A particularly important long-term effect of the network collaboration was undoubtedly that the participants gradually developed a more positive attitude towards research and development in general. Industrialists who have to operate and compete in a free market must be impatient people. Norwegian seafood producers are no exception and the words from people in the industry have not always been kindly directed towards researchers. A general complaint against research has typically been lack of effectiveness and productivity in research with too little industrial relevance in thematic prioritizations.
Work in the networks revealed at the start that misunderstandings could easily arise in communications between the researchers and the industrialists, which in the worst case affected mutual trust. However, this was not difficult to remedy once the problem had been acknowledged. To the extent that the network members’ opinion of research and researchers had previously been surrounded by a slight aura of mystique, such ideas disappeared quickly. To say it a little irreverently: The industry’s representatives discovered that researchers also had obvious human characteristics. But above all, the researchers learned that the collective experiences and observations of the industrialists could make extremely important contributions to scientific progress and innovation.
During the last half of the 1990s and up until the turn of the century there was a noticeable change in attitude towards research within the Norwegian fishing industry. Perhaps especially within the land-based processing industry. This was largely due to the realization that sustainable exploitation of resources and adequate competitive strength in a steadily more demanding international market could only be achieved and maintained if the industry were in front with regard to knowledge and the application of technology. Included in this was a realization of the necessity of basic research at universities as well as the long-term, strategic research in the research institutes which, like the basic research, is largely dependent on government financing. With that came the realization that quality and relevance of research can best be improved by good dialogue between researchers and those who benefit from the results. Industrialists therefore almost unanimously believed that it was absolutely essential to escalate the applied, industry-oriented research in Norway. Most important of all they realized that this was only possible if the industry itself covered part of the total national research investment.
