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The Center defines
innovation as problem solving. Given the number of crises that face
this country and the world, there is no more important agenda for a
research center than being able to increase the rate of innovation,
providing solutions to national and global problems. How can this be
done? The central strategy of the Center is to build the theory of
innovation based on the following equation:
Knowledge +
Learning = New knowledge or innovation or adaptation
The theory focuses on how to increase the diversity of knowledge and the
extent of learning so that one can solve problems or adapt to context
more effectively. This knowledge production function can be used at
five levels, but the majority of our work focuses on the first three
levels: research teams, research organizations and high tech sectors,
both economic and non-economic (health). Archimedes once said that if
you could place a lever in the correct place, you could move the world.
The sociological lever is how to produce new knowledge.
Given this strategy, one key research program is to develop a new
socio-economic paradigm of social change. A book that pulls together 50
years of research on this topic is presently being written. The core
idea is an evolutionary theory that states as knowledge grows, it feeds
back into the way in which knowledge is produced with the following
institutional changes: replacement of the dominant design with
resulting consequences for expertise, differentiation of new research
organizations in separate arenas, emergence of new networks connecting
the research arenas, and increasing globalization of research. All of
these consequences explain how knowledge makes society more complex.
However, this evolution does not occur automatically because of path
dependency allowing one to recognize evolutionary failures.
With the arrival of Wilbur Hadden as a senior
research scientist in the Center for Innovation, a whole new research
program is being added. The objective of this program is to study
institutional and organizational change and how it can reduce
inequalities of health care both nationally and internationally and most
particularly reduce health care costs and mortality. The current
research project on measuring technical progress in medical research is
one part of this new program. But more critically, new working
relationships have been established with the
Beaufort, Jasper, Hampton Counties
Community Health Services, Inc. and the
School of Public
Health, University of Liverpool, U.K. malaria program in India.
Another key research program is developing the research tools and
techniques to measure and correct evolutionary failure. The Office of
Management and the Budget has made the evaluation of programs a key
agenda and certainly the evaluation of scientific and technological
research programs represent perhaps the most critical component of this
effort to make society more innovative and efficient.
Continuing its long interest in organizations and networks and how they
affect innovativeness, the Center maintains research programs in these
areas.
The research programs in the Center for
Innovation are:
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