SAIC comment: Sharing know-how

A recent LinkedIn post the other day, by an acquaintance* who supports academics in commercialising their research, suggests that there are two types of people in the world: “fixed-pie people” and “grow-the-pie people”.

The former believe that if they give you a share, it means they get less – so they hoard information for their own advancement. Whereas the latter think differently: they look for ways to increase opportunities for others as well as themselves, and share freely of their knowledge.

In aquaculture, great strides are being made in finding increasingly productive and sustainable ways of farming fish, shellfish and seaweed. But without open and well-directed knowledge exchange, there is a risk that these advances never reach further than academic journals or isolated business processes.

The problem with keeping knowledge bound up within individual organisations is that it can lead to missed tricks: valuable information that could help farmers, suppliers, and policymakers may never reach the people who need it most. Let’s face it, a fish farmer can’t benefit from new findings, products or processes if he or she doesn’t know they exist.

Remember the early days of Covid? Our sector displayed rapid collaboration between businesses and across borders. We shared viral detection protocols, biosecurity strategies, and supply chain adaptations. Urgency dissolved barriers, and the result was an agile and resilient industry response.

But we don’t have to wait for global crises to occur before we start sharing information. When we work together to overcome the complexities of intellectual property, competitive advantage, data transfers and regulatory constraints, we can make knowledge exchange part of our culture. This way, “growing the pie” becomes the norm.