Barriers related to the characteristics of scientific knowledge

A barrier mentioned almost as frequently as ‘Ignorance’ is that scientific know-ledge is ‘Too theoretical/specialised, not concrete/practicable’. This is a bar-rier related to the characteristics of the scientific knowledge.

“The problem is that the issues we have are not theoretically on this level.”

Respondent 1

“And again, you can say that a lot of it at universities are theoretical where what we miss is sometimes the more practical. If we have to advice some client we cannot simply glance at theory, we have to make sure that it works in practice.”

Respondent 12

“It is really difficult, because what many of them are doing is so specific.

How in the world can that specificity be laid out as general in order for me to find it and search for it?”

Respondent 14

“Often, what they work on at universities or at the university here is ac-tually at a different, abstract level, a more academic level than what we need. It is much more a practical level we really need, and you may find a solution that is not be very academic but functions okay anyway in a product you develop.”

Respondent 25

“We are not a Novo Nordic that donates five years to conduct research within a specific subject. Our use of the university must be much more application-oriented, and it must be something that meets a specific need.”

Respondent F

This is a central problem related to a fundamental characteristic of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is often very specific and theoretical and does not necessarily have a practical orientation. This is very difficult to change and it would require efforts of a character other than what the insights provided by this thesis allows for. However, understanding this barrier creates an aware-ness about what SMEs need from scientific knowledge, and it points to the communicative principle on reorganising. In order for SMEs to be able to im-plement it to their own situation and issues, they need scientific knowledge to be practically oriented rather than theoretical; and general rather than too specific. They need it to be application-oriented and usable to solve specific needs. In total, it must be reorganised. How this can be done within the limits of this thesis will be explored in the Development phase.

Another considerable challenge the respondents mentioned was ‘overly long production time’: As also addressed in the Literature Study, SMEs generally work on a short-term basis, while universities do not. This often means that scientific knowledge remains beyond reach, since SMEs simply cannot wait for the knowledge to be produced and published. Also related to the charac-teristics of scientific knowledge is that it is ‘Overly heavy material/not result-oriented’. Universities must consider ways of transforming their knowledge into products that will meet the SMEs’ list of criteria, which relates to both the communicative principle on reorganising and the one on concretising.

“I am not going to sit down and read a thesis that is 100 or 300 pages long, it has to be quick information because things are moving fast and there is no time to read a large thesis about one subject. It has to be boiled down to something I can use.”

Respondent 4

“When I see that there are 200 pages and maybe something specific I need to use, well, there is not always a surplus of mental resources … it is typically when I have a specific problem that I need knowledge, and to then have to start something where I do not really know if it will pro-vide me with an answer. And the material is simply too heavy and typi-cally in English in order for me to use it.”

Respondent 8

“You would definitely catch my attention 100 percent better visually than if you write a report with 100 pages. Sure, I will read that report if you have caught my attention, but you have to catch it first.”

Respondent 10

“Make it short. Because research projects and student projects are often long, quite long.”

Respondent 13

“I have heard speakers from university researchers within music and they give talks in a way that is so lecture-like, as they have been accus-tomed to in the last 20 years in an auditorium. That might not work in the environment you go out in. So, there is something about how you communicate it that really has to be thought about.”

Respondent 14

“I just want to say one thing that can be difficult, because one time we received a letter from the university, you can hear about this, it is actually quite interesting. We received a letter from the university, we read it and we did not understand it. So, we tried to see what the readability index was, and it was around 27-28, it was completely hopeless. I think a news-paper is around 10-12 or something like that. And this letter was 28.

That language, it caused the information to be put aside, which was a shame. It could have been interesting but you just could not understand what it said, even though it is well-educated people we have … So, if you want to share knowledge and you want to reach different professions and enterprises then you have to make sure it is readable and understanda-ble.”

Respondent B

“If I have to read a master thesis then maybe half of it is stuff I cannot use for anything and then you have read 300 pages and there might be one of them you can use for something (…) It has to be more specific, boiled down much more. If you could write a mini report, a one-page report about each master thesis, that would be perfect.”

