Uber disrupted taxis; Airbnb disrupted hotels; Amazon disrupted
retailers…all because they didn’t look at the existing solutions and look
to improve upon them – but instead, by totally redesigning what those
industries had built in a time before the internet. The idea of disruption
is not new – ‘Silicon Valley’ has been flourishing for 30 years – but,
ironically, despite being invented as a result of science, the internet has
left researchers decades behind. So – what does peer review and publishing
and wet lab work look like in a world of Tinder, CTRL+C and Skype? How do
you begin to think about innovating in a world of long processes, fierce
bureaucracy and prolonged stagnation? How can you truly ‘disrupt’ science?