Connecting science and industry with improved communication of research results

Apstrakt

"Research for innovation" has been Serbian national scientific and technological development strategy for 2016 – 2020 period. Similar strategies have been adopted elsewhere, including in the European Union. Horizon 2020, the EU Research and Innovation programme, implements Europe 2020 flagship initiative "Innovation Union", which indicates that efficient research utilization and innovation are the means for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth of the society. 'Innovation' is defined as the actual implementation of new ideas, inventions or technologies to create a new value, not only for an individual or organization but also for the society as a whole, with ultimate aim of creating a smart future. One of the goals in the Serbian national strategy is to assure relevance of the scientific research in Serbia for the industrial needs. Currently, the scientific research in Serbia, like in some other, especially developing countries, is majorly oriented towards production of scientific publications. Patent applications and novel technical solutions yielded only 3.3 % of the total scientific output in the preceding period 2011-2015 in Serbia. However, the process of implementing the research findings into practice is burdened with substantial challenges, which include effective communication of the new knowledge to target stakeholders and actual implementation by the users. Academic writing has often been regarded as being unnecessarily complex. And although practitioners in the field of technical and professional communication found that much of the published scientific research is indeed related to their practice, they found the research was not communicated in the way that could easily be adopted to their work. This finding could probably be extended to other scientific fields as well.