborative research where people of totally different backgrounds and disciplines work together and I think we'll see that that will give us results that we didn't even imagine possible.
What is your mission? What do you want to claim?
My mission has been dubbed from research to change. Which actually represents an ambition of making sure that all the good research we do actually gets out into the open and meets reality. A lot of basic research is done and needs to be done, but I think oftentimes that some of the research communities are not open enough towards actually looking at the opportunities that their research represents outside the research community. And, therefore, my concern is more what can research do for society? With new knowledge and all the societal challenges within environment, climate, health, food, all these areas, what can research do for that and making more research change the world we live in not just in an abstract way but actually when it transists itself from new knowledge to new ways of living.
We talked to both philosophers, but also people working and stalking the Internet and they've told us that in order to bring innovation you need an environment where you can make mistakes and try again and where that's accepted. So I have to ask, in relation to these 10,000 students that were demonstrating yesterday, do you see if there is a paradox between your new reforms and also encouraging innovation and collaboration as part of the university culture?
Actually, I don't see a paradox between the ambition of having an innovative society and also our reforms in the education area. What we're saying is we are the country in the Western world that invests most resources in young students because we have collectively financed studies and we also give a large subsidy that's larger than any one we know other countries to students. And, therefore, what we ask them to do is to study full-time. The debate that has been in Denmark that has recently been, to my view, a good deal of what's actually in the reform because we're not challenging people to pass exams more than they were used to, what we're saying is that we would need you to study, have a full schedule of both Spring semester and Fall semester, and we will automatically submit your name to exams so you don't have to worry about whether or not you would like to sign-up for an exam. And I think that if students in many other countries knew that so far its been more-or-less optional if you wanted to study at full pace and if you wanted to sign-up for exam, I think they would be surprised in a country that offers both finance of the studies and subsidies to live on as you do it.
I think that that's a fair demand to put on students. But, on the other hand, we're putting demands on the universities to recognize that internships should be a well-integrated part of a university program. That studying abroad should be given full credit when you return back. That innovation shouldn't be something you do as an add-on or extra-curricular activity, but actually should be a way or teaching or a way of learning as part of your curriculum. And, therefore, I think that there's actually a very good coherence between our policies, not surprisingly I guess.
We need, of course, to focus on the fact that today as well as tomorrow we need to have graduates who have had an education of the highest quality and are very strong in their own discipline. We also need people who have a perspective on other disciplines because that's the only way of creating a more cross-disciplinary approach to both research and in the workplace. And the second part is that besides the fact that they have to be good, they also have to be change agents. They have to be innovative. That means they have to take some of that DNA we talked about earlier that is inherent in Danish culture. Which means that you don't just take the boss' order as it is, but you are also willing to question or see are the old ways the right ways or should we do things better. Then you have empathy and can understand that people who have a different background than yourself may have other needs or may have something to contribute with.
And, therefore, it's important for me that innovative ways of teaching will also, in turn, bring about innovative graduates. And, therefore, we have to change the way we teach, not to make studies be about everything else than the actual subject that the different programs are about, but to make sure that people not only have a really strong education in their own field, but also are able to apply it in a world where change will be normal.
If you had one piece of advice for students, what would it be?
My hope for our education system as a whole is that we'll encourage even more students not only to work hard so that they can get a job, but work hard so that they can create jobs. So I would like to see even more students grasping at the chance to become an entrepreneur. Taking their ideas from their thesis or their PhDs, starting their own company and, perhaps, be a part of a new wave of entrepreneurship in Denmark. So, perhaps we can have a situation where more and more students see that the time after their studies isn't only as working either as a scientist or in a company, but actually creating their own job and hopefully jobs for others.
It's absolutely times to challenge status quo and making sure that everybody is challenged to reach their full potential, no matter what it may turn out to be. If you're going to be a teacher, if you're going to be a carpenter or if you're going to be the next PhD in nanoscience, we need to challenge you through our education system and hopefully give you some ideas that may, in turn, end up being a new company that will create jobs for you and, perhaps, a lot of others.
