Crown research institutes (CRIs) are government-owned companies that do scientific research for the benefit of Aotearoa New Zealand. There are seven CRIs in Aotearoa, which were set up to lead research and science that address New Zealand’s pressing issues and achieve economic, social and environmental impact. For example, ESR is the CRI that plays a critical national role in health, food safety, groundwater, radiation and forensic sciences, and is a key contributor to public health, environment and biosecurity outcomes. 

While each CRI is focused on its core areas of science and research, the end goal for all of them is to create positive impact for society. A recent review called CRIs an indispensable part of the science system but said there were concerns that there is no mechanism to evaluate the research impact of CRIs. How can CRIs, the government and the public know whether CRIs are being successful if there is no rigorous process to assess the societal benefits? 
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The Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), the steward and major funder of CRIs, has recently shifted its focus to investing in research that has potential for social, economic and environmental impact. MBIE wants government funded science to have a clear and strong “line of sight to impact” and has been encouraging CRIs to use a logic model framework (Figure 1) to show this “line of sight”. Using consistent language in logic models helps to compare and evaluate across CRIs, and to focus on impact.

Of course, there are challenges to creating “line of sight to impact”. One challenge is limited concrete mechanisms for measuring impact. Most CRI monitoring and evaluation indicators have been output level measures (e.g. knowledge and skills) and sometimes outcome level measures (e.g. policy influence), but it is difficult to measure the impact of the science out in the community. It does not help that community and society impact of research tends to be incremental and over the long term, in direct contrast to funding mechanisms that have short time frames and pre-set deliverables. These funding mechanisms have arisen from neoliberal approaches that promote competition between CRIs, a “contract for services” approach, and a requirement for CRIs to generate commercial benefits from science.

A focus on impact would require change at both the MBIE/policy level – determining science priorities, creating longer time frames, flexible resourcing for developing and maintaining collaborative relationships, willingness to allow a research agenda to develop in consultation with communities – and at the CRI/science level – explicit mechanisms for measuring impact, focus on authentic and reciprocal relationships, commitment to allow a research agenda to develop in consultation with communities.  
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Another challenge is the traditional approach to Western science that divides research projects and funding into separate disciplines. Yet increasingly it is being recognised that transdisciplinary and collaborative science research projects have the potential to yield greater impact, by addressing the bigger, more complex problems using a variety of different disciplines. This requires collaborative working not only within a like-minded research team, but between researchers with very different perspectives, and even completely different worldviews as when partnering with kaupapa Māori researchers. Most importantly, social science could be a bridge among multiple knowledge systems in an Aotearoa context.

There has also traditionally been a difference in status between science based on ‘things’ versus science based on ‘people’. Yet this is a false distinction, as there are important roles for social science (science with people) especially when considering the societal impact of research and innovation. Social science contributes not only to assessing impact of science on communities, but also ensuring beneficial impact of science for communities through input to the research agenda, collaboration while undertaking research, and feedback and sense-making of results.  

A question to be asked is: given it is relatively well established that complex problems require holistic, transdisciplinary approaches, why have we not focused our science system to operate in this way? One explanation can be found in the systems dynamics archetype of “Shifting the Burden”, as shown in Figure 2.

However, securing funds to embed evidence-based solutions is often a challenge. The potential pathway to outcomes and impacts is disrupted by the inevitable need to propose yet more novel research rather than progressing toward impact, in order to secure much needed funding via competitive processes. Novelty is often bundled with concepts of risk, pushing researchers into realms where current knowledge and accepted principles are applied in `unproved or speculative’ ways, new methods or ideas are proposed, and incremental or ground-breaking advances are made. 

The issue is, does rewarding considerable novelty and risk necessarily ensure the research will deliver usable and useful findings? How much of this type of research can New Zealand afford, compared with nations that deploy substantial funding pools to support basic, untargeted research?

Applied research that has a clear outcome in sight for a broad range of users within a realistic timeframe can deliver real change and benefits for Aotearoa New Zealand’s environment, society and economy. But it may not have a novel and highly risky launching pad. Instead, it might require more resources to support implementation, adoption and adaptation to make a difference. A challenge Melissa notes when she asks, `Who funds implementation?’