I had intended to follow-up my last post on the Scientist Dilemma with one on what I call the Management Corollary. However, events this week have me thinking on a slightly different, but related tack that I think will be worth exploring first. It will help pave the way for a more in-depth look at the challenges of astronomy management later.
Astronomy is a business. Well, maybe not all aspects of it, but these days, astronomical facilities like observatories are a business. There are now multiple options in all size ranges – from 1m to 30m diameter telescopes. Institutions and countries with money to invest in facilities have multiple selections from which to choose. How then, do they choose where to invest? They look for the facility that offers the best product for the least money. That sounds like a business to me.
This situation is a relatively new state of affairs. There are more 8-10m class telescopes than there are 4m telescopes. (Well, it depends a little how you count then, but the numbers are at least comparable.) For the next generation of telescopes, we have at least the TMT, GMT, and E-ELT to choose from. If you’re a government looking to provide the latest resources to your astronomers, you have choices. And once again, you would obviously choose by attempting to maximize the value you get for your money.
This state of affairs means observatories must work to provide a better product for a lower cost if they hope to continue and grow with time. Many scientists and engineer types don’t want to think this way. They don’t want to be bound by business-world processes and instead prefer to think of themselves as above the fray – engaging in pure research for the sole sake of expanding human knowledge. This goal is indeed noble, but you can’t do research without money, and sitting through the Gemini Board meeting last week, it crystallized that you don’t get money if you don’t offer value your competitors don’t.
2009 is the International Year of Astronomy - another example of astronomy as a business, promoting itself to the general public.
Ours is certainly a business that includes a research function, but like all high-tech businesses, the research aspect is but a part of the business and its focus better be aligned with the business’s mission and market needs. An astronomy facility that doesn’t innovate and keep pace with technology will not survive. Technological research is a vital part of its mission, but it is not the mission itself.
This state brings up the Scientist Dilemma from a different angle: our facilities need active research and technical development to stay competitive, but they also need to do so at as low a cost as possible. Thus, an observatory wants scientists to innovate for the observatory, not for themselves. The observatory wants scientists to continue to expand and improve the facility’s capabilities, but wants to do so efficiently. Publishing papers internally, for example, does little to increase an observatory’s market value. But if an observatory doesn’t support their scientists publishing papers, a) they won’t be able to attract scientists in the first place, and b) they will lose innovation that benefits the observatory’s market value by having researchers push the capabilities to the limit as they develop new techniques and tools for their research. In other words, it is a careful balancing act that must be done to stay competitive. The choices that are made to balance cost efficiency and internal research and development are critical to an observatory’s future success.
Finally, as a slightly different take on what I think is actually the same topic, I offer a link to Jim Gunn’s famous diatribe on the HST mirror disaster. I believe one thing Jim is saying here is that as astronomers, we need to take responsibility for both the research and the business side of our projects, lest we become vulnerable to our fate being controlled by people who do not understand the full picture. I’m not sure I agree with his view on national facilities, but perhaps that’s a topic for another post some day.
Scot has actually never found the concept of astronomy as a business difficult to accept. Its product is science and knowledge, instead of something you can buy on late-night TV, but the parallels between commercial businesses and astronomical facilities are easy to identify. He enjoys reading management books, as well as astronomical treatises. Current in-progress books include “First, Break all the Rules” and “Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe’s Missing Mass and Energy”.
In re-reading this post, I just realized I didn’t say anything about ground-based optical facilities needing to compete with space missions, ground-based non-optical facilities, and even other science facilities like particle accelerators and the like. Any government or even private donor wishing to spend its money on basic research has to decide among this wealth of choices. It’s a good time for funders of research, but an increasingly competitive time for those looking for funding.
I’ve been enjoying your posts and the SPIE paper, but I think the “astronomy as business” model falls short of the mark. It seems to me, the better comparison is a charitable organization. In some respects, businesses have it easy–if they’re successful, they make profits and are self-enabled to “continue and grow with time”. But when a charity/observatory increases its output of good/science, all it has is a better case to take to those holding the purse strings.
