Guest Editorial
Industry and Higher Education
Students: Flowers blooming in the season of
youth sciencepreneurship
Piero Formica
Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University, Ireland
In the centenary year of Luigi Meneghello’s birth, it is
appropriate to remember what the Venetian storyteller and
linguist wrote about education in his book Fiori italiani
(1976). In this text, a student addresses the teachers: “We are
a vase of flowers. You should cultivate us delicately, make
us bloom.”
Bloom how? Into ‘human resources’, each with its
specific competence, to be employed in the service of ar-
tificial intelligence which, as it evolves, will end up re-
placing many work tasks anyway? Or into people who will
use artificial intelligence to make discoveries, invent, de-
vise? To produce blooms of the latter type, students must be
invited to connect the dots between seemingly disparate
realms of research: physics, chemistry, biology, neurosci-
ence, psychology, sociology, economics, philosophy,
law, design research, political science, art: logic and
imagination about how the world works are submitted to
the test of reality. No less creative than writing novels,
poems or musical scores, this is an exercise in achieving
what the Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson (1998) called
‘consilience’ – the unity of knowledge. The evidence-
based physical sciences help to explain and resolve issues
that bedevil the social sciences. The latter, in turn, add
value to the discussion by facilitating the coming together
of the many different competing ideas. It is as if a Tower
of Babel is being erected, but, rather than confusing, it
assists – from its various tongues we learn how to in-
terpret the action as the curtain rises on the future of
society and entrepreneurship. Only with such an ap-
proach can there be an evolutionary surge of culture to
overcome the current constraints of economic models and
lifestyles. At present, when science is translated into new
entrepreneurship it becomes narrower, so that new dis-
coveries and inventions do not lead to as many new
enterprises as they might. Science cannot accommodate
all the graduates and PhDs who are not absorbed by small
and medium-sized family businesses.
Meneghello adds, “Our ideas were an elaboration of
artisans’ ideas, or of peasants’ ideas interpreted by artisans
(the peasants did not care to express them).” In today’s age
of knowledge, there is a vase to be moulded in which
scientists’, students’ and teachers’ experimental ideas can
2022, Vol. 36(5) 491–492
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DOI: 10.1177/09504222221114764
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bloom. Students and teachers take their cue from the dis-
coveries of scientists to experiment with scientific enter-
prise. As science advances, the Frontier of knowledge
moves forward. The same happens at the Frontier of en-
trepreneurship, when doing business is a result of thinking
about how to turn over the soil of tradition in order to
regenerate it.
The pluralities and diversities of scientific and business
research interacting in a coordinated effort give rise to
great opportunities, such as manufacturing at scale in the
microgravity environment. Scientific enterprise translates
the transformation of science into saleable products. But
such enterprise does not materialize for the sole purpose of
selling. It acts like a living organism that initiates a fluid
movement between two innovation objectives: one di-
rected at the market and the other at the wellbeing of
society. The focus must be on developing indicators that
measure impacts on natural resources and negative ex-
ternalities such as global warming. Thus, we do not lose
sight of combining quantitative economic growth with
concern for the quality of future life for all species on Earth
and for the health and sustainability of rivers, lakes, seas
and mountains. Scientific enterprise should thus contribute
to the improvement of economic and environmental
ecosystems.
Scientific ideas that become the basis of entrepreneurial
endeavour require, therefore, combinations of the most
diverse disciplines, building transdisciplinary bridges be-
tween the sciences and the humanities. The humanities can
benefit from the explanatory depth of the sciences, which in
turn can benefit from what the humanities can teach about
behaviour and communication. Rather than exchanging
ideas that are part of the common heritage of knowledge,
ideas are intercepted and shared that are entirely new to all
parties involved. The compelling reference here must be to
multifaceted personalities like the Muslim Andalusian
polymath Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmed ibn
Corresponding author:
Piero Formica, Innovation Value Institute, Maynooth University,
Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland.
Email: piero.formica@mu.ie
492
Muhammad ibn Rushd (also known as Averroes in the
West) who devoted his scholarly life to connecting seem-
ingly disparate streams of knowledge creation. Polymaths
abandon the beaten paths. They do so because they are
endowed with a cognitive flexibility that allows them to
discern obstacles in those paths that will prevent success.
Moreover, they single out the stimuli that trigger short-term
stellar results as the cause of the malnutrition of innovation.
Scientific enterprises must keep pace with such multifaceted
and flexible people who refuse to reap the rewards at hand.
Instead of easy, low-risk, quick actions, they prefer the
“hard stuff”, aiming to escape the gravitational pull of the
current environment.
Students are flowers who will blossom in the season of
scientific entrepreneurship driven by transdisciplinary
Industry and Higher Education 36(5)
communities inhabited by polymaths. Then, with the stu-
dents, scientific enterprises will flourish, and a virtuous
circle will be set in motion. By observing, thinking, testing
and validating ideas, a multifaceted generation of budding
future scientists, engineers, computer scientists, sociolo-
gists, economists, designers and artists has the potential to
shape scientific enterprises that will confront the challenges
before us – such as pandemics, climate change and envi-
ronmental degradation.
References
Meneghello L (1976) Fiori Italiani. Milan: Rizzoli.
Wilson EO (1998) Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New
York: Knopf.