ABSTRACT
Design research today is characterized by its focus on technological innovation, especially digital innovation, and on collaborations between university researchers and private or public sector organizations to address practical concerns. In tandem with this direction, funding bodies encourage and often stipulate cross-disciplinary partnerships and look favourably upon projects that contribute to ‘real world’ impact. These widespread practices, however, can be problematic. They tend to endorse, rather than disinterestedly critique, the dominant paradigm which, despite its many material and practical benefi ts, is highly destructive of the natural environment ( Carolan 2014: 32-5 ), deeply inequitable and socially divisive ( Piketty 2014: 417 ; Skidelsky and Skidelsky 2012: 30 ) and, on an individual level, associated with a sense of meaninglessness ( Taylor 2007: 561, 717 ). Also, such intimate involvement of funding bodies in the positioning of academic inquiry can seriously compromise vitally important elements of scholarship, not least critical distance and academic freedom. As Waters says,
colleges and universities are places in which people are [or should be] encouraged to let their scientifi c, philosophical, and literary fancies fl y . . . The so-called free market – which is anything but free – is not a concept that should be considered the ultimate framework for the free play of ideas . . . The problem is that the advocates for the market say that what cannot be counted is not real.
