Fostering transformative research final
Repor t
July 2016
in BRief
Fostering Transformative Research in the
Geographical Sciences
Transformative research drives science forward by redeining entire ields of study,
forming new research communities, and even launching new industries. Such research
brings great rewards, but also carries great risks for funding agencies that are challenged
to identify, at their earliest stages, those projects that have the potential to yield transformative results. By reviewing how transformative research emerged in the past, the
report identiies several factors that could help nurture such groundbreaking projects in
the geographical sciences, including the open sharing of ideas, rapid dissemination of
indings, and breaking down institutional barriers between disciplines.
in contrast to basic research, which moves forward through the continuous, incremental accumulation of knowledge, transformative research pioneers new ideas, new
technologies, or new questions to rapidly push the boundaries of current understanding.
Such projects have the potential to yield great advances—but at the same time, their
unconventional nature brings a signiicant chance of failure.
Research-funding agencies have long sought to encourage and support transformative research through special funding initiatives, but assessments of these programs
provide a mixed picture of their effectiveness. A central and ongoing challenge lies in
identifying transformative research projects at the time they are proposed—before any
results have been generated-- in order to minimize the risk to funding agencies.
At the request of the national Science foundation (nSf), this report provides insight
into how transformative science in the geographical sciences evolved in the past, in order
to help nurture and bring transformative research to fruition in the future. To carry out its
charge, the committee gathered information from a broad cross-section of the geographical sciences and afiliated disciplines, as well as experts in assessing research outcomes,
via a workshop, an online questionnaire, and a literature review. Many of the report’s
indings and recommendations are directed to the report’s primary sponsor, the nSf’s
Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) program, but are also relevant to the work of other
agencies, institutions, and individuals.
Recent tRansfoRmative advances in the GeoGRaphical
sciences
The committee reviewed ive transformative areas of geographical research that have
taken shape over the past 65 years to explore how transformative research has emerged
An ongoing challenge
lies in identifying
transformative research
projects at the time they
are proposed.
in the past, and to identify early indicators of transformative
potential of this research. These ive examples are identiied
under the broad rubrics of Political ecology, Spatial Social
Theory, Remote Sensing of the environment, Geographic
information Sciences (GiS), and Global Climate Change. The
inventors and early innovators, sources of ideas, and stimuli
responsible for the development and widespread diffusion of
these transformative research areas within and beyond the
geographical sciences were considered.
puttinG it toGetheR: a Recipe foR
tRansfoRmative ReseaRch
By assessing the ive case studies identiied in Box 1, the
report’s authoring committee identiied factors important to
the emergence and success of transformative research.
1. technology push or market pull—The impetus
for innovation has often been a technology push, where
inventors recognize that a newly created technology or idea
has an unrecognized, widespread need. Market pull is where
an innovation is created to meet a demand.
2. evolution or Revolution—The case studies outlined
in the report indicate that transformative research can arise
in a rapid, revolutionary manner, or over a relatively long
time period. One common element is that the innovators
worked broadly beyond disciplinary constraints, were effective communicators, and had persistence in advancing the
transformative research agenda.
3. effective modes of diffusion and development—The diffusion and further development of research
ideas can be facilitated by face-to-face meetings and direct
communication between developers and early adopters
through a series of workshops, symposia, and formal research
groups. Another key factor is the timely and open distribution
of data upon completion of studies—this is a requirement for
research supported by the national Science foundation and
other U.S. government agencies.
These observations led to the development of four overarching indings:
finding 1: Transformative innovations can arise from a wide
variety of individuals and groups, from a wide variety of intellectual sources, including older and long-ignored ideas, and
through revolutionary and evolutionary paths.
finding 2: An open innovation system in academic sciences
and research can encourage the exchange of information,
even among competing groups, and helps to achieve the
desire of the nation, funding agency, or foundation for the
most rapid, productive, and eficient academic research
sector.
finding 3: The promotion of rapid communication among
innovators and adopters is critical for the development as
well as the diffusion of transformative innovations.
finding 4: There are no established indicators that would
identify speciic individuals or concepts as sources of transformative innovation prior to the conduct of research.
the cuRRent context: challenGes to the
ReseaRch enteRpRise
The examples of transformative science identiied in this report
developed in an era of strong federal and state investment in
science, and the parallel development of America’s system of
higher education. Many of today’s most challenging problems
require approaches that are of a similar scale and scope, but
with scarce resources and shifting priorities, funders are challenged to choose between protecting existing portfolios
of projects and programs, or redirecting resources toward
more revolutionary problem solving. Placing the potential for
transformative research in the geographical sciences into this
contemporary context, the committee sees four challenges to
the American research enterprise:
1. federal research and development (R&D) funding levels are
likely to decline, or at least remain stable, in the near term.
