Breakfast gossip.

I don't know everyone but the ones I have met seemed good. But it's too early to tell.

Bringing in some features of the Darpa model was probably good. Unclear if it will be successful in uk.

Focus on excellence is good.

The argument for it was unfair about ukri at the time.

So probably positive,(????) but it didn't address the key issues the UK faces.

I think it's too early to tell. And it's very difficult to be dispassionate on it given its so associated with Dom C.

He was a huge fighter for research at the time. In a Government that won't go down in history for being great at science policy. But politically.... I'm not sure we'd see i2i

It reversed decades of experience and ideas developed by people like Warren Weaver and James Conant.

This was replicated in things like the EU's Brain project, a bunch of national mission programmes, the design of national institutes that have underperformed.

Oppps. I haven't had my coffee.

5. "Then magic happens" impact plans in relation to industry.
6. "End of pipe" engagement with social science - basically sociologists and ethnicists fighting about over hyped guff.
7. Thin management.

5.

The basic model is:

1. Hugely hyped tech promises.
2. Vast, unstaged funding with no stage gate reviews.
3. "Christmas list" organisation, bringing in collaboration based on "garbage can" matching of problems to pre-existing solutions.
4. Weak governance. Often with bullies at the top.

4

This model continues to inform research funding today and it continues to hugely under deliver.

Lots of failures and problematic programmes draw heavily on it.

3.

He was a key figure in setting up the Human Genome Project, which had a terrible organizational structure and failed to deliver on the hype.

I interviewed one of the main funders who said they felt it was a waste of money (but did generate useful research tools).
2

The world needs more people like this.