Facilitating scientific communication for industrial innovation

Much has been written about how methods of working and communicating can improve the productivity of innovation for industry. Less has been related to this from the overall development of science and policies that assist this. The changing organisational context of industrial research brings the need for scientific publishers to reinvent themselves for this market segment. Scientific communication, including one of its key functions, awareness, is examined and it is concluded that functions and processes in scientific communication may be organised more efficiently to increase the productivity of industrial research. The new context of virtual communities, exploiting the opportunities for interactivity, provides the organisational basis for introducing new methods for inculcating new approaches to knowledge management, for innovation in industry to occur more effectively. An approach to better understanding knowledge synthesis and the potential role of the publisher, as communications facilitator, is discussed.