The uses of grand challenges in research policy and university management: something for everyone

ABSTRACT

The notion of grand challenges has become popular in research governance to support the allocation of research funding to societally beneficial topics. This article illustrates the flexibility and usefulness of grand challenges for university rectorates and project leaders when communicating with policy makers, research funders, and local industries and companies. The flexibility is beneficial to researchers and rectorate during the design stage of research projects. However, their utility diminishes in the later stages as other targets take precedence, particularly the need to demonstrate academic excellence. First, I explore the definitions of grand challenges in United States and European Union. Second, I provide a case study demonstrating the use of grand challenges in one technical research university. Last, I propose that if the aim in research policy is to orient research more towards societal benefit, more specific processual or outcome-oriented targets should be introduced to supplement grand challenges.

KEYWORDS:

• Grand challenges
• research policy
• science funding
• university management
• boundary objects
• articulation work

Introduction

Grand challenges have become fashionable in recent science policy as a means of supporting the position that research funding should be allocated to the study of societally relevant topics. They have been described as pressing global, societal challenges that require multidisciplinary research and expertise from fields such as the natural sciences and engineering, and collaboration between non-academic and academic communities (Mate et al. 2020; Flink and Kaldewey 2018; Kuhlmann and Rip 2019). One influential reference to grand challenges appears in the Sustainable Development Goals drawn up by the United Nations (Jütting 2020), thereby associating them with sustainability. They are also connected to the discussion on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), one of the main targets of which is to align research with the values, needs and expectations of society: such targets are often expressed in the form of grand challenges (Owen and Pansera 2019).

This article focuses on the uses of grand challenges in research governance and management. Analysing a case study from a Finnish university specialising in engineering, technical and business studies, I point out how the flexibility of the notion facilitates communication among academics and university management with non-academic members and groups. Drawing from the ideas of boundary objects and articulation work, I argue that researchers and university management could usefully utilise the idea of grand challenges in some contexts, particularly when launching research projects and communicating with non-academic groups such as business partners. However, there are also limits in this flexibility, particularly if key stakeholders such as the academic community and research funders prioritise other target types.

Scholars in science policy and technology have expressed various views on how grand challenges affect scientific knowledge production. Kuhlmann and Rip (2019) compare ‘Grand Societal Challenges’ with previous ideas in research policy, arguing that they strengthen the role of new actors. Flink and Kaldewey (2018) argue that ‘grand challenges’ should not be treated as a research category such as ‘frontier research’, which is connected to the notion of basic research but is used to discuss the position of scientific research and future targets of the scientific community. Foray, Mowery, and Nelson (2012) point out that research projects on grand challenges are not exclusively Big Science projects, and that many are funded by the private sector (Foray, Mowery, and Nelson 2012). There are similarities with RRI, including the idea that research should address societally relevant topics. However, unlike RRI with its substantive and procedural dimensions, there are no specified procedural requirements for grand challenges (Owen and Pansera 2019; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013).¹

Academic studies have focused on the uses of grand challenges in research policy and funding (see Hicks 2016; Kaldewey 2017). Meanwhile, less attention has been given to how researchers have responded to their increasing prominence, with the recent exceptions of Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner (2020) and Andrea Schikowitz (2020), who draw on Joan Fujimura’s (1987) notion of doable problems. Schikowitz’s (2020) main target is to find out how transdisciplinary research teams make sense of societal relevance as an objective. My aim in this paper is to study research projects adopting the idea of grand challenges but without the requirement of transdisciplinarity. In addition, I extend the perspective adopted by Kaltenbrunner (2020) in his analysis of existing research teams and their response strategies by focusing on university governance and newly-initiated research teams, which tend to be more open in deciding how to address grand challenges. Given that the context of this empirical study is Europe, the findings have particular relevance in terms of understanding the workings of European research policy: there have been several projects aimed at improving transdisciplinary collaboration between non-academic and academic groups, and strengthening the societal impact of academic research (Felt et al. 2016; Åm 2019; Schikowitz 2020; Conceição et al. 2020). This article contributes to this discussion by showing the various meanings given for grand challenges when aiming at wider societal outreach.

The article proceeds as follows. Next section focuses on how grand challenges are perceived in the European Union and the United States, pointing out that the notion may refer to scientific, industrial, or societal problems depending on the context. Third section describes the analytical ideas of boundary objects and articulation work. Then, I present an empirical case study of how university management and leaders of research teams benefited from the flexible nature of grand challenges to meet the needs of various non-academic stakeholders. In the discussion, I consider what the findings reveal about the use of grand challenges and research aimed at making a societal impact more generally.

