PARTNERSHIPS & RESEARCH FUNDING

Supporting Independent Research and Capability Development

The ECOSYSTEM VLG world LAB develops independent research dedicated to exploring, understanding and designing architectures capable of addressing complex, emerging or still insufficiently explored challenges.

This research may concern human, territorial, technological, environmental, organisational and governance systems, as well as the interactions between them.

The LAB is open to collaboration with researchers, universities, laboratories, foundations, public institutions, international organisations, NGOs, companies, territories, communities and partners wishing to contribute to the development of new knowledge and capabilities.

WHY SUPPORT INDEPENDENT RESEARCH?

Some important questions emerge before markets, institutions or scientific disciplines are organised to address them.

Independent research makes it possible to explore these spaces.

It can formulate new questions, connect disciplines that are usually separated, identify emerging phenomena, build conceptual models, develop new architectures and open pathways that can later be studied, challenged, tested or applied.

Supporting this research means helping to preserve a space where questions can be explored before their applications are fully known.

OUR RESEARCH AREAS

The LAB develops research programmes and architectures in areas including:

capability architectures;
water and water systems;
forests and territories;
health and essential capabilities;
food systems;
governance;
complex systems;
territorial resilience;
security and cybersecurity;
digital systems;
technological transformations;
humanitarian architectures;
knowledge and knowledge sovereignty;
environmental and planetary systems;
collective dynamics;
transition and transformation models.

Some of this work remains exploratory.

Other research may progressively lead to methodologies, protocols, programmes, labels, experiments or operational capabilities.

DIFFERENT FORMS OF PARTNERSHIP

A partnership with the LAB can take different forms depending on the objectives, capabilities and resources available.

SCIENTIFIC PARTNERSHIP

Collaboration between researchers, laboratories, universities or institutions around a research question or programme.

RESEARCH FUNDING

Financial support for a research area, study, programme or scientific output.

PHILANTHROPIC AND INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT

Contributions supporting independent research, its documentation, publication or further development.

DATA AND RESOURCES

Provision of data, knowledge, equipment, infrastructure or other resources relevant to research.

OBSERVATION OR EXPERIMENTATION ENVIRONMENTS

Collaboration with territories, communities or organisations allowing certain hypotheses to be observed, contextualised or tested.

APPLIED RESEARCH AND PROTOTYPING

Support for transforming an architecture or research result into an experiment, prototype or demonstrator.

RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS

Support enabling a researcher or contributor to dedicate time to a specific research question.

JOINT PROGRAMMES

Development of a shared research programme when objectives and principles of scientific independence are compatible.

FUNDING RESEARCH DOES NOT MEAN BUYING ITS CONCLUSIONS

Research independence is a fundamental principle of the LAB.

Funding research does not mean buying its conclusions.

Financial, material or institutional support does not automatically grant any right to control research questions, methods, interpretation of results or publication decisions.

Partners may contribute to defining questions, provide knowledge, data or resources, and participate in scientific exchanges.

They cannot, however, impose a predetermined result.

An unexpected, negative or contradictory result remains a research result.

TRANSPARENCY AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

When research receives funding or a significant contribution from a partner, this relationship may be disclosed in the relevant publications or documents when appropriate.

Potential conflicts of interest should be identified and managed.

This transparency helps preserve the credibility of the research, researchers and partners.

It also makes it possible to clearly distinguish a partner’s contribution from the independence of the results produced.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Funding research does not automatically transfer intellectual property rights over concepts, architectures, models, methodologies, protocols or works developed by the LAB.

Intellectual property rights, rights of use, licences, joint developments or potential exploitation conditions are defined separately when necessary.

When a partner contributes pre-existing knowledge, technologies, data, methods or intellectual property, these remain subject to the applicable rights and agreements.

Conditions are defined before any development requiring specific rights takes place.

PUBLICATION, ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE AND USE

The LAB supports the documentation, traceability and dissemination of knowledge when it can be made public.

Depending on the nature of the work, research outputs may take the form of articles, white papers, research notes, conceptual models, protocols, architectures, datasets, exploratory publications or other scientific outputs.

However, making research publicly accessible does not mean that all uses of that research are unrestricted.

ECOSYSTEM VLG world distinguishes access to knowledge from authorisation to use, adapt or deploy it.

A document may therefore be publicly accessible, readable and citable, while certain operational uses, adaptations, reproductions, certifications, deployments or integrations remain subject to applicable licences, authorisations and control mechanisms.

This distinction makes it possible both to encourage the circulation of knowledge and to preserve the integrity of the architectures developed, their traceability and the conditions required for their responsible use.

Depending on the work concerned, different levels may therefore coexist:

Access → Reading → Citation → Research → Authorised Experimentation → Certification → Operational Use

Publication therefore represents an opening of access to knowledge, not an automatic transfer of rights of use.

