Title : Are the risks of being creative manageable? The case of public research in Hard Science.
Author(s) : Ylenia Curci, Mireille Matt, Isabelle Billard, Thierry Burger-Helmchen
Abstract : This study analyses the risk associated to creative research in the field of Hard Science. The theoretical framework in which the research question has been developed affirms that researchers’ creativity and their risk aversion are negatively correlated. In the analysis of two case study, we found that many of the sources of the different risks perceived by researchers are generated by a misfit between scientists’ goals and mission of the organization in which they operate. In this research, we found that scientists show aversion for a great variety of risks, which mainly change according to the research field, to the nature of the research (basic vs applied), to the composition of the research team and to the type of research activities (experimental vs theoretical). This paper develops a categorization of the observed risks and proposes the exploitation of some resources in order to decrease the impacts of the risks on researchers’ creativity.
Key-words : creativity management, leadership, economics of science.
JEL Classification : D23, L30, M19, O30
