Since the New Year I have been involved, along with representatives of all the faculties of the university, in the drafting of an action plan for innovation for the university of Bergen. This work concluded on the 30th of April and will now be presented to the rektotrate for approval. It’s clear from the commitment to this project that innovation will now percolate into all facets of university life from teaching through research. While some might have grave reservations in this direction, believing we are abandoning the fundamental tenants of a university, it maybe that this is down to how exactly one defines “innovation”. Indeed, the committee that helped put this report together naturally had very different ideas as to what innovation was and how it should be implemented across each of the faculties. The Oslo manual 2018 manual on Guidelines for Collecting, Reporting and Using Data on Innovation defines Innovation as:
“a new or improved product or process (or combination thereof) that differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been made available to potential users (product) or brought into use by the unit (process)”.
In this context, innovation is not necessarily selling ones soul to corporate research, but implementing change for the betterment of society – which is in essence what most of us are trying to achieve within biomedical research. It will be interesting to see how this rolls out across the university, and the potential funding opportunities it will afford.
Finally, the biomedical network will have a meeting on “Drug Repurposing” to be held at bikuben, haukeland university hospital on June 7thfrom 12-16:00.