CROSSTALKS: Knowledge Transfer

Background

CROSSTALKS is an academic and corporate network operating in a bottom-up and an inter-disciplinary way. CROSSTALKS offers an exchange platform for all possible stakeholders, public and private to develop long term visions on the future.

 

The CROSSTALKS approach has existed at VUB since 2003, with increasing success in gaining wide industry and stakeholder support (including funding) for a variety of themes. It provides opportunities for companies and organisations to engage in discussion with VUB researchers and the potential to start collaborative projects.

Aims and targets

CROSSTALKS completes the range of initiatives for the promotion, valorization and dissemination of research results and know how, within the socio-economic mission of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

A crucial aspect of CROSSTALKS is the collaborative partnership and sharing of knowledge in an open and constructive way – the university strives to provide a professional, unbiased platform that is trusted by all participants. The cross-disciplinary approach is a key issue in facing the global imperatives for innovation, with one eye on the quality of our social and individual life and another on economic sustainability.

Strategy and actions

The CROSSTALKS format encourages constructive dialogues on policy probing issues between all stakeholders: academic and corporate world, policymakers, artists & designers, and the non-profit sector. The first issue CROSSTALKS started with was Free and Open-source Software and the socio-economic consequences and opportunities that could emerge from an open source kind of thinking. A second topic was Early Warning Signals and the major question why although many early warnings manifest themselves, we as human beings seem not to be able to respond to them in an efficient way. The third topic was New Interfaces, which concentrated on the role that ICT and technology, architecture, urban planning and design play in our society and the growing need for more engagement of end users, which we all are, not only in the test phase or as marketing vehicle but as co-designers.

Monitoring and evaluation

Every theme is backed up by an inter-university and interdisciplinary committee engaging in exploring and deepening brainstorming before and after every event.

Funding/Cost effectiveness

There is a mix of public/private funding: see strengths and weaknesses below.

Sustainability/Transferability

Organizing valuable events is one thing but leaving a tangible and sustainable trace is another one. That is why every CROSSTALKS theme is presented in a publication with international impact.

Outcomes/impacts

Achievements

A key output of CROSSTALKS is a suite of publications, as in the following examples:

(2009):The Boiling Frog Litany

This pre-publication wraps up the interdisciplinary launch of the CROSSTALKS project Energy Efficiency: Facing the Facts and Learning to Cooperate.

We enter the last stage of the energy era and the problems have become bigger than the benefits. We are in the midst of 4 substantial crises: (1) the reliance of cheap labor, logistics, global economy and food on energy (2) the location of the oil production in political instable countries (3) reaching peak oil, meaning that pretty soon now half of the global oil is used up and the second half will become unaffordable (4) the highly underestimated feedback loop of the climate change.

The frog indeed is boiling and the global economic crisis might just be the golden opportunity to tackle these questions in a sustainable way. Contributions by the late Nicolas Glansdorff, Max Mergeay, Angelo Vermeulen & Kristina Ianatchkova, Elke Beyer, Geert Palmers and Gerrit Jan Schaeffer.

> Publication 3 (2009): In Sicknesss and in Health. The Future of Medication: Added Value & Global Access.

  People want to live longer and remain healthy. Through series of seminars, workshops and publications from 2005 to 2008, CROSSTALKS gave an incentive to a more integrated and more efficient health care, starting from the challenges to accessible and safe medicine for everybody. Health is not a matter of politics only, health care is. Through a continuing process of exchange, CROSSTALKS wants to generate a growth model with added value for all the stakeholders in health care. A crucial factor in this project is the open collaboration and knowledge exchange between academics, the corporate world, doctors, pharmacists, patients, sickness funds, social partners and politicians.

undefined> Publication 2 (2007): Brave New Interfaces. Individual, Social and Economic Impact of the Next Generation Interfaces.

 Some of the articles are loosely based, while others are directly based, on the discussions, insights and perspectives raised during the Brave New Interfaces workshop of 27 April 2006 in Brussels. The topic of exploring existing and future interfaces and their design emerged from numerous discussions on whether some spectacular technological innovations also meant or implied something more than just technological progress. So we gathered key people from the European design, architectural and technology-driven worlds to reflect on the meaning of working, thinking and acting in an interdisciplinary way … and what the added value could be. 

undefined> Publication 1 (2005): How Open is the Future? Economic, Social & Cultural Scenarios inspired by Free and Open Source Software.

 The first CROSSTALKS book “How Open Is the Future?” is cited as very relevant as well by universities as MIT, Duke University and Stanford in the US as by Cambridge University in the UK and many universities in South America and Asia. But in the mean time the book is referred to by all the major open source and not so open source communities in the world as a source for inspiration. 

Success factors

One main success factor is the principle of stakeholder inclusion. In, for example, the "Optimal Partnerships through Transparency" project, (part of the continuation of the Future of Medication project) the constructive CROSSTALKS method  engages all stakeholders in exchanging the value supply chain of their respective products and services:

• exploring the merits and efficiency of their organization, its pricing and ethical code
• defining future challenges and common goals
• stimulating a serene and value-driven national public debate

Unintended impacts

Strengths and weaknesses

One strength is the funding mix: public funding, with strong private support project by project. For example the "Optimal Partnerships through Transparency" project noted above was made possible by unconditional funding from Astra Zeneca Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Pfizer and UCB.