Intentional Research Portfolio Growth in U.S. Research Universities During 2010–2018

The integrated mission of knowledge discovery, curation, application, and dissemination across nearly every field of inquiry is a uniquely American innovation. However, only a fraction of higher education institutions in the United States conduct the vast majority of academic research in this country. In fact, research expenditures in today’s academy follow a power law distribution and reflect a prestige hierarchy that has been in place for decades. This study investigated how leaders use intention in already research-intensive universities to martial necessary and sufficient resources and focus institutional research efforts to yield unrivaled advances in research expenditures and prestige. Specifically, this multisite case study employed qualitative research methods and a quantitative descriptive analysis to compare various strategies implemented by three high-performing public R1 universities that achieved outsized growth in their research portfolios during 2010–2018. Data were obtained through interviews with key university leaders, an analysis of publicly available institutional documents and websites, and examination of public datasets—principally, the NSF HERD survey. The universities in this study achieved robust sustained research portfolio growth by building directed momentum over time, accelerating a metaphorical flywheel of research growth with strategy ensembles that provided enhanced operational capacity which, in turn, altered and then bolstered institutional culture. New leadership was instrumental to success as they (1) leveraged fresh political capital and a new strategic plan to legitimate research excellence as an institutional priority, (2) installed a senior executive team to connect strategy to execution, and (3) grew the faculty ranks in strategic research domains. Using key research growth strategies, themselves commonplace across academe, these universities produced sustainable results at an institutional scale only once the intentionality behind these strategy ensembles led to the emergence of a culture of research excellence. Ultimately, three critical success factors for institutional advancement illustrate the difference between doing the right things and doing things right: leadership able to maintain persistent focus, the emergence of an enduring culture of research excellence, and the institution’s ability to execute on its determined strategy