Competition for scarce resources will pit existing programs
and institutions against revolutionary developments.
figure 1. The growth of the terms Political ecology, Social Theory, Remote Sensing, GiS, and Climate
Change in published books held in the Google database, normalized by the total output of books. Data
from Google Books n-gram Viewer (Lin et al., 2012; http://books.google.com/ngrams).
2.
3.
4.
After three decades of growth, state-level funding for
R&D has stabilized and is in decline in many states.
in the near term, demographics point to a proportionately smaller cohort of individuals available to pursue
undergraduate education. Pursuit of graduate education
is responsive to levels of undergraduate debt, stagnant
wages, and uncertainty over future investments in
further education.
Developing countries are building educational systems
capable of supplying the skilled labor that is required to
attract R&D investments. The U.S. system of R&D and
higher education now has rivals.
fosteRinG tRansfoRmative ReseaRch
today
focusing its discussion on the geographical sciences—and
speciically, work funded by the nSf’s GSS program—the
report’s authoring committee identiied factors that could help
maximize funding investments in transformative research.
initiatives in education—The GSS program helps
prepare young geographical scientists for research careers
by granting funding through programs such as the Research
experience for Undergraduates and Research experience for
Teachers initiatives, and makes additional types of awards
in support of geographic education at all levels. While these
awards often give students valuable lab and research experience, the awards could do more to help foster transformative
research by engendering the kinds of critical, creative, and
independent thinking that such research requires.
Recommendation 1: Gss should examine the degree
to which its awards, especially those in support of
geographic education, foster the potential for transformative research among the students who beneit
from these awards, and encourage principal investigators to give attention to such potential in their
proposals.
the Research culture—The geographical sciences are
already a mulidisciplinary culture, in which collaboraion
across the boundaries of the tradiional disciplines is not
only common, but encouraged. In the past, transformaive
ideas have oten stemmed from such collaboraion. There
remain many ways, however, in which the diversity of the
geographical sciences could be further strengthened. For
example, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
individuals, and ethnic minoriies may sill be underrepresented, especially in certain areas of the geographical
sciences, despite the potenial for such groups to bring
new, transformaive ideas to the research table.
further, although collaboration with europe and many
Commonwealth countries is common in the geographical
sciences, and collaboration with researchers in China is
increasing, collaboration with many other parts of the world
remains adversely impacted by differences in language and
research culture, problems with travel and communication,
personal security, and the lack of bilateral or multilateral
funding programs.
Much could be done to foster increased interaction with
industry, the military, and the intelligence community. for
example, exchange and internship programs could provide
increased opportunities for exposure to new and potentially
transformative ideas.
Recommendation 2: Gss should continue to emphasize the nsf policies and programs that are designed
to increase ethnic, age, and gender diversity among
its awardees.
Recommendation 3: in the interests of fostering
transformative research, Gss should also recognize
the importance of research collaboration among
nations, among disciplines, and among academics,
industry, government, and the military and intelligence communities.
funding practices—The processes of proposal review are
essentially conservative, and can work against projects that
figure 2. federal outlays for the conduct of research and development, 1962-2012. The dark blue line
shows declining outlays as a percent of GDP (right-hand y axis) while the light blue line shows total outlays
in 2013 dollars (left-hand y axis). Source: Congressional Budget Ofice, 2014.
might offer the potential for high return, but also carry high
risk. Thus, one way to encourage transformative research
might lie in a review and revision of the proposal process.
for example, nSf has modiied the rules it uses to evaluate
submissions to its CReATiV program, one of the programs
designed to foster transformative research, by raising the
dollar limit on projects that can be approved without external
review by more than an order of magnitude. Presumably this
stems from the belief that external reviewers are more likely
to be conservative than nSf’s own program oficers, who are
likely to be invested in the foundation’s goal of supporting
transformative research. Another option could be termed
“progressive funding”, in which promising ideas would irst
be awarded small seed grants through a streamlined review
process. if the results were promising, a subsequent proposal
could be made for a second, larger phase of funding. Keeping
the initial award small would reduce the risk to the agency.