Some research may also remain temporarily or permanently non-public when disclosure could compromise individuals, territories, sensitive data, security, intellectual property or ongoing development.

INTEGRITY AND CERTIFICATION OF USE

Some architectures developed by the LAB require their use to comply with specific principles, conditions or protocols.

In such cases, authorisation, traceability or certification mechanisms may be used to verify that an architecture is not distorted, misrepresented or applied under conditions incompatible with its intended purpose.

Certification is therefore not intended to prevent the circulation of knowledge.

Its purpose is to distinguish access to knowledge from recognised capability to use or deploy it in an operational context.

Applicable conditions may vary depending on the research, architecture, programme, label or system concerned.

FROM RESEARCH TO EXPERIMENTATION

Producing a research result does not automatically imply its deployment.

When an architecture appears sufficiently mature, a new stage may begin:

Research Question → Research → Result → Publication → Experimentation → Evaluation → Capability

Depending on the project, this transition may involve different components of ECOSYSTEM VLG world.

LAB explores, documents and develops knowledge architectures.

LABELS — Global Incubator may transform sufficiently mature architectures into structured programmes, frameworks, labels or capabilities.

CUB — Local Incubators may enable their contextualisation, experimentation and incubation in real-world environments.

ANGELS may help mobilise skills, experience and human networks when needed.

Not all research necessarily follows this pathway.

Some work may remain fundamental, conceptual or exploratory.

PARTNERSHIPS WITH TERRITORIES

Territories can also become research partners.

A city, municipality, region, community or local organisation may encounter a challenge that first needs to be observed and understood before a solution is sought.

The LAB can contribute to structuring the question, building an observation framework, identifying existing knowledge and developing new hypotheses.

The territory then becomes more than simply a place where a solution is applied.

It can become a field of knowledge and a partner in the development of new capabilities.

When experimentation is considered, implementation can subsequently be connected with the appropriate programmes and incubation structures.

PARTNERSHIPS WITH COMPANIES

Companies may support research programmes or contribute knowledge, data, infrastructure, technologies or experimentation capabilities.

This cooperation does not turn the LAB into a service provider expected to produce conclusions aligned with a partner’s interests.

When a request primarily concerns product development, commercial services, an operational assignment or the deployment of a solution, another collaboration framework may be proposed.

This distinction helps preserve the boundary between independent research and commercial services.

PARTNERSHIPS WITH UNIVERSITIES AND RESEARCHERS

The LAB is open to scientific and interdisciplinary collaborations.

These may include:

joint research;
scientific contributions;
methodological exchanges;
critical analyses;
replication or comparison of models;
co-publication when appropriate;
seminars and working groups;
student projects;
research environments;
interdisciplinary collaborations.

Scientific challenge and critical examination are part of the research process.

A partnership therefore does not imply prior agreement with the hypotheses, models or architectures developed by the LAB.

Discussion, criticism, comparison and the possibility of refutation all contribute to the development of knowledge.

SUPPORTING A PROGRAMME WITHOUT CONTROLLING THE RESEARCH

A partner may choose to support a broad research field rather than a specific result.

For example, a partner may contribute to research on water, forests, governance, territorial capabilities, complex systems, security, digital systems or other areas explored by the LAB without determining in advance what the research must demonstrate.

This separation between support and conclusion protects both the LAB and its partners.

It allows the exploration of a question to be funded without turning funding into a mechanism for validating a predetermined answer.

FROM FUNDING TO CAPABILITY

Our objective is not simply to produce more documents.

We seek to understand how knowledge, when sufficiently robust and relevant, can contribute to the development of real capabilities.

The cycle can therefore become:

Question → Knowledge → Architecture → Experimentation → Learning → Capability → Transmission

Some capabilities may subsequently be contextualised, certified, adapted or deployed within specific environments.

Research funding helps make this cycle possible while preserving the distinction between knowledge production, validation, authorisation of use and operational deployment.

PROPOSE A PARTNERSHIP

Researchers, universities, laboratories, institutions, foundations, NGOs, companies, territories, communities and other organisations may propose:

a research question, scientific collaboration, observation or experimentation environment, data, expertise, resources, funding or a joint programme.

Each proposal is assessed according to its relevance, available capabilities, applicable ethical principles, necessary protection requirements and alignment with the LAB’s research directions.

Funding does not guarantee the acceptance of a research project.

A partnership begins with a question:

What can we understand, explore or build together that we could not develop alone?

LAB — ECOSYSTEM VLG world

Independent Research · Systemic Exploration · Capability Architecture

Research → Knowledge → Architecture → Capability

Independent Research · Knowledge Transmission · Certified Use