The dynamism in UK and US research

Dear readers,

James advised me to read some chapters of the interesting book "Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands" which compare a lot of nations from different points of views. The aim of the book is to help people to better understand local practices and cultural cues in order to develop better working relations between people from different countries. The book includes more than 70 country profiles but for this work I just focused on France, the UK and the USA. This book was a starting point for my study.

In each article I will try to give a general concept or idea and I will compare the aspect of this concept in the UK and in the USA. I will do it regarding my own experience and also (most of the time) thanks to statistics or objective facts.


I would like to start with the concept of "dynamism", especially concerning scientific research. This article will be particularly based on my own experience, thus it might be quite subjective, sorry for that!

The USA : Research is strongly connected to industry

My professor back in the USA was both an MIT professor, a department head and also the co-founder of a high-tech company in Boston. During our weekly meetings I could always feel that  multiple experience. He was always talking about the possible applications of my research in the "real" world and for him one of the most exciting things was to be able to transform your research results into a company. And I think that this was not only the case in my lab, but I could feel this tendency in the whole of MIT.

One other interesting characteristic that I remembered was a strong enthusiasm. The idea was to motivate you by saying that your research could truly change the world. As a Frenchman, I was quite dubitative but I have to admit that it was sometimes helpful to give me enough strength to try new things and persevere in my research. Americans are sometimes too much enthusiastic, which can be interpreted as hypocrisy (because we are not used to it) but it is sometimes highly pleasant. Moreover I really believe that people think what they are saying, they have just a different way of seeing things.

The UK : Research as a whole

My experience in the UK is quite different. Here I feel that research is more done to be research as a whole. References to companies or start-ups are less frequent in my lab, but again it is maybe only due to my own experience. Concerning the enthusiasm, it is also different from the USA. I think from this point of view the UK is close to France, indeed a professor won't say directly that your work is amazing or that it is going to change the world. You have to read the implicit signs to get some feedback about your work.



Thank you for the reading!

Some related readings :

Startup and US universities

Next topics : language, communities...

Vous or Tu seen by an American who loves France...

A fun article about the "Vous" and "Tu"....

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-og-bastile-vous-tu-20140711-htmlstory.html