Dare to fail – but navigate wisely

Dear colleagues,

Research entails calculated risk. We explore ideas whose outcomes are uncertain. We pursue questions that may turn out to be dead ends. We invest time and effort in paths that may never lead to a breakthrough. This is not a flaw in research. It is its very nature.

Taking calculated risks is one of our stated values. It is also one of the great attractions of academic life: the opportunity to explore the unknown, to create something that does not yet exist, and perhaps occasionally to discover something entirely unexpected. Research should be demanding. But it should also be exciting, engaging and, indeed, fun. Without the thrill of exploration, research would be a slog, even for the brightest and most capable among us.

To create such an environment, researchers need both freedom and collaboration. Freedom to pursue promising but uncertain ideas. Collaboration with colleagues whose competences complement our own. The most important discoveries rarely emerge in isolation. They emerge when talented people challenge each other’s assumptions, combine perspectives and pursue ambitious goals together.

Our junior researchers are particularly important in this regard. We must help them grow as researchers, support them in navigating opportunities, and encourage them to take calculated risks. We should guide them and help them succeed, but that emphatically does not entail placing them on a track where success is guaranteed. Such a path would prepare them poorly for the realities of research, where uncertainty is ever present and where learning to judge which risks are worth taking is among the most valuable skills a researcher can develop.

All this requires resources, and increasingly those resources are secured through competitive research grants. This year, our externally funded research activities will exceed 400 million DKK. For comparison, we will earn about 240 million DKK from educational activities and have a total net income of around 700 million DKK. Competitive funding has thus become the dominant financial foundation for research at TEK. This reality can lead to a concern that project-based funding may constrain academic freedom and encourage excessive focus on predictable outcomes.

There is some truth in that concern. But there is another side to the story.

It is precisely through our success in securing competitive funding that we have been able to build the strong research environment we enjoy today. Over the past decade, our research activities have grown dramatically. This year we anticipate year-on-year growth of approximately 30 percent. We have been able to recruit talented colleagues, establish new research directions, invest in advanced facilities, and create critical mass in areas where a decade ago we had only isolated activities.

The challenge is therefore not whether we should pursue competitive funding. We must. The challenge is how we do so.

Successful research environments do not consist of disconnected projects. They consist of coherent research programmes that develop over time and within which individual projects contribute to a larger ambition. Funding plans, recruitment plans and grant applications are therefore not administrative exercises sitting beside our research ambitions. They are instruments that help us build and sustain the research environment we want.

Heads of Units and Heads of Departments are currently revising scientific programme plans, funding plans and recruitment plans. This is important work, but it cannot be done by leaders alone. The plans must be shaped with the academic staff who know the research frontiers, the opportunities, the partners and the ideas worth pursuing. In our funding plans, we identify the concrete grant applications we intend to prepare and submit, with clear topics, strong participation, realistic budgets and colleagues prepared to drive the grant-writing effort.

I therefore encourage all academic staff to engage actively in this work. Bring forward the ideas that matter. Help identify colleagues, at TEK and beyond, whose competences complement your own. Take responsibility where you can, as principal investigator, as key participant, or as the colleague who helps form the strong consortium without which even excellent ideas may not be funded.

Increasingly, success depends on our ability to reach out to excellent research groups across the world in good time and build teams that are scientifically strong, well prepared and credible. We do this to secure funding and create the best possible basis for pursuing ambitious research programmes with room for uncertainty and exploration.

Most importantly, we must protect our willingness to take risks. We must resist the temptation to optimise every activity for the highest probability of short-term success. If we eliminate the possibility of failure, we also eliminate the possibility of remarkable discoveries and disruptive inventions.

Forty years ago, Danish universities operated in a very different funding landscape, with a much higher share of base funding and far fewer competitive grants. That is not the world we inhabit today. Our freedom to explore increasingly depends on our ability to secure competitive grants and commercial contracts. The task before us is therefore not to wish for a different reality, but to navigate the present one wisely.

We are fortunate to do so from a position of strength. Our scientific performance, our ability to attract funding, and our growing community of talented colleagues all point in the right direction. But maintaining that position requires continued attention to collaboration, to long-term planning, and to building strong teams that can compete successfully for funding while retaining the courage to pursue the uncertain.

Research requires us to dare to fail. Securing the freedom to do so requires us to navigate wisely.

All the best,

Henrik