Recommendation 4: in the interest of being more
supportive of transformative research, Gss should
work with other groups within and beyond nsf to
explore and evaluate the novel approaches to research
funding and proposal review discussed in the report.
References
Congressional Budget Ofice (CBO). 2014. Federal Policies and Innovation. Washington, DC: CBO.
Lin, Y., J. B. Michel, e. L. Aiden, J. Orwant, W. Brockman, and S. Petrov. 2012. Syntactic annotations for the Google Books n-gram corpus. Proceedings of
the ACL 2012 System Demonstrations. pp. 169–174. Association for Computational Linguistics.
committee on identifyinG tRansfoRmative ReseaRch in the GeoGRaphical sciences
michael f. Goodchild (Chair), University of California, Santa Barbara (emeritus); amy K. Glasmeier, Massachusetts institute
of Technology, Cambridge; Glen m. macdonald, University of California, Los Angeles; mark d. lange (Study Director),
elizabeth a. eide (Board Director), nicholas d. Rogers (Financial and Research Associate), eric J. edkin (Senior Program
Assistant), national Academies of Sciences, engineering, and Medicine
For More Information . . . The national Academies appointed the above committee of experts to address the speciic task
requested by the national Science foundation. The members volunteered their time for this activity; their report is peerreviewed and signed off by both the committee members and the national Academies of Sciences, engineering, and Medicine.
This report brief was prepared by the Academies based on the committee’s report.
for more information, contact the Board on earth Sciences and Resources at (202) 334-2744 or visit http:/nationalacademies.org/besr. Copies of Fostering Transformative Research in the Geographical Sciences are available from the national
Academies Press, 500 fifth Street, nW, Washington, D.C. 20001; (800) 624-6242; www.nap.edu.
Permission granted to reproduce this brief in its entirety with no additions or alterations.
Permission for images/igures must be obtained from their original source.
Division on earth and Life Studies
Copyright 2016 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
July 2016
in BRief
Fostering Transformative Research in the
Geographical Sciences
Transformative research drives science forward by redeining entire ields of study,
forming new research communities, and even launching new industries. Such research
brings great rewards, but also carries great risks for funding agencies that are challenged
to identify, at their earliest stages, those projects that have the potential to yield transformative results. By reviewing how transformative research emerged in the past, the
report identiies several factors that could help nurture such groundbreaking projects in
the geographical sciences, including the open sharing of ideas, rapid dissemination of
indings, and breaking down institutional barriers between disciplines.
in contrast to basic research, which moves forward through the continuous, incremental accumulation of knowledge, transformative research pioneers new ideas, new
technologies, or new questions to rapidly push the boundaries of current understanding.
Such projects have the potential to yield great advances—but at the same time, their
unconventional nature brings a signiicant chance of failure.
Research-funding agencies have long sought to encourage and support transformative research through special funding initiatives, but assessments of these programs
provide a mixed picture of their effectiveness. A central and ongoing challenge lies in
identifying transformative research projects at the time they are proposed—before any
results have been generated-- in order to minimize the risk to funding agencies.
At the request of the national Science foundation (nSf), this report provides insight
into how transformative science in the geographical sciences evolved in the past, in order
to help nurture and bring transformative research to fruition in the future. To carry out its
charge, the committee gathered information from a broad cross-section of the geographical sciences and afiliated disciplines, as well as experts in assessing research outcomes,
via a workshop, an online questionnaire, and a literature review. Many of the report’s
indings and recommendations are directed to the report’s primary sponsor, the nSf’s
Geography and Spatial Sciences (GSS) program, but are also relevant to the work of other
agencies, institutions, and individuals.
