I head incubation projects for a social good incubator run by Steve Levitt at UChicago. I also publish the Engineering Innovation Newsletter on Substack.
If I could make wishes come true, I’d be president of MIT or run the NSF. But my tier 2 dream would be to help run a large academic lab or applied R&D lab one day.
https://freaktakes.substack.com/s/engineering-innovation
This first paper, by B&G, is such a fascinating piece of data collection work. You’re absolutely right. Do you have any rough guesses on how much of the issue is building a course of research on niche capital itself vs. the kind of person who does that kind of thing. I’m sure they both have an effect. I ask because I would be not shocked if the hypothesis, “People usually only pursue a course of research that requires specialized equipment if they are extremely dedicated to that problem over all others/that is an area of clear comparative advantage to them and they don’t believe they can contribute as much to other areas.”
That might be mere conjecture though and I’m not one to lend too much credibility to personal hunches without evidence. Do you think there’s any work that can help us think through that question? Even if tangentially. As much as it can feel like it sometimes, a paper does not exist for everything.