Future of Science & Research Funding

Due to the current turbulent discussions, activities, and movements around the globe it becomes evident that the present forms of financing are outdated in times that are accelerating so fast that as soon as the funding is right, the business model has changed already.

A year back in time, a dear FB friend from California, Michael Herrler, initiated a crowdfunding approach for scientific research, NextGenCrowd. An interesting project, even though it by now has not managed to get either larger attractiveness by the stakeholders, or real impact on the scientific research (worldwide).  At present times lots of scientific research is financed by public funding via grants. These arrangements are time consuming, and often take quite a chunk of researcher's daily work, which certainly could be more effectively used in their main work domain. 

Especially constrained are efforts of research-based spin-offs that on one hand depend on their main enabler, the education institution their makers come from, and the public domain of funding. In Germany, and especially the Eastern parts (formerly GDR) quite a thriving science community could be built up over the past 20 years. Now with the European Community extending towards even more Eastern countries the current funding will go down significantly, and funding will be mostly given in the future to technology-related work.

Which future paths may come when the questions are on the table, "How do we monetarize our research findings by getting a viable startup up, and going?"- "Will the efforts of networking across disciplinary boundaries be supported, and which ways?"

What are the possible future funding schemes currently hidden by our "blind spot" (individually and collectively)?

Some examples of new ways of funding are (and more on Crowdnavigator itself):

Crowdnavigator - a quite new crowdfunding matchmaking platform - seems to open new paths of collaboration to give new answers to the questions above.

Seedmatch (currently in German only) - a Dresden-based crowdfunding platform could also be a valuable source for technology-based startups to check out for funding

Credits go to Philippe Greier making the connection on Facebook (a case of serendipity)