ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which universities strategically view the creation of intellectual wealth, to include the promotion of research teams and 'growing one's own' researchers via the higher degree route. The personal perspective of Professor Leela Damodaran, derived from her cumulative experiences as a career researcher, chartered psychologist and consultant, together with extensive teaching practice in education and commercial sectors, enables her to offer a grounded insight into the world of contract researchers: a significant group involved in creating the nation's intellectual wealth. Additionally, within higher education today there are a number of issues surrounding the creation of intellectual wealth, most notably those associated with its funding and the subsequent deployment of resources. Globally, research institutes are deemed to be the powerhouses in terms of knowledge generation. But paradoxically, in the UK these creators of intellectual wealth appear to be marginalized by disenfranchising human resource policies.