Grand challenges in the United States and Europe

The origin of the notion of grand challenges is in the United States, but it has been very influential also in the research policy of the European Union since the mid-1990s. There are significant differences in how such challenges are approached in these two contexts, having an impact on the uses of this notion in local research governance. One of the first uses of the term was in the High-Performance Computing Act (1991). The act listed ten grand challenges, including high-performance supercomputing, the prediction of severe weather events and air pollution (Hicks 2016). It defines a ‘Grand Challenge’ as ‘a fundamental problem in science or engineering, with broad economic and scientific impact, whose solution will require the application of high-performance computing resources’ (Gore 1991). Hence, grand challenges were primarily problems emerging from scientific interests with broad social applicability. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation endorsed the notion in the early 2000s, launching the ‘Grand Challenges for Global Health’ initiative to support research related to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (Ulnicane 2016). In this usage, grand challenges were connected to global social issues and wellbeing.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has approached grand challenges primarily from the viewpoint of research-led interests. It sponsored several reports connected to challenges at the turn of the millennium, including ‘Grand Challenges in Environmental Sciences’ and ‘Grand Challenges for Engineering’ (Hicks 2016). The challenges mentioned in these reports were in line with the targets set by the research community, while also attracting public interest. The Obama administration echoed these sentiments in the Strategy for American Innovation (2009) report series, in which the grand challenges were engineering-oriented and exciting, such as ‘solar cells as cheap as paint’ (National Economic Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy 2009). The third version of this strategy, published in 2015, emphasised research done in collaboration with companies, including projects such as making humanity a multi-planetary species (with SpaceX), and dramatically reducing traffic fatalities with the introduction of self-driving cars (with Google) (National Economic Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy 2015). Recently, the ‘Ten Big Ideas’ programme of the NSF has offered funding for programmes with private-sector partners on topics that have ‘broad community appeal’ (Mervis 2016). It thus seems that grand challenges in the US emphasise research-business collaboration with broad community appeal.

Whereas grand challenges are frequently defined by scientists in the US, policy-makers and research-policy goals have had a more central role in the EU (Modic and Feldman 2017). The term grand challenges appears in the Lund declaration (2009), the document used as a basis for drafting the Horizon2020 programme. The Lund declaration mentions several topics that could be described as grand challenges, including climate change, water shortage and pandemics (CORDIS 2009; Lund declaration 2009). Thus defined, grand challenges resonate with global challenges that involve issues such as global finance, climate and material resources (European Commission 2010). One of the main recommendations in Horizon 2020 was that complex problems should be investigated by multidisciplinary teams of experts from different fields and disciplines (European Commission 2013). This interpretation introduces the requirement for interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in programmes supported by Horizon 2020 funding. The requirement is still visible. Horizon2020 continues as part of the Horizon Europe programme (European Union 2019), stressing the benefits of co-creation, and aiming to increase the involvement of citizens and end-users in industry (European Union 2019).

There are significant differences within the European Union in how nations approach grand challenges in their research policies (Egeland, Forsberg, and Maximova-Mentzoni 2019; van der Molen et al. 2019; Ladikas et al. 2019). In their study of Dutch research governance, Van der Molen et al. (2019) analyse the adoption of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and the institutionalisation of responsibility, showing that grand challenges was referred to in the development of collaborative systems among companies, government and universities, the target being that these systems would contribute to the country’s ‘global leadership’ (van der Molen et al. 2019). Grand challenges are sometimes described as thematically connected to sustainability (Jütting 2020). According to Mariana Mazzucato, for example, they are environmental, demographic, economic and social issues, and they call for cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral innovation (Mazzucato 2018). They are used both in the US and the EU to engage non-academic actors, represented as able to ‘capture the public imagination’ (National Economic Council and Office of Science and Technology Policy 2015) and being ‘bold, inspirational with wide societal relevance’ (Mazzucato 2018). These characteristics put non-academic actors and their interests in a strong role in the definition of grand challenges. In the following I show how this idea unfolded in university governance with a case study.

Boundary objects and articulation work

In the following I focus on how grand challenges were embraced in a technical university, particularly by its rectorate and research-project managers. This analysis uses the notions of boundary objects and articulation work, both of which describe interaction between academic and non-academic communities. These analytical notions enhance the understanding of how people assign different meanings to and targets for grand challenges. Articulation work denotes practices adopted by researchers in turning abstract societal ideas into ‘doable’ research (Fujimura 1992). Boundary objects refer to ideas or objects used by academic and non-academic participants for dissimilar purposes (Star and Griesemer 1989; Star 2010). These ideas are complementary: to make research doable, and to align between societal and academic targets, it is often useful for researchers to utilise and to work with boundary objects.

Articulation work emphasises that scientific problems cannot be defined only in the social world, and that researchers need to establish a solid connection between the social world, the laboratory and the experimental domain. In making research ‘doable’, scientists find a balance between simultaneous and often competing demands set for them on multiple levels of work organisation (Fujimura 1987). The work contains tasks such as planning, organising, monitoring, evaluation and coordination (Fujimura 1987), including activities aimed at aligning one’s research with the interests of employers or funding agencies, and with the research interests of others (Kaltenbrunner 2015). This idea has been fruitfully used to analyse the dynamics of scientific knowledge production, such as the incorporation of societal relevance and transdisciplinarity into the research agenda (Schikowitz 2020; Möllers 2016), mission-based research within a restricted time frame and the unpredictability of commercial partners (Kaltenbrunner 2020). The analytical notion suits particularly well to analyse grand challenges, because of the vague characterisation of grand challenges in research policy and the strong role it gives to non-academic actors and interests.

Given the influential role of non-academic actors and interests in grand challenges, one can conceptualise the notion of grand challenges analytically as a boundary object (Winter and Butler 2011). Boundary objects have been utilised to study various academic interactions, including collaboration across disciplines (Sundberg 2007; Piso, O’Rourke, and Weathers 2016), collaboration and communication between academic and non-academic groups (Shackley and Wynne 1996; Turnhout 2009), and communication between universities and society (Sataoen 2018). When boundary objects are effective they provide infrastructure that allows members of research projects to manage the tensions arising from the competing needs of the different domains, and to cooperate with each other (Winter and Butler 2011). Furthermore, objects fail to be boundary objects if they become isolated, confined to one or a limited number of contexts, or if the shifting priorities of stakeholders make them too vulnerable to incorporate various usages (Winter and Butler 2011). As I explain in discussion, grand challenges can be flexible enough to be successful boundary objects, particularly in the early stages of the research, but this successfulness tends to decrease as the research process unfolds.

