Provost’s update: Innovation, disruptive thinking and the culture of a university

UCL's President & Provost, Dr Michael Spence, reflects on how UCL can remain true to its founding ethos as we approach our 200th anniversary. Dear colleagues, What does it mean to be true to our founding ethos as we approach our 200th anniversary? What does it mean to be 'disruptive' as we were at our foundation, and as we so often claim to continue to be? Earlier this term, I spent time visiting industrial collaborators, philanthropists, partner universities, alumni and potential students in Asia, and was asked to reflect on this question in a speech at Osaka University. In some sense, most universities make a claim to be 'disruptive'. After all, most universities claim to be 'research-led', and to treasure the connection between research and teaching. That, of course, means that everybody in the university is engaged with advanced tools of critical thinking. The skills that our researchers use every day are the skills that we develop in our students, skills to ask the difficult and unexpected question, to think about problems creatively, tangentially, in a different way, to formulate hypotheses, to look for evidence, to propose answers and to defend them effectively both orally and in written communication. Those are the skills of disruptive thinking, which is the bread-and-butter work of universities and not unique to UCL.