Dr Richard Isnor

Emerging Horizontal Research Management

By Dr Richard Isnor

Over the past five years, the pages of RE$EARCH MONEY have documented many, if not most, of the transformative changes taking place within the structure, management, and functioning of Canada’s science and technology institutions and programs. Reflecting on the changes taking place, as well as the new research programming models being proposed or discussed, one cannot help but be struck by the ways in which the organization and conduct of research has been affected by relatively new structural, administrative and management models.

In particular, it is interesting to observe the degree to which “horizontal” research models have come to the fore. By referring to “horizontal” research programs, I mean structures or mechanisms that encourage researchers in administratively distinct organizational units to combine their efforts in a more coordinated or integrated fashion.

Canadian researchers and research institutions have become quite savvy at developing research networks, and this has been recognized as a unique strength of the Canadian innovation system. The national Networks of Centres of Excellence program is a national flagship of sorts for stimulating this type of behaviour, and has been highly effective in transforming the nature of research collaborations towards horizontally integrated efforts that align research strengths located in centres across the country.

Today, it is difficult to envisage a policy proposal to establish any new major research initiative that would not seek to integrate the capabilities of multiple research performers. It seems that we are witnessing the “institutionalization” of trends observed by Gibbons et al in the mid 1990’s. They documented an evolving trend of knowledge production away from the traditional mode of relatively isolated and disciplinary research groups towards a more dynamic (Mode 2) type of research characterized by transdisciplinary teams of researchers from multiple institutions united for relatively short periods to address specific problems.

The institutional and administrative/ managerial innovations now evident within some of Canada’s most recognized S&T players — organizations such as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Genome Canada — bear witness to the mechanisms being advanced to encourage and support “horizontal” research integration across researchers and their home organizations. This trend can also be observed within the federal government’s S&T programming — with the creation the short-lived (but effective) Toxic Substances Research Initiative (TSRI), and more recently the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI). CRTI has been nothing short of spectacular with respect to the speed at which it has catalyzed the overall management security-related R&D community in Canada and integrated new R&D programming relevant to priority national needs. At the same time, CRTI has facilitated significant culture changes with respect to the ways research is being managed and accounted for.

The federal government’s intramural S&T activities — now comprising a much smaller proportion of total national S&T activity than a decade ago — have also been affected by the trend towards horizontal research management. These trends have not been limited to new initiatives such as CRTI, but are affecting the established base of activities within large research performing organizations like the National Research Council.

For example, in 1999 NRC established a new “horizontal initiative” in Genomics and Health Research in order to integrate research capabilities cutting across a large number of individual research institutes. A relatively small amount of new funding received from the government for genomics R&D ($6M/yr) was thus used as a financial incentive and leveraged into an initiative with total expenditures of over $25M/yr. Eight NRC institutes currently participate in this initiative, and there is an expectation that this number will further increase in future years.

Other NRC horizontal research initiatives have been launched in fuel cells research and high performance computing. In each case, there have been transaction costs associated with the transformation to a substantially different approach to the organization and management of research. However, the benefits achieved in an organization like NRC from a combination of cross-disciplinary and cross-institute capabilities are clearly advantageous and are starting to bear considerable fruit.

Emerging horizontal research initiatives tend to share certain management and administrative principles. These include requirements for shared funding (matching funds), a competitive peer reviewed process, the requirement for research teams to integrate their research activities, submitting to ongoing research progress review, and ultimately developing an exit strategy or periodic review to redirect research funding.

External sources of advice received by the federal government - in particular from the Council of Science and Technology Advisors (CSTA), but also from internal reviews by the Auditor General of Canada - have helped these research management approaches to become more pervasive within the S&T system. The changes require culture change within the research community, as well as leadership and new institutional competencies. Financial incentives are also essential.

Can more progress be made in this direction? Absolutely! We can go a lot further as a country in terms of horizontal, integrated research programming if we remove certain administrative (or even legislative) barriers and use the right financial incentives. The number of different S&T funding initiatives and organizations with different mandates and administrative processes also presents a challenge in terms of achieving greater collaboration and integration across research institutions. Leadership is needed to help reduce these barriers and ensure that Canada can receive maximum impact from S&T investments and capabilities.

It was very heartening to learn that Dr. Arthur Carty, the new national science advisor to the prime minister, will tackle the issue of finding mechanisms to build horizontal research partnerships and collaborations between departments, agencies, institutions and foundations, as well as between the public and private sectors. Ensuring that we are able to truly harness and integrate dispersed scientific institutional capabilities in support of national objectives (regardless of whether they reside in government, universities, or the private sector) is essential for Canada to prosper in the 21st Century economy.

Dr Richard Isnor is Director of Biotechnology Horizontal Initiatives at the National Research Council of Canada.