Articulation work and boundary objects offer complementary insights to understand the relationship between science and society. Boundary objects enable researchers and non-academic groups to utilise the same idea or object for different purposes, and if it is successful, it has enough flexibility to work in diverse ways. Articulation work is needed when researchers face competing demands and targets, for example when they have diverging commitments, concerns, requirements and practices (Schikowitz 2020). I build my analysis on the assumption that boundary objects can be a part of articulation work – corresponding to Kaltenbrunner’s (2015) analysis of the relationship between articulation work and infrastructural inversion (see Bowker and Star 2000). Next, I will turn into my case study, showing how these analytical notions shed light on the uses of grand challenges in university research management.

Materials and methods

BizTech is a Finnish university specialising in technology, engineering and business. In 2015, it introduced a new strategy declaring that it would focus its research on four grand challenges. In pursuit of this goal, BizTech established six new interdisciplinary research units, called research platforms, which received annual seed funding of 350-400,000 euros for five years (2016–2020), the expectation being that they would seek additional research funding from external sources such as national funding agencies, Horizon2020 and other EU bodies. This strategy resulted in the creation of four completely new interdisciplinary research-collaboration units (‘platforms’ with several work-packages), and extended the disciplinary coverage of two existing research teams, offering abundant space for university management and platform leaders to plan a research agenda (Salmela, MacLeod, and Rosenschöld 2021). After the launch of the new strategy, researchers and the rectorate aimed at several goals, some of which were easier to achieve by using grand challenges. Grand challenges were used by research managers and platform leaders on several occasions, particularly when launching research platforms and setting up research collaboration projects. participate.

The main research material comprises interviews with members of the BizTech staff from various positions in management and research. Interviewees included university rectorate, platform leaders, research coordinators, professors, and senior and junior researchers (number of interviews 38, in total 28 interviewees).² The interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2021, and the length of interviews varied between 30 and 90 min.³ Some persons, including the rectorate and platform leaders, were interviewed multiple times throughout the years. The interviewees were asked semi-structured questions about their current work, research collaboration, interdisciplinarity, research funding, and research outcomes. Additional empirical material includes strategic plans of BizTech, initial research platform applications from 2015, and mid-term evaluation documents from 2018. This material supplements interview data, and illustrates the uses of grand challenges in BizTech policy documents.

The data was analysed using qualitative content analysis (Guest, MacQueen, and Namey 2012; Schreier 2012). Coding was done using Atlas.ti software. Coding strategies included theming the data as well as process coding and evaluative coding (Saldaña 2015). Theming was used to identify the main categories and topics from the list of issues discussed in the semi-structured interviews. To shed light on the historical process, I applied process coding to identify the various activities undertaken at BizTech and the interviewees’ reactions.⁴ I used evaluative coding of the key actors/institutions (individual platforms and research funders, business partners, the rectorate, and BizTech in general) to acknowledge the interviewees’ understanding of various actors working in the academic environment. I read interview transcripts multiple times and coded the transcripts in two main rounds. I coded the supplementary material, such as the strategic plans, with open coding. Further re-reading of the material was done throughout the analysis. Categories and themes were refined during the analysis, and in this phase I also reflected them against the analytical ideas of boundary objects and articulation work.

Results: the diversity of grand challenges

The notion of grand challenges was most prevalent and useful in the strategic work of BizTech during the early stages of the new strategic process, and in the design of new research platforms and projects. It succeeded particularly well in strengthening positive emotions about academic research. However, its effect became more limited over the course of the following years as BizTech staff were increasingly required to meet the standards set by the academic community and research funders.

This section starts with an identification of main actors with whom BizTech staff was in regular contact. Rest of the section follows a loose chronological order, given that the interests of different actors tend to carry differing amounts of weight throughout a research project (Metzger 2013; Parker and Crona 2012). In second sub-section, I consider grand challenges in early strategic work, in which the interests of high-level policymakers play a strong role. Next, in third sub-section I focus on the uses of grand challenges in the early work done by newly set research platforms, and in motivating different disciplines to work together. Fourth sub-section analyses the use of grand challenges when collaborating or planning to collaborate with industrial and business partners. The focus in the final subsection (5.5) is on research funding.

The main actor groups

Different academic and non-academic actors often have divergent and conflicting interests and expectations from research collaboration. There were four main actor groups with whom BizTech staff (including the rectorate, platform leaders and research coordinators, work-package leaders, and researchers) were in regular contact. As a sign of their importance, the staff actively reflected on the interests of these groups and aimed to comply with at least some of them. The groups were (i) national policymakers in the field of higher education, (ii) the academic community, (iii) research funders as well as (iv) industrial and business partners. These general categories correspond with research stakeholders identified in Parker and Crona’s (2012) study.

There are wide differences in the power and legitimacy of various actors in universities and research management. These differences are connected to the question of which actors should be considered research stakeholders. One of the intentional targets of responsible research is to include individuals representing diverse publics and epistemic communities, and to engage these groups in order to expand the knowledge and values behind the decisions (Foley, Bernstein, and Wiek 2016). It is very common for people and groups do active work in research governance to become stakeholders, for example by building attitudes and views that some topics or places matter (Metzger 2013). The main people with whom the staff did research-related work in BizTech were the aforementioned four groups (national policymakers, the academic community, research funders, and industrial and business partners). Other groups such as local communities, voluntary organisations and the general public were not much mentioned or discussed in the interviews.

