Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business on Endless Thread

Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode in which Boston University President Dr. Melissa Gilliam discusses why solving society's biggest challenges requires ideas from many disciplines working together. So in universities, we run the gamut. We go from cells to society and our types of research that sets us up for entrepreneurship, innovation, company formation. It's very tempting to say, what's the return on investment? I want to see these translate quickly to society. But what you have to remember is that there's often a very long lead time. to getting to those discoveries. And there's a lot of serendipity. So in universities, we focus on something called curiosity-driven research. It's a place where we allow people to pursue things that matter, even if you cannot figure out what the application is. What we're now doing at our institution is we're focusing on something called convergent research. So you use the example of photonics. BU created something called neurophotonics, the combination of the study of light, but also thinking about how the study of light contributes to brain health. You created something called synthetic biology, how the insights of engineering... can be used to advance biological processes. So convergence is this idea of bringing lots of fields together. Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business, Markets, and Society at ibms.bu.edu.