The Signal #18
Speculating the future of scientific structures.
One of the most interesting opportunities I’ve come across this week is rethinking the ways of organising science.
Science Works has launched an essay prize on how we might redesign research institutions (closing date: 15th July 2026). The prompts range from speculative fiction imagining new kinds of research organisations to asking whether today's institutional landscape is actually fit for the scientific challenges ahead.
That immediately caught my attention because it points to a broader shift.
For a long time, science policy debates have centred on funding levels, talent pipelines, infrastructure and incentives. Those questions remain essential. But increasingly, attention is turning towards whether the organisational forms through which we conduct research are themselves becoming constraints.
The bottleneck isn't only resources but institutional design. It’s worth also sharing this accompanying reflection, which argues that we should spend as much effort studying how we organise research as we do studying the world itself. That idea resonates. We have sophisticated methods for evaluating scientific discoveries, yet comparatively little systematic attention devoted to the institutions that shape which discoveries become possible in the first place.
It’s a reminder that institutions are technologies too. They encode assumptions about incentives, collaboration, authority, acceptable risk and what counts as success. Change those structures, and entirely different forms of knowledge may emerge.
That also echoes a theme from my previous essay, Foundations for Shared Progress. If institutional design shapes what science can discover, it also shapes who gets to participate, whose questions are considered legitimate, and ultimately who benefits from new knowledge.
There are plenty of signs that traditional science institutions are evolving. Whether the next breakthrough comes from a university, a mission-driven laboratory, a distributed network, a civic research organisation or an institution that doesn’t yet exist may prove to be one of the defining governance questions.
If this is in your lane, Science Works’ essay prize looks like a wonderful opportunity to contribute to that conversation. They are explicitly looking for provocations, new evidence and imaginative thinking.
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Keep speculating,
Sanja