Even the “astronomy as charity” model has limitations. While I can envision it applying to organizations like NOAO and ESO, a facility like Gemini strikes me as being more like a non-profit orchestra that only plays free concerts in the park. If the orchestra/observatory is funded well, they can attract fantastic musicians/staff and play terrific music/do great science and serve enormous crowds/produce lots of citations, but they don’t directly benefit financially from being popular. If money is available, they can bring in exciting new instruments, but they can only perform as a single unit and only on a certain number of nights per year. That places a different kind of limitation on the ways in which they can “grow”. (If Gemini added another telescope, they’d have to rename the whole observatory, wouldn’t they?) 😉
So as not to drone on too much, let me conclude with two questions. Has anyone responsible for funding astronomy (politicians, philanthropists, etc.) had even the slightest understanding of the “full picture” since the days of Percival Lowell? And doesn’t that mean that astronomy has long been in the position of having to persuade those who control its (financial) fate of what matters and why?
Thanks for the comments, Chris.
Your description of astronomy as a charity vs. a business is interesting. Indeed you are right, that success alone in an observatory’s output (ex. science) does not self-guarantee its ability to continue and expand. The point I wanted to make was that the funding agencies have so many options these days that they must perceive observatory X as offering more return than science project Y in order to fund it. That value could be in scientific output, technological development and transfer, funds returned for development projects, etc., but it is some bottom line value for unit of money invested that is of concern.
To address your latter questions, I think you are right. The audience I was really aiming at was the observatory employee who works like the observatory has a right to exist and continue as some sort of elite academic, R&D endeavor. What matters to the people who give us money is what we can return to them compared to the competition. There are plenty of other options these days in which to invest your astronomy dollars if one facility is not returning enough value. We exist as long as we satisfy our funders. Maybe you’re right in that things haven’t really changed all that much, but I imagine the choices were a little slimmer back in the 60″, 100″, 200″ days, so less demand was placed on each new facility in terms of having to compete for its existence.
s
I agree that observatories ought to be maximizing the utility of the money they receive, both for their own benefit and to ensure that continued investment is an attractive proposition for the funding agencies. Furthermore, I think your description of the competition between facilities is completely accurate. But I wonder if the charity analogy can be instructive in another way. There’s no easy metric that can accurately quantify the amount of good done by a charity–the value they provide has to be assessed more qualitatively. Astronomy has latched on to citation counts (or citations/$) with the same zeal as the business world looking at P/E ratios. But perhaps the charity model offers an alternative standard. It would likely take an effort amongst all of the natural science communities (not just astronomy), but eventually the funding agencies may be converted to adopting a broader view of what value a research facility provides. Could a more holistic view of an observatory’s “product” help to alleviate the Scientist Dilemma?
Hi Chris,
Indeed – the products of an observatory are far more numerous than papers or citations and recognizing this fact would help provide a broader context for viewing the resources an observatory uses. (Although it’s a bit more complicated than that. Most scientists wouldn’t argue about the value of scientific research by scientists at an observatory, for example, but when credit for that research doesn’t directly flow to the funders – especially in a multi-institution project – they become less willing to pay for it.) I also wonder if the distinction between a business and a charity is of much practical use. I don’t know, but I would imagine that the best charities are run like businesses – you still need to maximize your return per money invested in both cases; it’s just that what you define as your return may be different. I also have a little trouble still with the charity definition. Astronomical facilities can have tangible, monetary returns in addition to the less tangible “furthering human knowledge” return. Gemini, for example, returns monetary contracts for new instruments back to the partner countries- in essence using the money they provided the observatory to pay for jobs and technology development in their own country.
I do like the charity model characteristic that even if you do have the best value return around, an astronomical facility still cannot guarantee its funding. But since you have to try, regardless, I’m not sure this control of fate is really a practical difference.
The Scientist Dilemma simply arises from a hope that science and technical people can be employed for their science and technical skills, but in a job that may not allow them to develop them. The need is to fully recognize why these specialized skills are needed and how their development also continues to help the facility even if it doesn’t result in an immediate task getting done more efficiently. I imagine companies with significant R&D components have to make similar judgments as to how much to invest in R&D and how focused to require their researchers’ efforts to be.
s