CENTRA 8 - Taiwan

There is a growing global awareness of the impact that could be created by cross-fertilizing applied research projects likely to have large potential community impacts. Instead of research groups competing to be the first to publish a scientific or technical innovation, a collaborative wholistic approach is designed to bring multiple synergistic intelligences to bear on real-life difficult problems. The success of this process is not guaranteed, but apears to be enhanced when scientists, practitioners, and beneficiaries involved have varied backrounds, assumptions, and areas of expertise. This type of process is being encouraged in the United States by the National Science Foundation's new Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships Directorate, and is having impacts throughout the other NSF directorates. International collaborations should, by this reasoning, be especially beneficial because additional viewpoints are encouraged by varying languague, culture, training, expectation, and experience. Some nascent positive directions include (a) formal, supported participation by potential beneficiaries; (b) place-based collaborative innovation with community commitment; (c) early identification and focus on the most intractable portions of the task; (d) a willingness to pursue and adopt multiple potential solutions simultaneously; and (e) a strong and evolving sense of priority, urgency, and collaboration. It seems highly unlikely that the US NSF has a monopoly on this shift to more collaborative and applied research on pressing societal issues. What can CENTRA members contribute to this vitalily important international discussion?