Analysing the effect of different stakeholder types, Parker and Crona (2012) identify the following three aspects that affect an agent’s impact: Power, whether an actor has the coercive or normative force over others; Legitimacy, whether an agent is considered to have desirable, proper or appropriate interests; Urgency, how much the agent’s interests are time-sensitive or treated as important. The more visible these three elements are, the likelier it is that the actor’s ideas and demands will come into effect (Parker and Crona 2012). It is useful to acknowledge these three aspects, as they allow us to understand better the uneven positions of diverse actors. In the following I analyse how the interests of diverse actor groups were addressed and negotiated during the various stages of research. The groups had contrasting views about the main characteristics of grand challenges. Table 1 summarises these views.

Table 1. Grand challenges in different contexts.

Actor	Communicates with	Definition of grand challenges
HEI policymakers	University rectorate	Interesting ideas: aligned with strategic research areas
Academic community	Platform leaders & researchers	Something that motivates research: not in line with academic discussion
Business & industrial collaborators	University rectorate, platform leaders & researchers	Topics with commercial potential
Research funders	Platform leaders & researchers	Diverse definitions: Academy of Finland: In line with strategic research areas Horizon 2020: Societally important issues requiring transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research Strategic Research Council: Societally important topics requiring transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research Business Finland: New business opportunities

National policymakers in the field of higher education: Finnish national policymakers (from the Ministry of Higher Education) were in regular contact with the BizTech rectorate. The Ministry measured and evaluated BizTech on several criteria, including scientific excellence, number of degrees awarded and the ability to attract external research funding. The BizTech rectorate and research management generally considered these demands and ideas legitimate, and as needing a quick response.

The academic community and academic collaborators: This category includes professional societies and the research networks to which academics belong. Particularly the platform researchers identified themselves as academics, and their central goals were more often in research instead of higher education or business collaboration. New researchers were recruited according to their research merits, and research groups collaborated with other national and international research organisations. There were strong reasons for BizTech staff to achieve the goals set by these communities.

Industrial and business partners, current and potential: the BizTech rectorate and researchers had long worked with non-academic partners, particularly companies and industries. In some cases, these partners were former students or researchers. The wishes and demands of this group tended not to be as urgent as those of the previous two groups. Furthermore, these partners did not have much power over BizTech: in case of non-fruitful collaboration, researchers could select new collaborators.

Research funders: BizTech had four main sources of research funding, with divergent targets. Research grants from the Academy of Finland prioritised research excellence, the Horizon 2020 programme supported research with academic and non-academic objectives, and Business Finland promoted collaboration with industry. Funding was also available from the Strategic Research Council, launched by the Academy of Finland in 2015. This programme targeted the investigation of societal challenges, and applicant groups were expected to take a cross-disciplinary approach and to collaborate with non-academic members (Jalas et al. 2019). Funders’ demands were considered legitimate, and they were also urgent in the sense that without complying with them, researchers could not obtain funding. Academy of Finland research grants and Business Finland funding had traditionally played a major role in BizTech, and platform team leaders were expected to seek funding from these sources. In its new strategy, a key task for the rectorate was to encourage research platforms to apply for funding from the European Union.

The origins of grand challenges in top-level research governance: competence areas and industrial relevance

The notion of grand challenges was first used in the BizTech strategic plan in the mid-2010s. The strategy for 2016–2020 identified several societal challenges, presenting them as questions, such as ‘Will we burn up everything?’ and ‘Will we let Europe degenerate into the world’s backyard?’ The university also launched new research platforms, in which expertise was described in general terms such as ‘clean energy’ and ‘the circular economy’. The strategy was originally published as a slide presentation, loaded with full-page photographs. This type of visual presentation with general wordings is very typical of strategic plans because they need to contain elements that work with different audiences (Breznik and Law 2019; Sataoen 2018). The BizTech rectorate was very pleased with the reception of the new strategy, and particularly with how key stakeholders in Finnish higher education policy reacted to it. As one member reflected:

There were CEOs from big companies, and even [a key person in the Ministry of Environment], and then there was somebody from the diplomatic core, from ministries, and we had MANY different people. And many of them said, when we then talked about the strategy, and the example of [one project] […] and they said that ‘wow, this gives us hope’, because they could see that something indeed may come out of the university research. (Member of university rectorate, int. 3A, interviewed in English)

The six new research platforms were selected via an internal application process, and the final decisions were made by the rectorate and a board of external advisors. Research plans were assessed in terms of academic quality and the ‘overall importance’ of the topic. Overall importance was not specified in much detail, such as expecting it to be connected to sustainability or to expand conceptions about potential collaborators or stakeholders. Neither did the research plans include typical elements of responsible research and innovation, such as a focus on anticipation, reflexivity, inclusive deliberation, or responsiveness. One of the external evaluators described the rationale behind the assessment:

[I]n the academic area, if you do research, you, there is a big pressure to publications [publish], to move to scientific excellence. But that is one point. And the other point is, if you work on it, it costs a lot of money. Public money. […] There is also the strong focus: What can the society do with the results? Can you come to the new industrial activities? So involvement of industry, in technological issues is in my opinion a very important aspect. (Platform evaluator, int. 5A, interviewed in English)

The evaluator thus perceives the non-academic relevance of research primarily as industrial relevance. Non-academic engagement focused on business collaboration in the platform research plans, and societal contribution was described using expressions such as ‘the development of resource-efficient innovations’. This aspect highlights how dominant the target of business and industrial relevance was among the BizTech community. The implications of this extend to grand challenges, as the organisation had long traditions in approaching non-academic outreach from the perspective of industrial and economic relevance.

