Question: How does your research benefit your company?

Ian Cade answered on 18 Nov 2014:

I don’t really work for a company.

My supervisor is fairly independent (he receives research grants from the government to do new chemistry)… So I suppose you could say the work I do benefits him, in the sense that my results will get written up into journal articles and it is partly the number of journal articles that determines ‘how successful’ my supervisor is assessed to be.

The University of Manchester benefits in a similar way… every so often all the research departments in UK universities get assessed (and put into league tables) and the number of publications counts here too. The higher up this league table a department is the more students are likely to apply… and the more likely that university will get government money to improve its facilities.