DILEMMA OF DOING LATERAL RESEARCH IN FERMENTATION TECHNOLOGY

It is sad to note that in a number of universities and colleges I have visited, the research projects that have been carried out under the banner of fermentation technology are eother:

1 Isolation and enumeration of strains for certain biochemical or pharmacological activity
2 Establishing shake flask studies or laboratory fermentation studies of the species isolated

These represents initial studies that are carried out in upstream activities. No efforts are done in the coming years to go deeper into the studies initiated by either going further scale up studies or attempts to commercialize the studies.
To make things worst, the so called preliminary research will forever remain preliminary with no intention to carry deeper studies on the fermentation process by carrying other engineering aspects of the research. The next year or so, similar studies will be carried on similar strain or species of microorganisms. The difference maybe now they are doing studies on strains or microorganisms isolated from other sources or niches

I have the gut feeling that these researchers are really not interested in doing further research in depth on the studies or they are 'bankrupt. of research ideas.

It doesn't make sense to me after decades of research in the fermentation process, the direction of research is only going laterally and not yielding concrete results that can be commercially exploited. It is just a time wasting research that will lead to no where but wasting time, ebergy and capital equipment.
There is no attempt to refine or further the research. No attempts to innovate or improve the fermentation research. Maybe it is just another ' Mickey Mouse' project????

The way I look at it before any real research is done in the fermentation technology, these researchers must identify the objective of the research. They should ask the following questions before doing the research such as:

1 Is this research looking into really new novel or genetically engineered microorganisms?
2 Will it yield new products that is never yet on the market?
3 If I do research with existing microbes will my research end up with a new improved and efficient process in terms of its productivity

If we cannot answer these basic questions then in terms of business sense there is no point in initiating the research as failure will be the only option and there will be no commercialization of the process