What you hear about research

Academia is often criticized for being a too slow innovation force, with research being either too fundamental and abstract or specific but outdated by the time it gets published. This is certainly the case in more applied disciplines like marketing communication and advertising research. While I will not contest this observation, I will try to make clear in this blogpost that the slowness of academia should not be replaced by mediocre research from non-academic research agencies. Of course, everybody is free to conduct research but non-academic research is rapidly gaining impact in society and this could be troublesome if it is treated just as if it was a piece of research that went through the complete scientific publication process.