Reimagining R&D: Exploring tomorrow and beyond

Imagining a future

CaSE has started a piece of work, ‘Reimagining R&D’, that seeks to imagine a future we’d like to see for the UK R&D sector, and identify the steps needed today, and in the years to come, to get there. The work will draw on the breadth of CaSE’s membership, the R&D sector, and public opinion.

New and emerging trends in the global and domestic landscape are likely to impact the UK R&D system in the future. Changes to the geopolitical context, the impacts of climate change, technological development, and the public legitimacy of R&D, to name a few, present both challenges and opportunities for R&D.

How do we take advantage in an era of increasingly automated discovery? How do we collaborate in an increasingly geopolitically fragmented world? How do we secure public legitimacy of R&D in the face of deteriorating trust? What will these trends mean for funding, skills and infrastructure?   

For four decades CaSE has championed R&D through our policy advocacy. Our 40^th anniversary next year provides a timely moment for us to consider questions such as these, and what R&D system we want and need as a society.

Developing a vision

Looking ahead, how do we position ourselves over the coming decades? We want to use this opportunity to be strategic, make bold decisions and reimagine UK R&D to be an even more powerful force in a changed and changing world.

This requires coming up with different and imaginative solutions to shape the future R&D system in the UK. It also means making the case for why R&D will be important in 20 years’ time to make the most of this new environment.

The work seeks to answer the following question: in light of emerging future challenges and opportunities, what kind of R&D system do we want and need in 20 years?

We will gather insights from a series of thought leader interviews, stakeholder meetings, workshops and desk-based research. We will also draw on CaSE’s extensive public opinion research, including Public Attitudes to R&D 2025, the next part of our tracker study, due to be published later this year.

The first phase of the project seeks to consider what the context for R&D might look like in 20 years. We will explore new and emerging global and domestic trends, and their implications for the UK R&D system over the next two decades.

The second phase seeks to develop a vision of an ideal R&D system in that context. We will use the insights gathered to imagine a positive possible future for the UK R&D system that we’d like to see as a sector. We will also create a roadmap with actions that policymakers and advocates in the sector need to take today, and in the years to come, to make that future a reality.

If you’d like to learn more about this work or get involved in the workshops, please get in touch with our Policy Manager, Camilla d’Angelo camilla@sciencecampaign.org.uk