The research enterprise faces a number of challenges that arise from its dynamic, multi-organizational nature. They stem from the complexity of the interorganizational arena, from the rapid pace of technological change and the comparatively slow pace of organizational adaptation, and from conflicting concepts of risk.

Organizational complexity and diversity--Thousands of organizations with different management, technology, and policy frameworks and a wide variety of overlapping and distinct goals come together to make up the research enterprise. To some extent, these differences reflect different value propositions embedded in their individual missions and cultures. Consider these complementary, competing, and conflicting values which must be reconciled as organizations work across the enterprise: discovering new knowledge, producing practical value, conducting fair and open peer review, providing funding to the best scientists, providing opportunity to a broad range of scientists, ensuring resource availability, and achieving technical compliance and financial integrity.

Different work models and priorities among these organizations add both complexity and diversity. Some organizations are open and flexible, others are formal and structured. Some are slow to respond to change, others respond quickly to new ideas and discoveries. These different organizational designs and philosophies result in different approaches to work and different priorities with respect to the grants-funded research process. Some grants-making organizations are strongly committed to blind peer review to select the best projects. Others believe the best way to cultivate sound and important new research ideas is through ongoing working relationships between program officers and investigators. Some grants makers use both approaches. Some universities provide sophisticated administrative and technical support to researchers as they work with grants makers; others do not. Each grants-making organization deals with many different grantees, while a single grantee may need to respond to the missions and rules of multiple funders. Navigating through this web of rules and cultures adds costs and complexity to the entire system.

Rapid technological change--The research enterprise can take pride in technological progress. Modern technical tools and the work we can do with them are part of the legacy of scientific research. But technological change is also a source of frustration. The people, processes, and organizations that make up the research enterprise face the same issues that confront every other kind of organized endeavor. Past investments in technology create sunk costs and legacy systems which offer stable and consistent ways of working, but which eventually become barriers to the very new developments we most wish to adopt. Moreover, the many organizations within the enterprise make independent decisions about technology investments resulting in uneven infrastructure, inconsistent capacity to engage in electronic communications, and incompatible skills, standards, and work processes.

Slow organizational and interorganizational adaptation to change--The ways organizations define themselves, relate to the environment, approach their work, and select processes, tools, and techniques all evolve more slowly than the technology around them. The impacts of this reality are compounded when working in an interorganizational enterprise. The rates of change and the nature of change vary from one place to another. Changes in some organizations, especially in the granting agencies that are central to the enterprise, can affect the flow of information throughout the system. Electronic grants administration, for example, requires research institutions to adjust or reconcile their internal management needs with the changing organizational and management demands of the granting agencies that provide their main funding. Another organizational change has to do with the recent focus on cross-disciplinary research. Both granting agencies and universities are organized along strong disciplinary lines, yet both are working toward more multidisciplinary research programs. This evolution creates important tensions between new research goals and traditional organizational systems for designing work, allocating resources, and measuring and rewarding performance.

Conflicting concepts of risk--The nature of research - inquiry into the unknown - involves risk taking. This is like the risk an investor accepts in creating a mixed portfolio of assets. The performance of some of the investments are quite predictable, others less so. Some may be quite speculative, but these represent the calculated risk that either a loss or a great gain may be possible. Contrast this kind of risk assessment with the traditional compliance and accountability activities of public organizations. Rules-based systems, audit programs, and internal controls are all put in place to ensure predictable performance and to prevent errors, fraud, or other misuse of public resources. These accountability tools have a legitimate place in the research enterprise as well, given its distribution of billions in taxpayer dollars. The juxtaposition of these two very different approaches to risk presents an ongoing conundrum for research agencies. They simultaneously need policies, procedures, and processes that assure public trust, as well as the freedom to take the risk of investing in new and untried ideas.