By Cristo Leon, last reviewed October 08, 2026.
In research, we often talk about resources in terms of funding, equipment, personnel, facilities, and access to data. These resources matter. They shape what questions we can pursue and how quickly we can move from an idea to an experiment, a prototype, or a publication.
But there is another resource that is easy to underestimate: time.
Funding can sometimes be increased. Equipment can be purchased. New collaborators can be recruited. Infrastructure can be built.
Time cannot.
This becomes particularly important when we think about collaboration.
Collaboration Takes Time
Meaningful collaboration rarely begins with a proposal.
It usually begins much earlier: a conversation after a presentation, a workshop, a campus visit, a conference, an introduction from a colleague, or a discussion about a problem that neither person is yet prepared to solve.
At that point, there may be no grant opportunity. There may not even be a clearly defined project.
What exists is the beginning of a relationship.
Over time, researchers begin to understand one another’s expertise, language, constraints, priorities, and ways of working. They learn what the other person can contribute and, perhaps more importantly, where their own knowledge ends.
That process cannot easily be accelerated.
Social Capital Is Research Infrastructure
We tend to think of research infrastructure as laboratories, instruments, computing systems, databases, or specialized facilities.
Social capital should also be understood as part of research infrastructure.
Knowing whom to call when a problem emerges matters. Knowing who has expertise that complements your own matters. Being known by people working on problems related to yours matters.
This does not mean networking for the sake of collecting contacts.
Social capital develops through repeated, substantive interaction.
You attend the meeting.
You listen.
You ask questions.
You share what you are working on.
You return six months later.
Someone remembers your work.
Eventually, the conversation changes from:
«What do you do?»
to:
«We have a problem you might be able to help us solve.»
That transition is significant.
From Cold Calls to Informed Questions
Researchers frequently encounter funding opportunities and immediately ask:
What proposal can I submit?
Sometimes a better question is:
What problem is this community actually trying to solve?
Without relationships, we often work from the outside. We read solicitations, strategic plans, and public documents and attempt to infer what might be useful.
That approach can work. But it is inevitably incomplete.
Direct engagement changes the quality of the question.
A researcher who spends time with a community begins to understand its vocabulary, constraints, unresolved problems, and priorities. The proposal that emerges from those interactions is no longer simply an idea looking for a funding opportunity.
It becomes a response to an observed problem.
The difference is subtle but important.
A cold proposal effectively says:
«Here is what I know how to do. Do you need it?»
A relationship-informed proposal says:
«I have listened to the problem you are trying to solve. Here is where my expertise may contribute.»
Presence Matters
This is one reason I continue to believe in the importance of being physically—or at least consistently—present in research communities.
Go to the workshop.
Attend the working group.
Visit the laboratory.
Join the seminar.
Talk to the researchers.
Ask how they arrived at the questions they are currently asking.
Not every interaction will produce a collaboration. Most probably will not.
That is not failure.
The purpose of these interactions is not to extract an immediate transaction. Their value is cumulative.
They build familiarity, trust, shared language, and an understanding of what each participant can contribute.
In other words, they build social capital.
The Real Investment
This creates an uncomfortable reality for researchers.
Relationship-building consumes the one resource we cannot replenish.
Time.
Every meeting has an opportunity cost. Every workshop, visit, conference, mentoring conversation, and exploratory collaboration competes with writing papers, preparing proposals, teaching, administration, and conducting research.
That means the question cannot simply be:
«Is this opportunity interesting?»
The more important question is:
«Is this relationship worth investing part of my finite research career in?»
That is a much higher threshold.
And perhaps it should be.
Strategic research development is not simply the accumulation of opportunities. It is the deliberate allocation of time toward people, problems, and communities where sustained interaction can produce meaningful work.
Research Trajectories Are Built, Not Discovered
Looking backward, successful research programs often appear remarkably coherent.
One project leads to another. A collaboration produces a proposal. A proposal produces infrastructure. Infrastructure enables a new experiment. That experiment attracts another collaborator.
From the outside, it can look planned.
Often it was not.
What creates the apparent coherence is sustained engagement with a set of related problems and people over time.
A research trajectory therefore does not emerge only from choosing the right topic.
It emerges from repeatedly investing time in the right conversations.
Funding matters.
Infrastructure matters.
Ideas matter.
But collaboration takes time, and social capital matters because research is ultimately conducted within communities of people.
We can seek more funding.
We can build larger laboratories.
We can acquire better technology.
But there is one research resource for which there will never be a supplemental appropriation:
time.
How we choose to invest it may be one of the most consequential research decisions we make.