Recent tRansfoRmative advances in the GeoGRaphical
sciences
The committee reviewed ive transformative areas of geographical research that have
taken shape over the past 65 years to explore how transformative research has emerged
An ongoing challenge
lies in identifying
transformative research
projects at the time they
are proposed.
in the past, and to identify early indicators of transformative
potential of this research. These ive examples are identiied
under the broad rubrics of Political ecology, Spatial Social
Theory, Remote Sensing of the environment, Geographic
information Sciences (GiS), and Global Climate Change. The
inventors and early innovators, sources of ideas, and stimuli
responsible for the development and widespread diffusion of
these transformative research areas within and beyond the
geographical sciences were considered.
puttinG it toGetheR: a Recipe foR
tRansfoRmative ReseaRch
By assessing the ive case studies identiied in Box 1, the
report’s authoring committee identiied factors important to
the emergence and success of transformative research.
1. technology push or market pull—The impetus
for innovation has often been a technology push, where
inventors recognize that a newly created technology or idea
has an unrecognized, widespread need. Market pull is where
an innovation is created to meet a demand.
2. evolution or Revolution—The case studies outlined
in the report indicate that transformative research can arise
in a rapid, revolutionary manner, or over a relatively long
time period. One common element is that the innovators
worked broadly beyond disciplinary constraints, were effective communicators, and had persistence in advancing the
transformative research agenda.
3. effective modes of diffusion and development—The diffusion and further development of research
ideas can be facilitated by face-to-face meetings and direct
communication between developers and early adopters
through a series of workshops, symposia, and formal research
groups. Another key factor is the timely and open distribution
of data upon completion of studies—this is a requirement for
research supported by the national Science foundation and
other U.S. government agencies.
These observations led to the development of four overarching indings:
finding 1: Transformative innovations can arise from a wide
variety of individuals and groups, from a wide variety of intellectual sources, including older and long-ignored ideas, and
through revolutionary and evolutionary paths.
finding 2: An open innovation system in academic sciences
and research can encourage the exchange of information,
even among competing groups, and helps to achieve the
desire of the nation, funding agency, or foundation for the
most rapid, productive, and eficient academic research
sector.
finding 3: The promotion of rapid communication among
innovators and adopters is critical for the development as
well as the diffusion of transformative innovations.
finding 4: There are no established indicators that would
identify speciic individuals or concepts as sources of transformative innovation prior to the conduct of research.
the cuRRent context: challenGes to the
ReseaRch enteRpRise
The examples of transformative science identiied in this report
developed in an era of strong federal and state investment in
science, and the parallel development of America’s system of
higher education. Many of today’s most challenging problems
require approaches that are of a similar scale and scope, but
with scarce resources and shifting priorities, funders are challenged to choose between protecting existing portfolios
of projects and programs, or redirecting resources toward
more revolutionary problem solving. Placing the potential for
transformative research in the geographical sciences into this
contemporary context, the committee sees four challenges to
the American research enterprise:
1. federal research and development (R&D) funding levels are
likely to decline, or at least remain stable, in the near term.
Competition for scarce resources will pit existing programs
and institutions against revolutionary developments.
figure 1. The growth of the terms Political ecology, Social Theory, Remote Sensing, GiS, and Climate
Change in published books held in the Google database, normalized by the total output of books. Data
from Google Books n-gram Viewer (Lin et al., 2012; http://books.google.com/ngrams).
2.
3.
4.
After three decades of growth, state-level funding for
R&D has stabilized and is in decline in many states.
in the near term, demographics point to a proportionately smaller cohort of individuals available to pursue
undergraduate education. Pursuit of graduate education
is responsive to levels of undergraduate debt, stagnant
wages, and uncertainty over future investments in
further education.
Developing countries are building educational systems
capable of supplying the skilled labor that is required to
attract R&D investments. The U.S. system of R&D and
higher education now has rivals.
fosteRinG tRansfoRmative ReseaRch
today
focusing its discussion on the geographical sciences—and
speciically, work funded by the nSf’s GSS program—the
report’s authoring committee identiied factors that could help
maximize funding investments in transformative research.
initiatives in education—The GSS program helps
prepare young geographical scientists for research careers
by granting funding through programs such as the Research
experience for Undergraduates and Research experience for
Teachers initiatives, and makes additional types of awards
in support of geographic education at all levels. While these
awards often give students valuable lab and research experience, the awards could do more to help foster transformative
research by engendering the kinds of critical, creative, and
independent thinking that such research requires.
