Developing Collaborative Research Management among Government-University- Industry in Life Sciences R&D in the Context of Emerging Bioeconomy in Indonesia

Abstract

The involvement of the social studies participation in life sciences has been remarkably prominent in the recent decade in Indonesia regarding how economic policy-making shaped by scientific works as well as how research activities are influenced by economic development. The paper addresses several issues on relation between emerging discourse of bioeconomy or knowledge-based economy reflected from the increasing demand for social researcher in utilizing and maximizing knowledge as new resources in life sciences based research. There was an upsurge increase in social researcher vacancies, from only 10 vacancies in 2017 to 24 vacancies until midyear of 2018 portrayed from 34 job vacancies from various sources of social media distributed publicly. It indicates that more job opportunities were available for social researcher working on life sciences subject, public health, agricultural, certain emerging diseases, environmental issues compare to the subjects in community development, art, history, education. The majority of the demands require multidisciplinary thought in collaborative work among various actors. Concerning such issues, this research explores the emerging demand for researcher and its connection with the bioeconomy as well as the characteristics of interdisciplinary research engendered in the collaboration among university-industry-government (UIG) known as triple-helix relation. The involvement of social researcher requires the fundamental understanding of life-science based research. So to speak, the distinctive features of life science studies in industrial researches, particularly in biotechnology industry is predominantly established for creating product value innovation through research and development along the way such products impacting society demanding them. These imply necessary needs on collaborative spaces that mediate between social sciences and life sciences as well as the policy support from the government and market or solving problem from the industry. The contribution of the anthropological study will be focused on the search on meaning of research productivity and collaboration for active engagement in the future bioeconomy in Indonesia. Practically, the study want to contribute on the development of research management that could fully encourage the inclusiveness of research productivity as well as the readiness for skilled researcher demands facing with the issues of emerging economic sharing, collaborative moment in research, interdisciplinary trends and its consequences for future management research in Indonesia.