Editor's three day travelogue through the EHMA Agora

We open this issue with an opinion paper of Aad de Roo, the new president of EHMA who takes you into the middle of our opening session. We did not want to have an ordinary and safe opening procedure but moved directly into the real world of uncertainty, confrontations, mixed interest and lack of evidence. The risk of this approach is to be left in this state of confusion for the following days of conference. This is where we need an experienced moderator and also positive experiences and case studies. This is also why we wanted to give this paper a positive and optimistic title. But do we actually have good examples of economic constraints promoting innovation and creating reforms? If we had at least few such cases, we would have published them in this issue. Too often researchers and policy makers adopt the classic formula of a sermon: start with describing the horrors of present, giving apocalyptic visions and end with a hope for a better world. I would like to challenge our readers to write positive papers and to present their success stories! This paper describes the journey we took with the Largo experiment. We managed to enter the area of unsafe debate, where the new paradigms do hide. Perhaps we need an economic crisis to enter this zone in real life. As long as we have all the money, we do not need to think. When we ran out of money we start to cut expenses. When this does not work, not earlier, we have to rethink our systems. Could we do it earlier, even before we start to cut and impoverish? On the other hand, if we find the new paradigm too early, are we able to “sell” it? Is it actually possible for a mainstream researcher to find a new paradigm? A new paradigm is not usually the way to proceed in your academic career, so why take all the pain. We also need a channel to publish the results in “a new way”. The classical scientific paradigm may find the results of new debate as “unscientific opinions needing heavy rewriting...” like editors use to say. The young and coming managers are also often stuck deep in the old paradigms, because this is the safe way to success and good position. We need an AGORA for seeking and testing new paradigms. This might also create a new research “school”? It might be more subjective, experimental, discussing and observational than what we have been used to. Aad gives a promise to expose us to paradigmatic innovation and unsafe debate. This is a good “mission” for EHMA.