Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Social Media and federally funded research

Using Collaboration Technologies to Accelerate Innovation in Federally Funded R&D Programs
The challenges involved in managing collaborative processes using such technologies can be significant in the context of Federally funded R&D programs that involve many different types of organizations:

1. The different people and organizations involved may not be accustomed to communicating or collaborating to accomplish common objectives.
2. Competing business objectives may exist among these different groups, e.g., for-profit vs. nonprofit, academic vs. commercial sector, basic research vs. engineering, privacy advocates vs. law enforcement, etc.
3. Voluntary participation by the private sector can be an important factor in driving success of a Federally supported R&D program. For this to occur, the private sector needs to understand and adopt a variety of public sector goals, objectives and — bureaucracy intrudes here — processes.


What researchers need is for someone to walk them through the basics of social media.

1 comment:

Dennis D. McDonald said...

I don't think it's the researchers that need "walking through the basics of social media." Researchers naturally seek out and communicate with their peers. It's all the other links in the chain that need to have the barriers removed to their collaborating -- procurement officers, administrators, policymakers, private sector marketers, etc.

Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D.
web site: http://www.ddmcd.com