Manager's Musings: #13

Sostenuto

Over the last few years, a widespread concern about sustainability of projects has arisen, to the point where it is parroted by everyone as “a very important thing” in general – don’t ask them to go further and explain, though, as things will get very fuzzy. Sustainability is a term that is confusing in general, perhaps increasingly so, because it is also massively used when talking about the planet and other more or less ‘green’ things. But, in the context of research projects, it is used as a wildcard term to talk about how the project’s results should be further developed and used for the benefit of society as a whole after the project ends, commercially or otherwise. It used to be called “exploitation”, but at some point some bored politician must have thought that “sustainability” was a less aggressive and better term, God knows why.

It is easy to understand the perceived need to sustain a research project from a public funding perspective: look, everyone’s money has been used to fund your own little adventure for 4 or 5 years, now you should make sure that it is not a self-limiting exercise – you should guarantee that whatever you developed doesn’t die when the project finishes and is translated into some sort of direct or indirect benefit for us all. Which is another way of saying “where’s our return on investment”, really. And it is a legitimate issue that would worry any taxpayer if they had any idea about how the publicly-funded research system works.

But there’s a number of problems here.

The first one is that no one knows what “project sustainability” exactly means. There’s many interpretations. For some, it means transferring your project results to companies that can make business out of them. For others, it means creating some entity that mimics the project to some extent but has indefinite duration. Depending on who you ask, it may simply be lobbying to get a project number 2 that continues the work in an as seamless way as possible.

Actually, sustainability is a very subjective term, in the sense that it is inevitably associated with institutional and personal interests and our own perception of what is “valuable”. What is a good sustainability for me may not be the same for you – it may even be at odds with what I would prefer. I’ve seen this for example when people are looking for a nice retirement by becoming the president of something. For them, creating that something is fantastic, irrespective of what it actually does. For the rest of us, it is mostly irrelevant. Similarly, some components of the project may be more prone to market exploitation than others, and the project members behind them may have their own plans and agendas. The project is an artificial bubble that needs a number of pillars to work – but not all of them may make sense in an afterlife. Actually, some of them clearly are only needed in a project context. But that may be hard to swallow for those responsible for such contexts. In essence, we face a multitude of personal interests that go in different directions, so consensus may be really difficult.

The second problem is that while in a project we have a shared construct to implement a workplan with specific timelines, commitments and tasks, the post-project world is a big wide void. We can shape it in any way, really. And again, this makes it difficult to agree on a particular scenario to the satisfaction of everyone. Theoretically, and while respecting IP and other rights in the contracts, everyone could do whatever they want individually. But there could also be a myriad potential joint ventures of two or more participants. A new institution could be created, but also an existing institution could take over one or more of the project results. Some results may require a lot of further development to become usable or sellable, others may be more ready. You can imagine that this open landscape does not precisely help reach agreements between the project participants, unless the landscape is so obviously limited that the range of options is extremely narrow.

If you imagine creating a company, who would you create it with? Do you trust your partners enough to embark in such an adventure? Well, probably you trust some people/institutions more than others.

The third problem arises here: one thing is personal commitment, but institutional involvement typically implies people that have nothing to do with (and maybe no particular interest in) the project. Managers, directors, administrators. All of them have a say on whether the institution will sign any papers. While researchers normally have ample freedom to get involved in projects, they typically have to fight their way through their own hierarchy when it comes to more exotic things such as creating a spin-off or invest on something that is inherently risky. As a consequence, while within the project constituency you could agree on a specific post-project plan, the actual implementation of that may be plagued by obstacles that are alien to the willingness or disposition of the people you have actually worked with during the project.

The fourth issue that I’d like to highlight here is that research, by definition, is defined by uncertainty – there’s back and forth, reconsidering and redefining, new ideas and things that don’t work out. This often implies that results of a project (and therefore potentially sustainable components) take time to be fully defined – certainly to the extent that the jungle of the market usually demands. If you are not quite sure of what your “product” is, and can’t reasonably explain its quirks and potential in less than a half hour, how can you pitch it to potential investors or future contributors? To this, one may add the long duration of most projects – during which technology will surely evolve, fashions will change, trends may vanish. There may be windows of opportunity in the market that may not coincide with the project timelines. Say, someone very wealthy is very willing to invest in our great idea, but we only have a half-baked product at that point in time. So he gently tells us that we come back when we have something more finished, but in fact the opportunity is forever lost.   

Finally, there’s inertia and status quo. Research projects are a minefield, but a known one. There’s rules and regulations, there’s standard practice. It is an imperfect world, but one in which you can easily learn your way around after a bit of practice. Principal investigators and PhD students know their place in life. The same applies to industry reps. Once you start seriously talking about sustainability, most everyone is out of their comfort zone. In my experience, this often results in one of two situations: either people stay quiet, or they come up with very strange ideas. In both cases, discussions can linger forever and the outcome can be very unconvincing, leading to a n equally fluffy sustainability plan at best.

I could go on with more issues and barriers (technical, financial, legal, social, psychological…), but I think you get the idea by now.

Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed an attempt by funding agencies to alleviate all of these problems by asking or even forcing projects to start to discuss sustainability earlier. However, if you’ve read the above with a minimum of attention, you see that early is good, but it doesn’t really address some of the central underlying problems. Perhaps what you really need is some honest, neutral and, to some extent, merciless appraisal of the true richness of project results and their potential for further development in the light of market trends – a group of external people that is watching the project regularly and able to influence which components should be emphasised, and which ones can be de-prioritised. What is the true value of a product/service, who’s going to pay for it and why should they – maybe those are the key questions, independent of personal biases and interests? Including the possibility that for some projects there is NO sustainability possible or even desirable?

This is what you would normally demand of any business plan at the most basic level. Sadly, you can devise any number of scenarios and break-even forecasts without ever answering those fundamental questions.    

Anyhow, if you’re in the research project sustainability business – may the force be with you is all I can say.