The Finnish Ministry of Education monitored the performance of BizTech, directing that the university should seek academic excellence and attract competitive research funding. This aspect emphasises that there are divergent interests also between the ministries and between administrative personnel and politicians. For example, a member from the Ministry of Environment may be more supportive towards the idea of grand challenges, but this support is not strategically as important as meeting the goals set by the Ministry of Education. In more general usages, the rectorate could use grand challenges to speak about the future, showing that the university was focused on selected strategic research areas:

I remember that when I had to explain what [BizTech] is doing, it was very useful to say that [BizTech] is concentrating on clean energy and clean water, circular economy and on sustainable business. I still remember it. And then people understood. It was very easy to sell. (Member of the university rectorate, int. 3A, interviewed in English)

This person speaks as if one of the main targets was to ‘sell’ the university’s research. This sentiment was common among the university rectorate: another even described themselves as a ‘salesperson’ (int. 2B). Even though this identification was humorous in tone, it reflects how essential it was for the BizTech rectorate to attract businesses, industry and policymakers. This target of selling can be seen as an example of articulation work, as in it, the target is to align the concrete problems of the non-academic partners with grand challenges and scientific problems (Schikowitz 2020).

Grand challenges in research projects: more interdisciplinarity, at least on paper

One major aim for the rectorate in the design of research platforms was to improve BizTech’s academic performance. Proposals were evaluated according to their potential scientific impact, and the recruitment of new post-docs was based on academic and research merits rather than societal engagement. This orientation aligned the research agenda for the new platforms with the university’s academic goals. As one member of the rectorate put it: ‘Our best researchers are located, in one way or another, in these platforms.’ This element is in line with the target of attracting external funding: without solid academic credentials, it was impossible for teams to secure funding from sources such as Horizon2020 and the Academy of Finland. However, the requirements set by these institutions were not always in line with the focus on grand challenges.

Several members of the BizTech staff found the emphasis on societal issues motivating and inspiring. The general assumption that interdisciplinary research would lead to new scientific discoveries in uncharted areas motivated some academics to become interested in interdisciplinary collaboration. Research platforms were made interdisciplinary to make it easier for research groups to address wide societal issues that were beyond the grasp of individual disciplines. However, there were several reasons why interdisciplinarity was difficult to achieve. One research coordinator referred to this when asked about increasing collaboration:

Now we have to create a vision because we don’t yet have anything practical to show. It’s difficult because even if they [BizTech researchers, who are less active with respect to platforms] are very enthusiastic about the platform, problems start to emerge when you really need to make something. It comes from the lack of time and such. (Platform coordinator, 10A, interviewed in Finnish)

As this coordinator’s comment implies, even if researchers found research on large societal issues interesting, articulation work was still needed to turn ideas into executable research.

Several studies have documented tensions in research projects aimed at making both an academic and a non-academic impact (see, e.g. Parker and Crona 2012; Möllers 2016; Schikowitz 2020). Such clashes were apparent in BizTech, particularly once the research platforms had started operating. Another researcher, who was in a research project in which the funder required groups to make both non-academic and academic contributions, described this balancing act as follows:

We need in this project to maintain a scientifically high quality and to make a strong societal impact, but those targets are at loggerheads. […] So, if all laboratories aim at scientific excellence, we are so far apart and don’t have much in common. In contrast, if we aim at making a societal impact we will cover a very broad spectrum and interact more with each other. […] But no laboratory can deal with such a huge scope. (Platform researcher, int. 27A, interviewed in Finnish)

This comment shows how ideas introduced in the social sphere do not produce valid research targets for researchers working in an academic, often discipline-oriented, environment. In the view of the interviewee, the primary target was to contribute to academic discussion, not to engage in societal relevance. The group decided to rely on a division of labour aimed at making a multidisciplinary contribution instead of integrating various types of knowledge. Moreover, outreach activities were allocated to an external contractor outside of the research community. Creating separate work tasks and allocating unwanted tasks to sub-contractors are typical features of articulation work (Fujimura 1992).

BizTech’s research platforms were built on topics that could be investigated by multidisciplinary teams. The target of one of them was to monitor and estimate emissions, including greenhouse gases, applying knowledge acquired in the fields of business and engineering, and in another it was to study material reuse. Teams engaging in cross-disciplinary collaboration tended to find it hard to identify the academic area to which their research would contribute. As one researcher put it:

I remember some situations where like everyone seems to think that okay, maybe in your field you would find a suitable journal. Maybe in your field. Maybe in your field, but not my field. [Laughing] (Platform leader, int. 17B, interviewed in English)

Hence, even though the researchers found the idea of interdisciplinarity attractive, it was not necessarily in line with more time-sensitive target of academic publishing. In this case, research teams needed to consider how essential it was for them to do interdisciplinary research if the goals could be reached by multidisciplinary research. Also, they needed to find ways to balance between the pressures set by the rectorate, research funders and their own academic career. This element highlights that if calling for more interdisciplinary engagement, these goals need to be recognised and supported by various actors in research environment, for example by research funders and institutional reward systems.