Respondent D

These quotes give valuable insight into SMEs’ understanding of scientific knowledge and what it would require to make it more usable and relevant to them. They will not engage in long reports or theses where the outcome is unclear. The outcome and how to use it must be immediately identifiable or else they will move on. Further, from these quotes some criteria for how sci-entific knowledge should be presented according to SMEs can be listed: It has to be short and specific; containing information that can quickly be decoded;

and where the relevance is immediately identifiable. It should be communi-cated according to the target group and not as a lecture or scientific paper and its content should be practically useable, result-oriented, visually ‘catching’, and in an understandable language. That language can pose a barrier is illus-trated nicely by Respondent B and this was also identified in the Literature Study: The often eclectic and speculative language of universities, versus the more focused and practical language of enterprises can lead to misunderstand-ings and a lack of interest to interact (Alves et al., 2007; Gattringer et al., 2014;

Ranga et al., 2008; Siontorou & Batzias, 2010). This barrier is difficult to

over-come because it has to do with the knowledge production processes of individ-ual researchers. However, ways for transforming the form of scientific know-ledge so it meets the criteria of SMEs should be explored in order to ensure a successful dissemination, hence the reorganisation principle. Accordingly, the Development phase of this thesis will experiment with how existing scientific knowledge can be formed and presented differently and in agreement with SMEs’ criteria.

Related is the barrier of scientific knowledge being ‘Time- and resource-inten-sive’. By this, respondents refer to the time and resources they have to spend in order to use scientific knowledge. Because of the barriers related to the char-acteristics of the knowledge, SMEs experienced it as rather demanding to use:

“I think that related to the university specifically it can also be because it sometimes has to be planned in advance. If we have to use the university then it sometimes demands that expectations goes both ways and then we also have to spend time and resources on it.”

Respondent 11

“Published papers are not free and then you have to either use some students who can access it for free or you have to pay for it, and that is all right. But if you have to buy some papers and if you are busy and “oh I have to come up with something new” then you lack the incentive to pay 200 € for a number of papers that you just find online and print out.

Then you need a clearing to be allowed to use this money on research.”

Respondent 18

“I think that sometimes the barrier is that we have to spend too much time and too much money on applying a new small thing that might only result in a small improvement. And then it can sometimes be difficult to see the improvement in the long run.”

Respondent 23

As these quotes show, this barrier is not as much about SMEs being pressed for time (although that barrier also emerges again in this theme) as it is about SMEs experiencing that scientific knowledge demands too much time and re-sources of them. Accordingly, the problem to be solved is to make scientific knowledge easier for SMEs to use (reorganise and concretise), which the afore-mentioned criteria can help to do. However, another pressing problem brought up by these quotes is the problem regarding open science (or a lack thereof). It is a hot topic that is frequently debated these days, and it does in fact pose a substantial problem to the research aim of this thesis that a lot of scientific knowledge cannot be accessed free of charge by SMEs. However, it falls outside the scope of this thesis to solve this problem. I will, however, bring the debate on open science up again in the final part of the thesis, discussing the societal context in which the results of this thesis must be seen, and ad-dressing some further studies that could be conducted.

That scientific knowledge has an ‘Overly long production time’ is another bar-rier articulated by SMEs.

“There is not really any theory, a few books have been published, but again, typically, when a book is published then they might have spent six months writing it and it is already outdated when it comes out.”

Respondent 12

“It takes a long time for new research to gain acceptance and become a permanent part of the working day.”

Respondent 18

“Well the biggest challenge is probably that it takes a long time com-pared to us, we have some things, well, we are an enterprise working with very, very short horizons and sometimes large decisions have to be made from one day to the next and at the same time we actually want to sup-port some industrial PhDs with a three-year horizon. It is definitely a challenge.”

Respondent 20

“The only appeal is that you cannot control a scientific production, and of course we do not want to, not at all. But it is mostly the time perspec-tive, it just does not always go very fast.”

Respondent F

“We are not as close to development that has a five-year horizon, it is too far away from us business-like. We need something where we are closer to being able to capitalise on it.”

Respondent G

These quotes qualitatively confirm what was also addressed in the Literature Study, in which enterprises also identified that universities taking too long pub-lishing and commercialising their scientific knowledge is a barrier that can cause scientific knowledge to automatically be opted out (Hansotia, 2003;

Lakpetch & Lorsuwannarat, 2012; Vaidya & Charkha, 2008; Yusuf, 2008).