Our Strategy

The HRA, its member institutions, and other organizations with aligned goals can all benefit considerably from collaborative efforts to enable more HIBAR projects. The HRA’s strategy is to facilitate collaborative action through HRA working groups and through established and emerging networks in the research and innovation community. These actions will help build the capacity needed to achieve the cultural and structural changes within universities to enable more and better HIBAR research projects, and by doing so strengthen the commitment to research excellence and societal impact. 

This approach can be summarized by these 4 points:

  1. The HRA is part of an active, interconnected ecosystem: Many organizations are working to increase the societal impact of university research in various ways, including efforts to identify and engage non-academic partners, build and manage diverse teams, navigate rigid academic systems and processes, and broaden access to appropriate funding sources. There are many other valuable efforts and initiatives underway to address these broader challenges, such as APLU’s Modernizing Scholarship for the Public Good initiative, The William T. Grant Foundation’s Institutional Challenge Grant program, and the Transforming Evidence Funders Network’s landscape scan of efforts to broaden faculty reward systems.
  2. The HRA’s efforts fulfill a specific need: There is one specific area not yet addressed in detail by other efforts: strategies are needed to help cross-sectoral research teams collaborate in shared decision-making when working together on projects that are responsive to both academic goals and societal challenges. This cross-sectoral co-production is the distinguishing characteristic of HIBAR projects, and there is evidence that the diverse perspectives that partners bring leads to better decisions and, consequently, better results. The HRA is well suited to meet this specific need by developing and sharing a curated collection of evidence-based and actionable strategies.
  3. The HRA facilitates collaborative action: The HRA is a small organization, and works with other related organizations to expand its reach and achieve its objectives. Through this “network of networks” approach, we facilitate collaborative action to help achieve the cultural and structural changes within universities to enable more and better HIBAR research projects, and by doing so strengthen the commitment to research excellence and societal impact.
  4. This collective action accelerates the progress toward common strategic goals: The HRA’s goal is to catalyze a university system-wide increase in the quality and quantity of Highly Integrative Basic And Responsive (HIBAR) research projects, from about 1 project in 20 in 2020, to 1 in 5 by 2030. Importantly, actions taken by organizations to increase their capacity to participate in HIBAR projects directly contribute to their own institutional priorities, including strategic goals related to research and scholarship excellence, societal impact, community engagement, talent development, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We implement this strategy through:

  • Outreach and dialogue to engage collaborators;
  • Collaboration to identify barriers and opportunities for more HIBAR research; and
  • Collaboration to collect, develop, and subsequently disseminate relevant resources.
Learn more about the HRA strategy