Grand challenges in industrial/business collaboration: potential (commercial) benefits

Another major objective in BizTech’s strategy was to strengthen collaboration with non-academic partners. BizTech is a technical university, and hence there was nothing new in the idea that research should be societally relevant. This relevance was often understood as being economically or industrially beneficial. Platform leaders tended to utilise their existing networks with local industries and companies when selecting potential collaborators, and some platforms recruited staff with such connections.⁵

It was essential for BizTech staff to establish new research collaborations with companies and industries in the beginning of the new strategic period. In several occasions, platform leaders assumed that they needed something practical as examples of successful research outcomes. These outcomes needed to be such that they would not compromise the target of academic publishing. One way for it was by using grand challenges in their communications with companies to arouse their interest in collaboration. Another related way was by promising practical solutions to problems currently faced by the companies. In the words of one coordinator:

Even though these themes are global and huge and so on, I can’t build a platform that would solve all these problems immediately. Instead, I need to find some common factors between the companies, so that they all have the same problem, so one might produce something that they all will benefit from in a reasonable amount of time. And then they will join in. (Platform coordinator, int. 10A, interviewed in Finnish)

This account highlights the abstract nature of the original BizTech strategy and research plans. If the university wanted to interest companies in collaboration, it would have to transform the general scope of the strategy into something from which ‘they all will benefit’. This could include the development of general solutions that would suit several contexts, as well as working with leading industrial organisations with an awareness of global trends. Potential industrial collaborators often had immediate needs rather than a general wish to engage in research collaboration to tackle grand challenges. This corresponds to findings reported by Andrea Schikowitz (2020) concerning tension in transdisciplinary research between practical and broader societal relevance: funders may expect local actors involved in transdisciplinary projects to act as representatives of broader society, even though their main problems may be more immediate than topics classified as grand challenges.

As I explained previously, the exploration of grand challenges requires active collaboration with non-academic audiences. Not all the collaborators in Horizon2020 are company representatives, and they may include local and regional authorities as well as voluntary organisations (European Commission 2016). In BizTech there was no requirement for research platforms to widen their inclusiveness. Consequently, if non-traditional research collaborators were needed, they should have been included into research teams during later stages of research. This is a step that most platforms did not take. One central reason for the absence of non-traditional research collaborators is the funding environment, which did not usually necessitate this type of inclusion. Furthermore, the lack of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary training in BizTech, as well as the lack of procedural dimension such as anticipation, reflexivity, inclusiveness and responsiveness (AIRR) in research platforms (see Owen and Pansera 2019), and the focus on academic contributions in the evaluation of research success all contributed to this absence.

Grand challenges in external research funding: sometimes on the funder’s agenda

One key target of the BizTech strategy was to increase the amount and diversity of external funding, thus one of the first tasks for research-platform leaders was to apply for external funding. The rectorate highlighted the importance of attracting funding from the European Union in addition to applying for research grants from the Academy of Finland and Business Finland. The BizTech strategy shared substantial similarities with Horizon2020: many calls issued by Horizon2020 programmes fell within the areas of expertise in BizTech, such as the circular economy and resource efficiency. Nevertheless, project leaders had to adjust the original research plan when applying for funding from this source. As one coordinator explained:

[W]e have to expand the scope and prioritise the research topics, and take part in those collaboration networks where it is possible at the moment. We can’t get stuck too much on those things we wrote. Because I think that the level of the research plan for the platform is quite abstract, and the implementation – especially when the university couldn’t give us so much funding – the implementation depends a lot on the funding we can get outside of [BizTech]. (Platform leader, int. 9B, interviewed in English)

As discussed in previously, grand challenges may include research projects with an academic or practical orientation. In BizTech’s funding environment, opportunities launched by the Academy of Finland tended to prioritise scholarly output, whereas Business Finland leaned heavily towards industrial development. The funding conditions set by Business Finland deviated quite strongly from general societal benefit in that applicants had to provide information about their ‘growth vision’ and evaluate ‘customer needs’. However, it was quite easy for research platforms to provide this type of information, given that in the initial drafting of the research platforms, societal importance had been approached from this type of perspective.

The rectorate also encouraged platforms to seek funding from the new Academy of Finland programme for strategic research. This funding programme might have been in line with grand challenges, as it sets each time a list of societal challenges as funded topics and expects teams to have interdisciplinary coverage. Even though research platforms’ expertise covered several disciplines, however, they were not necessarily eligible because the funder had mandated that applicants include at least two research institutions. Five years after their launch, BizTech research platforms have had modest success in securing strategic research funding, indicating that this instrument has not altered the main sources of BizTech funding.

Even though the original BizTech strategy incorporated the idea of societal contribution, many central targets during the following years were connected to academic contribution. This does not necessarily imply a turning away from the grand challenges or from interdisciplinarity, but it does indicate that the best way for the rectorate to illustrate the success of the research platforms was with reference to their ability to attract funding from prestigious funding instruments prioritising academic merit. Discussing lessons learned from the original research platforms in early 2021, one member of the rectorate remarked:

And maybe one feature that we are now expecting even stronger, that those research platforms should help us to get ERC grants or academic professor positions [research-led position funded by the Academy of Finland], or something like that, but are very competitive funding. So not only collecting money, but having, let's say, this really demanding funding sources, like ERC or Academia Finland. Quality of the money, not just the amount of the money. (Member of the university rectorate, group interview, interview in English)

This statement indicates that the BizTech rectorate set aside its original idea of attracting funding from various sources and instead adopted the view that was in accordance with the objectives of academically oriented research. To achieve this, it was essential to meet the conditions set by the ‘really demanding funding sources’. It is noteworthy that the rectorate representative quoted above does not speak about the Horizon Europe programme. They refer instead to funding from the European Research Council (ERC), which has several programmes prioritising academic excellence over societal outreach (European Research Council 2021).

