ACE-FUELS Federal University of Technology, Owerri
We have become good at producing research. We have built nothing to carry it beyond publication.
The seven stages, and where the lifecycle currently stops
What it is
Research 7.x is a framework for designing value creation into research from the outset, rather than hoping for it afterwards. It sets out seven stages, five classes of value that apply across every discipline, indicators an institution can actually collect, and an honest account of how the approach can fail.
It is not an argument against publishing. The systems that translate research most successfully are also the systems that publish most. Publication was never the destination.
It is developed at ACE-FUELS and offered for adoption, adaptation and criticism by any institution that finds it useful.
Read the paper
A framework for converting research capability into national value. Sixteen sections on the output trap, the evidence from systems that got this right, what must change in how academics are assessed, and why the structures needed already exist and are already funded.
Four claims
Stages with owners, indicators with baselines. Not another analysis of why translation matters.
Designed where the industrial partner may not yet exist, rather than assuming a mature one does.
Engages before the proposal is written. Most translational potential is fixed by then.
The offices exist. The funding exists. What is missing is the mandate.
This work continues
An invitation
This framework has so far been addressed to universities, senates and funding agencies. That audience is incomplete to the point of undermining the argument. A framework about the industrial application of research, discussed only among academics and regulators, is a university system talking to itself about industry.
Firms, investors, industry associations, development finance institutions and public agencies are invited into the design of this work, not merely its implementation. What it omits, where it is wrong, and what would have to be true for you to take part.
