Richard Lariviere has been on campus only seven weeks, but the new Kansas University provost already has a clear idea of where he needs to go to find more money.

He cited businesses, industrial operations and corporate associations – anyplace where the payoff from nonspecific research can be expected to reside in the months, years and decades ahead.

“We really have to look at how research and development is conducted in this country right now, and how industry has walked away from it,” Lariviere said.

“There is no more Bell Labs. The research and development expenditures of the big automakers are almost nonexistent. This is true in industry after industry.

“So the question is: Where are those new innovations going to come from?”

More than ever, he told a luncheon crowd of Rotarians on Monday at the Lawrence Holidome, world-class universities such as KU are being relied upon for much of the ground-breaking “pure” research that could yield technological advances similar to the laser of years ago.

At KU, researchers already are excelling in pharmaceuticals, information technology and remote-sensing and imaging, he said, “and it’s not a regional superiority, it’s a national and international superiority.”

The key for KU is to build strength in such operations to help make up for dwindling state financing for higher education, Lariviere said.

All options – including tax incentives – should be explored to help boost research at KU and other universities, he said.