Discussion: the flexibility of grand challenges

I have now analysed the notion of grand challenges and its use in the research governance, and its application in one European university. First, I considered the differences in the use of this notion in the US and the EU. In the US, the notion refers mainly to academically ambitious research that introduces new dynamics between science and companies. In the European Union, the focus tends to be on projects aiming at societal transformation, even though this goal has been connected particularly to collaboration with industry and companies. I conducted a case study to find out how researchers and university management benefited from the flexible nature of grand challenges to balance different needs. The flexibility was effective in communications with national policymakers, industrial collaborators and the public in general, whereas the conditions imposed by funders and the targeted academic publications distanced research projects from societal contribution during the later stages of research process. Next, I discuss what these observations reveal about the uses of grand challenges more generally.

Many academic definitions of grand challenges emphasise their capacity to decrease the distance between academic and non-academic communities (Kuhlmann and Rip 2019; Lund declaration 2009; Modic and Feldman 2017). Kuhlmann and Rip (2014, 2019) describe them as open-ended missions with heterogeneous elements and forces. The authors further suggest that studying them requires a socio-technical system-oriented approach, and that they are best addressed by public-private consortia with the aim of developing social innovation (Kuhlmann and Rip 2014, 2019). A focus on grand challenges may also give funding agencies a more influential position in terms of defining or managing collaborative action (Kuhlmann and Rip 2014). The notion of grand challenges was used to attract companies and policymakers, whereas the targets of the research collaboration did not necessarily digress much from traditional targets of university-industry cooperation. The openness of grand challenges allowed BizTech to work with non-academic groups, but it did not suffice in terms of satisfying demands set by funders, or when working towards the target of academic contributions. These experiences highlight that even though grand challenges may look like open-ended, institutional conditions and targets tend to make projects more focused and restricted.

To some extent, the flexibility of grand challenges made it possible for BizTech staff, particularly the rectorate and platform leaders, to balance between competing pressures of academic excellence and extra-academic goals. This work required an articulation of different demands, and alignment between these competing understandings of research success. The staff used the idea of grand challenges to show non-academic partners that research collaboration would allow the reaching of multiple goals: such a focus could benefit society in general, provide companies with solutions or products, and enhance academic performance. On a general level, research topics such as the circulation economy were considered societally valuable, and policymakers in higher education were also keen to promote a vision of the university as being capable of satisfying these various targets. Grand challenges could also be used as a catchphrase to attract industrial and business partners to join new research projects, being flexible enough to cover the traditional target of industrial relevance.

Meanwhile, it was central that researchers did not align their own research contribution too closely with the demands set by non-academic collaborators. One member of the rectorate emphasised the importance of the ‘quality of the money’ strongly during the final group interview with the BizTech rectorate. This implies that even though the BizTech staff found it useful to entertain ideas such as grand challenges, interdisciplinarity and societal contribution, they were not presented as primary targets of academic performance. Following the introduction of New Public Management in universities, managements have focused on monitoring and evaluating performance (Luukkonen and Thomas 2016), but evaluative targets such as competitiveness, efficiency and publication often conflict with the goal of more open-ended and reflexive engagement between science and society (Felt et al. 2016).

Some authors have established a connection between Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and the study of grand challenges (e.g. van der Molen et al. 2019). Behind this connection is the RRI’s aim to align research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society, targets that are frequently described as grand challenges (Owen et al. 2021). However, as indicated in this case study, there are significant differences between grand challenges and RRI. Several accounts of RRI establish processual requirements for research and innovation (R&I) activities, emphasising that research organisations should develop processes of anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness (Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013). Research funders may have an active role in promoting these practices, such as stipulating that all funding proposals should account for how they will take into account the four dimensions (Åm 2019; Owen et al. 2021). As I have shown in the last four sections, the notion of grand challenges may be used in university research governance without connecting it to any of these requirements.

The BizTech rectorate had originally set that research platforms needed be interdisciplinary, and there needed to be expertise from at least three disciplinary areas in each of them. There were several reasons why this goal of interdisciplinarity was difficult to achieve, including grant funders’ guidelines, disciplinary differences and standards related to academic publication (Salmela, MacLeod, and Rosenschöld 2021). In practice, it sufficed for research platforms to be multidisciplinary without aiming at knowledge integration. In terms of doability, this was a reasonable strategy. In the third sub-section of the analysis I described how a research project adopted a multidisciplinary research strategy to pursue academic, discipline-centred excellence while delegating societal outreach to an external contractor. It is well recognised that interdisciplinary research tends to be less rewarded and supported by the academic system than disciplinary research (Müller and Kaltenbrunner 2019; Felt et al. 2016). The results of my case study indicate that these dynamics are also likely to affect the adoption of grand challenges.

