« Pat Roberson's version of science | Main | UK gets it - again »
November 14, 2005
NSF research on innovation
I have often complained that our "innovation" policy is focused on S&T and not on innovation. But, there is one ray of hope. The National Science Foundation has released its grant announcement for research on Innovation and Organizational Change (IOC):
The Innovation and Organizational Change (IOC) program supports scientific research directed at advancing understanding of how individuals, groups and/or institutional arrangements contribute to functioning, effectiveness and innovation in organizations.
The array of research topics is vast (an illustration of how much work there is to be done):
Research will be supported in several areas and disciplines relevant to the core mission of the program. Potential research problems may include, but are not limited to:
1. effects of individuals, groups, social networks and interpersonal relationships on organizational and institutional outcomes;
2. persistent challenges to and enablers of organizational effectiveness, such as team dynamics, organizational structures, organizational cultures, crossfunctional coordination, and organizational governance;
3. factors that enable or impede innovation creation and diffusion, organizational learning and improvement, and knowledge transfer within and among organizations;
4. key considerations in entrepreneurship, formation of new organizations, organizational change or transformation, organizational crisis and decline, and cooperation among organizations;
5. research pertinent to organizational effectiveness under emerging conditions, such as globalization, cultural and social evolution, public policy changes, and technological innovation;
6. relationships between social, economic and technological forces and organizational forms;
7. evolution and diversity of populations of organization types and institutional arrangements across industries or in response to social, political or market forces;
8. evolution and diversity of labor forces, including how demographics affect and are affected by organizations;
9. creation of methods and infrastructures that enhance research opportunities for a large community of organizational researchers, including new organizational databases, organizational data mining tools and analysis techniques, schemes for enabling data accessibility while preserving privacy, and/or technologies to enable improved data access and integration; and
10. processes and structures for improving research, development, and engineering tasks necessary to carry out effective knowledge creation in national laboratories, multi-disciplinary university centers, and industrial research departments or communities.
But (and there always seems to be a but . . .), total funding for this programs is only $1.5 million. Given the research agenda, this is the proverbial drop in the bucket. And "half of which is expected to be dedicated to proposals pertaining to organization and management of scientific endeavors involving shared technological resources." It is the National Science Foundation, after all. So dedicating a portion to the management of scientific endeavors is perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, the leaves only $750K for research on other innovation issues.
Maybe we need a National Innovation Foundation - of which the NSF could be part?
Posted by Ken Jarboe at November 14, 2005 10:26 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.athenaalliance.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/414