Supporting frontier research, which institutions and which processes: Some initial considerations

Abstract

The chapter deals with ‘frontier research’ as a concept to organise public intervention in science and questions the choices made in Europe with the creation of a specific agency, the European Research Council. It shows how politically driven the emergence of the concept was both in the US and in Europe. It presents the very different organisational choices that have been made in Europe and in the US, but also within the US. This drives to analyse Frontier research through two lenses: as a process highlighting organisational implications, and as part of knowledge dynamics highlighting the need for keeping the link with substantive aspects and thus the need for cognitive specificity. These lenses are then applied to look at the ERC trying to address three questions: does the process selected will produce ‘excellent’ rather than ‘frontier’ science? Will it help addressing the perceived ‘quantitative’ gap in frontier science between the US and Europe? Will it be able to cope with diversity in knowledge dynamics? The answers are not straightforward and drive to suggest an evolution of the ERC being not only one more agency among the existing funding agencies in Europe, but also the ‘agency of agencies’ to be in a position to focus on ‘scientific grand challenges’.