How Innovation Supports Resilience in Higher Education

In his introductory remarks, Brisch addressed the importance of resilience. In crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, individual and societal resilience was challenges, as people suffered from mental health challenges and the national health system needed to constantly adapt. In response to these building resilience, Barth-Manzoori pointed towards the Bay Area as an innovation hub that embraces innovators from different backgrounds and is characterized by a specific mindset which fosters innovation in institutions, norms and values.  

The first speaker, Julia Schaletzky, spoke of the uniqueness of the Bay Area as an entrepreneurial atmosphere and a feature as a key hub for biotech. Reflecting on her educational and research background in the life sciences, she also compared the Bay Area with Germany, where she studied in Bayreuth. The German university system not only has a reputation of scientific excellence and offers a rigorous scientific education, but also does not charge tuition at its public universities. In contrast, Schaletzky believes the customer-oriented mindset of students in the United States can negatively impact the education they receive, as students might expect to pass if they pay for classes and professors rely on student feedback for tenure. Furthermore, Schaletzky responded to a question on the industry-academia relation in the Bay Area, noting that there is a learning concept involving mutual/reciprocal exchange and collaboration between industry and higher education institutions in a bi-directional way. She described herself as a proponent of basic research because of the many of the groundbreaking findings that resultedfrom simple scientific inquiry. Thus, she advocates for an approach to research that does not prioritize commercial viability above everything. 

When asked for a comparative evaluation of the German and the US innovation concept, Schaletzky stated that both countries are very innovative. While in the U.S. high risk funding is prevalent, Germany is more expertise-oriented – but the innovative capacity in Germany is also existent. In the U.S., even young people are encouraged to venture out in terms of founding their own start-up, whereas in Germany this would be harder, as more obstacles and self-doubts would prevail. Schaletzky recommended choosing the best of both worlds within the framework of comprehensive collaboration. 

Schaletzky also addressed the innovative process of developing Covid rapid tests. She saidthat this was done very quickly at Berlin’s major hospital Charité. In contrast, this innovation process was blocked in the United States for months due to the profit motives of companies which saw little incentive for promoting it. 

Schaletzky explained that resilience is more than innovation. She is convinced that innovation is not good or bad, but it depends on how and for what innovative products or processes it is used. She stressed that in a crisis, people tend to react emotionally such as turning toward conspiracy theories. In those cases, it is best to rely on case-study methods, as this approach has worked throughout history. Innovation will lead a society out of crises and thereby will produce more resilience. But at the same time, it must be made sure that people accept changes that are produced by innovation, Schaletzky explained. 

She warned against political impacts on research institutions as this will endanger resilience because if trust in institutions were shattered, this would result in fear of innovation. She defined that every disaster is an event of discontinuity, but AI must rely on continuous data – therefore, AI did not help in the pandemic. In the future, a public information strategy will be the first large-scale use of AI. 

As an example for innovation, Joann Halpern highlighted the “Clean IT initiative” at HPI, which advocates applying sustainability by design, for example, to have sustainable aspects in mind when designing an app. Referring to the higher education landscape in Germany, Halpern highlighted the numerous non-university research institutions for basic and more applied research, like Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, Helmholtz Association, Leibniz Association, and Max Planck Institutes that also cover a wide range of topics. A well-established relationship between academia and industry is apparent in dual education concepts like compulsory internships during studies. She pointed out that Germany is well-known for sustainable technologies and can guarantee legal security for start-ups. 

Halpern explained that all HPI institutes have a robust innovation ecosystem. For example, during the “best idea competition” students can pitch their research topic. She strongly encouraged US students to do their PhD in Germany as this would surely enhance their prospects in the US, like was the case in her career. 

In response to the question on how design thinking – one of her major topics – will lead to more resilience, Halpern stated that design thinking is a team-based human-centered (and nowadays also a planet-centered) solution for a problem. Furthermore, problem solving plays a decisive role for innovation but will not always yield an answer, explained Halpern. Also, multi-disciplinary teams must enhance collaborative problem-solving, which plays an integral part in resilience. During problem-solving, people must accept the solution, so working together in preparing the solution would be important. Regarding the potential of AI to make us more resilient, Halpern pointed towards the importance of AI in public healthcare, in education and to find solutions for disaster prediction and response.  

Both speakers stressed that the academic and entrepreneurial ecosystems in Germany and the U.S. are quite different but both approaches have their pros and cons. Therefore, learning from each other and constant reciprocal exchange is important. This applies especially for working on resilience in higher education and in society in general that can be fostered by innovation.   

The webinar was funded by the DWIH San Francisco and DWIH New York. It was organized by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The recording is available here.

Speakers