Recommendation 1: Gss should examine the degree
to which its awards, especially those in support of
geographic education, foster the potential for transformative research among the students who beneit
from these awards, and encourage principal investigators to give attention to such potential in their
proposals.
the Research culture—The geographical sciences are
already a mulidisciplinary culture, in which collaboraion
across the boundaries of the tradiional disciplines is not
only common, but encouraged. In the past, transformaive
ideas have oten stemmed from such collaboraion. There
remain many ways, however, in which the diversity of the
geographical sciences could be further strengthened. For
example, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
individuals, and ethnic minoriies may sill be underrepresented, especially in certain areas of the geographical
sciences, despite the potenial for such groups to bring
new, transformaive ideas to the research table.
further, although collaboration with europe and many
Commonwealth countries is common in the geographical
sciences, and collaboration with researchers in China is
increasing, collaboration with many other parts of the world
remains adversely impacted by differences in language and
research culture, problems with travel and communication,
personal security, and the lack of bilateral or multilateral
funding programs.
Much could be done to foster increased interaction with
industry, the military, and the intelligence community. for
example, exchange and internship programs could provide
increased opportunities for exposure to new and potentially
transformative ideas.
Recommendation 2: Gss should continue to emphasize the nsf policies and programs that are designed
to increase ethnic, age, and gender diversity among
its awardees.
Recommendation 3: in the interests of fostering
transformative research, Gss should also recognize
the importance of research collaboration among
nations, among disciplines, and among academics,
industry, government, and the military and intelligence communities.
funding practices—The processes of proposal review are
essentially conservative, and can work against projects that
figure 2. federal outlays for the conduct of research and development, 1962-2012. The dark blue line
shows declining outlays as a percent of GDP (right-hand y axis) while the light blue line shows total outlays
in 2013 dollars (left-hand y axis). Source: Congressional Budget Ofice, 2014.
might offer the potential for high return, but also carry high
risk. Thus, one way to encourage transformative research
might lie in a review and revision of the proposal process.
for example, nSf has modiied the rules it uses to evaluate
submissions to its CReATiV program, one of the programs
designed to foster transformative research, by raising the
dollar limit on projects that can be approved without external
review by more than an order of magnitude. Presumably this
stems from the belief that external reviewers are more likely
to be conservative than nSf’s own program oficers, who are
likely to be invested in the foundation’s goal of supporting
transformative research. Another option could be termed
“progressive funding”, in which promising ideas would irst
be awarded small seed grants through a streamlined review
process. if the results were promising, a subsequent proposal
could be made for a second, larger phase of funding. Keeping
the initial award small would reduce the risk to the agency.
Recommendation 4: in the interest of being more
supportive of transformative research, Gss should
work with other groups within and beyond nsf to
explore and evaluate the novel approaches to research
funding and proposal review discussed in the report.
References
Congressional Budget Ofice (CBO). 2014. Federal Policies and Innovation. Washington, DC: CBO.
Lin, Y., J. B. Michel, e. L. Aiden, J. Orwant, W. Brockman, and S. Petrov. 2012. Syntactic annotations for the Google Books n-gram corpus. Proceedings of
the ACL 2012 System Demonstrations. pp. 169–174. Association for Computational Linguistics.
committee on identifyinG tRansfoRmative ReseaRch in the GeoGRaphical sciences
michael f. Goodchild (Chair), University of California, Santa Barbara (emeritus); amy K. Glasmeier, Massachusetts institute
of Technology, Cambridge; Glen m. macdonald, University of California, Los Angeles; mark d. lange (Study Director),
elizabeth a. eide (Board Director), nicholas d. Rogers (Financial and Research Associate), eric J. edkin (Senior Program
Assistant), national Academies of Sciences, engineering, and Medicine
For More Information . . . The national Academies appointed the above committee of experts to address the speciic task
requested by the national Science foundation. The members volunteered their time for this activity; their report is peerreviewed and signed off by both the committee members and the national Academies of Sciences, engineering, and Medicine.
This report brief was prepared by the Academies based on the committee’s report.
for more information, contact the Board on earth Sciences and Resources at (202) 334-2744 or visit http:/nationalacademies.org/besr. Copies of Fostering Transformative Research in the Geographical Sciences are available from the national
Academies Press, 500 fifth Street, nW, Washington, D.C. 20001; (800) 624-6242; www.nap.edu.
Permission granted to reproduce this brief in its entirety with no additions or alterations.
Permission for images/igures must be obtained from their original source.
Division on earth and Life Studies
Copyright 2016 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.