(I appreciate this is not the biggest news breaking right now)

It should have been the elephant in the room, yet I am always struck by how few link discussion of the design and operation of the exercise and the allocation philosophy and process.

‘Computer says no’ in UK policy often boils down to ‘we already tried that and it failed’ in which half hearted and short term policy interventions that unsurprisingly failed are then used to justify future inaction for ever after

Indeed!

...but this is an issue not just for science and innovation policy groups within business schools, but for research in business and management more generally, which to many observers seems to be getting further and further away from any real policy or economy relevance)

(...Although there is a legitimate question about the effects of research assessment (RAE/REF + lists) and, ironically, the desire of business and management studies to be more 'scientific', in pushing research attention away from relevance and towards questions of rather abstract theory...

(As an aside, this means that it's a little ahistorical to suggest, as the authors do, that @mioir.bsky.social being based in @alliancembs.bsky.social has somehow diluted our interest in science, given our part origin in the newly-founded Manchester Business School)

And the foundation of the R&D Research Unit by Alan Pearson at the then new Manchester Business School in 1967, off the back of a grant from Harold Wilson's Ministry of Technology. (which led to the R&D Management journal and conference).

(It's also worth noting the role history of science and history of technology have played in at Manchester, e.g. through the work of Donald Cardwell at UMIST (from 1963) and, a little later, John Pickstone at the Victoria University of Manchester.)

The history of science & innovation studies at Manchester stretches back further than 1977! Dept of Liberal Studies in Science founded in 65-6, but even before that there was important work on science policy by Michael Polanyi, and on innovation by John Jewkes, Charles Carter and Bruce Williams.

This is a very 1980s #scipolicy debate! (Apologies for the @nature.com firewall, which seems bizarre for a short news article from 1987)

www.nature.com/articles/328...

You can download the report itself here: research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publicati...

(The Council lasted barely 5 years in its purpose built Terry Farrell designed joint UK headquarters building before moving to cheaper accommodation because of cost pressures…)

www.estatesgazette.co.uk/news/british...