The Evolving Research Enterprise

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Private foundation funding of academic research has grown substantially over the past 10 years. Increasingly, foundations employ a new strategic funding process modeled after venture capital investing, in which project outcomes are identified by the sponsor with a specific problem to be solved, a team is selected based their potential contribution and a community of common inquiry is created and funded over a long period of time. This new funding model originated with disease-oriented foundations, such as Michael J. Fox and Faster Cures and is diffusing to other types of foundations and agencies within the federal government, suggesting that this new model may offer advantages to scientific inquiry. However, despite the growing importance of foundations and strategic funding models, little is known either about whether foundations complement or substitute for other sources of founding or whether strategic funding practices can enhance the overall functioning of the American research enterprise. This study considers the role of private foundation funding in the larger university research enterprise as well as the impact -- both in terms of research practices and research outcomes -- of this new strategic funding model. This project describes how the university research enterprise is evolving in response to the demands of new funding sources coupled with increased institutional fiscal pressures and calls for greater problem solving relevance.Intellectual Merit: This project uses detailed records of research proposals, funded projects, and intellectual property (IP) agreements from a set of diverse research universities to make three intellectual contributions. First, it examines the extent to which private foundation sponsorship provides a new model of research funding that affects the conduct of research. Second, it compares the contractual agreements of foundations employing strategic practices to managing funded projects to the contractual research agreements of other sponsors to assess the extent to which a new open model of innovation is being implemented. Finally, it evaluates the extent to which foundations, in general, and venture philanthropy in particular, complement or substitute other types of funding sources. Broader Impact: The current omission of foundation and nonprofit funding presents a confounding effect that would introduce downward bias in the estimation of the impact of public funding. This study expands the discussion of the funding of academic research to recognize the role of foundations and further to consider differences in funding strategies and the use of contractual terms in sponsored research agreements. Recognition of this richness provides evidence useful for measuring the impacts of research funding and the ongoing debate about the efficacy of different research funding strategies.