Jacob Christensen

I’ll hate myself for doing this but I am posting this quote from Robert Scoble’s blog with a purpose:

But, this is an important point: research is NOT done because of commercial pressures. It�s done to study something and come up with new approaches.

This is why it�s so important that our industry continues to do real research. Not just product development. You never know what Marc will learn from studying the social behaviors of those who hang out in newsgroups. Maybe he�ll find a new algorithm that�ll prove very useful in a blog search engine.

You see, what Danish (and Swedish) politicians want from the public universities is product development – the “research-to-invoice” approach.

So in research policy, we have a private company acting as a state ought to and states acting like they think a private company does.

There is a Danish equivalent, by the way: Carlsberg and the Carlsberg Foundation.

Correction: That’s Robert, not Richard Scoble.

Back in the early 1990s, the UK led the way in privatising railways and splitting ownership of the tracks from train services. From then on, it has been a bumpy road for British train services (bad pun, I know), even if there has been more investment in the infrastructure than before 1990.According to a report in The Times, the Conservative Party which originally pushed the idea of privatisation, is about review its earlier policies and call for a reintegration of track and service ownership. One of the arguments made is that the entire set-up of contracts made neccessary by the split is excessive and too costly. The Conservatives now want to promote a model with regional contractors and joint-ventures.Perhaps Monopoly will be the new Competition?In other news, only 3 out of 4 long-distance trains in Denmark arrived on time in June. DSB (the operator) blames BaneDanmark (the owner of the track) – and ultimately politicians – because of a severe lack of investment in railway infrastructure during the last 30 years. (My word of advice is: If you need to go somewhere in Denmark this summer, go by car or take a bus. Trains should only be used if you have no other means of transport available).Update: Link to the press release from the British Conservative Party. And here is the Guardian’s take on the Conservative Rail Review. Note the number of “wills” in that article.