In his study of two German research groups, Kaltenbrunner (2020) warns that grand challenges may become overly diluted as academics integrate mission-oriented incentives into financial planning and the drafting of research agendas (Kaltenbrunner 2020). Considered as boundary objects, one could say that grand challenges do not impose many specific requirements on research. This corresponds with Calvert’s (2006) analysis showing how the notions of ‘basic and applied research’ offer a flexible collection of characteristics from which researchers and policymakers may pick and choose depending on the context. In this respect, the use of grand challenges reflects the use of the ‘third mission’ in research governance, whereby one notion could incorporate entrepreneurial targets, regional development and research dissemination (Sataoen 2018). However, my case study found that this flexibility was enough to show to the industries and companies why they should become interested in research collaboration, but within the academic community it was surpassed by academic targets set by the major research funders.

As I discuss in the first main section, within the European Union the study of grand challenges is often associated with transdisciplinarity, in which the research target is to integrate actors from science and society and to broaden societal responsiveness (Schikowitz 2020). Schikowitz (2020) mentions various ways of understanding research relevance, in terms of policy, practicality and scientific contribution, for example, and the differences between these targets may give rise to conflict in transdisciplinary research. The strong position of the academic community in BizTech and the priorities set by higher education policymakers increased the need for the rectorate and managers to align their research with standards set by the scientific community. One way of enhancing the interconnection between research and societal concerns is to offer scientists general training so that they would understand the rationale behind science-society integration policies (Åm 2019). In this case study, there was not much institutional support of research aimed at making a societal contribution with other non-academic actors than business or industrial partners.

It is clear from the BizTech case that economic priorities were at the fore when the aim was to orient research towards non-academic goals. These findings reflect problems connected with the research policy of the European Union in encouraging societally relevant research. The target of the European Framework Programmes has been to promote socio-technical integration, which in funded programmes has primarily meant active participation with industrial partners rather than public dialogue (Rodríguez, Fisher, and Schuurbiers 2013). As Conceição et al. (2020) observe, between 1998 and 2020 it became less and less common in European Commission action plans to highlight the need for public communication or education. Not much attention was given to these outreach targets in platform creation and evaluation in BizTech either: a focus on grand challenges could create momentum without setting public impact as a clearly designated target. In this case study, a focus on grand challenges did not imply that the research projects had become more engaged in public dialogue, or open-ended in general.

From this case study, we can observe that the notion of grand challenges was most useful at the early stages of research process. However, in the later stages of the strategic process, the goal of academic contribution became more significant. This is shown by how strongly the BizTech rectorate viewed research-based external funding as the final measure of success. The flexible idea of grand challenges was not anymore as central for research managers and researchers in this setting.

Conclusions

At the first sight, the idea of grand challenges may seem quite straightforward, implying that academic research should have societal relevance and utility. The case of BizTech shows that the notion can be incorporated with a wealth of meanings and targets, working well as a boundary object as it can cross several social worlds. It can arouse excitement and interest in university research, which is central in the early stages of research when seeking for potential collaborators. The rectorate and leaders of research teams could refer to societal needs when speaking about various research projects and goals, ranging from academic publications to R&D projects.

However, without substantial changes in the general research environment, including in funding conditions, interdisciplinary training, the evaluation of research success and the process-based guidelines such as in RRI, the notion of grand challenges was less useful in changing the composition of research teams or setting new types of research outcomes. If the aim of grand challenges is to have a wider societal relevance, it should be supplemented with more specified processual conditions or outcome-oriented measures. This article has showed how the absence of these conditions or measures can affect the uses of grand challenges.

Availability of data and material

Available upon request.

Acknowledgements

The author is thankful for the support and comments given by Michiru Nagatsu and Tero Ijäs when conducting this study. The author would also like to thank the members of the research team ‘Interdisciplining the university – Prospects for sustainable knowledge production’ – Mikko Salmela, Martina Merz, Miles MacLeod, Inkeri Koskinen, Johan Munck af Rosenschöld, Leena Tulkki and Uskali Mäki – for contributing to the interview data collection, and for commenting and discussing ideas expressed in this manuscript. The author also thanks Wolfgang Kaltenbrunner, Mario Pansera and the anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 298049], the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the University of Helsinki.

Notes on contributors

Anita Välikangas

Anita Välikangas is a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Helsinki.

Notes

1 The substantive dimension in RRI includes issues such as ethical acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability, whereas the procedural dimension focuses on anticipation, reflexivity, inclusiveness and responsiveness (AIRR) (Owen and Pansera 2019; Stilgoe, Owen, and Macnaghten 2013).

2 In total, there were 28 interviewees, and the total number of interviews was 38: BizTech rectorate - four people (a total of six interviews, one of them a group interview); research platform leaders (five people, nine interviews in total); platform coordinators working closely with platform leaders (two people, four interviews); work-package leaders including lecturers and professors (14 people, 14 interviews); and postdocs and PhD students (eight people, eight interviews). Most of the interviewed researchers specialised in engineering or technical science. The interviews were conducted in English or Finnish. Citations originally in Finnish have been translated by the author.

3 This material has been collected in a research project with seven team members. In most of the interviews there were two interviewers from the team. The author contributed and participated to several of these interviews, particularly to those relevant for the scope of this paper. For more details about the BizTech interview data, see Salmela, MacLeod, and Rosenschöld (2021).

4 The process categories included: creating the platforms, starting the platforms, evaluating them (beginning and mid-term evaluation), currently working in them, and anticipation/expectations of them.

5 Meanwhile, the idea of grand challenges works well in public communication, if there is a need for researchers to have this goal. As an example of this, BizTech staff occasionally appeared in the Finnish media to present the outcomes of their research. Unfortunately, it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss these actions at length.