When Scientific American looked back “on the past 175 years, the manipulation of matter and energy stands out as a central domain of both scientific and technical advances”.
Electricity is the control of the flow of electrons as matter. This control enabled telecommunications: telegraph, telephone, radio and television and eventually the internet, to move information, entertainment and ideas, as Scientific American notes.
Energy and information technologies have always been two of the three primary drivers of human evolution – the third being human health quality and longevity, hence the importance of covid-19, anti-biotics and pain relief.
These areas are no longer – if they ever were – mutually exclusive fields of expertise. Ideas work best in conjunction and tested by different perspectives, which is why David Hume’s enlightenment philosophy that “truth springs from argument among good friends” remains Global Corporate Venturing’s motto.
There are dozens and hundreds if not thousands of great research projects and questions still to be tackled. Collaboration and discussion will help them be answered.
Academics’ study last year of participants at week-long conferences matched to a set of “control” scientists who do not attend found attendees with no prior collaboration produce about 9% more joint publications after participating in such a conference than the controls – and productivity only increased and a larger impact for more transient meetings.
Other academics looked at the impact of the abrupt cancellation of the 2012 American Political Science Association annual meeting due to Hurricane Isaac. By comparing the extent of new collaboration among those scheduled but unable to attend to actual attendees of the conference in previous years and un-cancelled political science conventions in the same year, they can estimate the effect of cancellation on new collaboration. They estimate cancelling the conference reduced the probability potential attendees collaborate by 16%, with the effect strongest for potential collaborators who are not colocated.
It is reassuring, therefore, to see how many of the community have engaged with the GCV Digital Fora through this covid-induced shock to travel and collaboration – the next forum is 29 September at the end of a month of discussion starting with tomorrow’s webinar co-hosted with Mach49 and including guest speakers Helen Crampin from InnovateUK, Stephane Longuet, Managing Director of Convivialité Ventures, and Sukhjinder Singh, CEO at Pear.AI; our partnership with Helsinki Business Hub’s enterprise tech webinar on the 15th and the invite-only GCV Powerlist awards reception on the 16th before the GCV Connect powered by Proseeder entrepreneurs’ pitch sessions on energy and sustainability (22nd) and fintech and deep tech (23rd) and CVC workshops hosted by Mach49 on 28th.
There also, of course, remains the willingness to engage with live events as the GCV Symposium and GCVI Summit return in December and January in London and California, respectively.
But the world continues to evolve so let us know how you see it.
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