Embracing complexity: COVID-19 is a case for academic collaboration and co-creation · Elephant in the Lab

… academia focuses too much on outputs. Only a fraction of the academic knowledge that reaches society can be attributed to a single output, such as a patent or a report. Most forms of impact are not attributable to a single output; they are based on diffuse processes. For example, scientists advise politics and business; they initiate public discussions. How do you measure the deliberative impact of science? Not by counting patents but rather by enabling young researchers to communicate their results effectively. We avoid complexity by pretending that impact manifests in outputs.