Thread by @Lyan82

New from @instituteGC: a proposal for Lovelace Disruptive Invention Labs

Is a better science possible, & how can we build it? 🏗️

Britain should pioneer a complementary model for research at the intersection of science & engineering – inverting core assumptions of modern public R&D

What if progress in public science isn’t held back by bottlenecks in funding or talent – but by the institutions we run them through?

Institutions are technologies. If we want to pursue new kinds of science, we need new institutional hardware.

Most talented junior scientists I know are frustrated. Many have quit. We’ve optimised for short-term 'impact' and publish or perish incrementalism, & treat PhD students & postdocs as decade-long trainees, rather than the engines of discovery history shows them to be

For decades we’ve run most public research on one platform: the university lab

We have many world class unis. But we're unusually dependent on them relative to other advanced science nations

Great for many things. But academia isn’t optimal for every kind of research

Some of the most impactful labs in history looked quite unlike modern academia. Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, the early LMB. They prove that small, empowered teams of researchers, given great freedom, can drive revolutions. Today, organisations like DeepMind are winning Nobels

In our new TBI report, we analyse UK context & global trends, arguing that the UK should create a network of physical laboratories intentionally tailored to long-term, high-risk, interdisciplinary research that traditional academic and commercial settings struggle to support

The report is part historical analysis, part implementation plan, part manifesto, together providing a path to create a new kind of research structure in the UK over a 15-year time horizon

We don’t claim the full solution to the problems: rather, we hope to begin a conversation

Lovelace wasn't just the “first programmer” but a dreamer who saw further than most

"We use her name not as ornament, but as injunction to rekindle the spirit that sparked the creation of the Royal Society – and in doing so, make the UK the home of today’s poetical science"

As Max Perutz said: discoveries can't be planned - they pop up like Puck in unexpected corners. But you can create fertile soil: environments that can build breakthroughs into new fields & industries

Find the full report here: institute.global/insights/tech-…