Mistra's role and some lessons learned in the ¢rst ¢ve years

GOë RAN PERSSONExecutive Director MISTRA, Gamla Brogatan 36^38, S 111 20 Stockholm, Sweden

The establishment of MISTRA in 1994 nearly doubled the ¢nancial resourcesavailable for environmental research in Sweden. To guarantee high quality,these funds were disbursed carefully and over several years. Because ¢ndingsolutions to important environmental problems where sustainable developmentof the society ¢gures prominently is not simple, great care has been taken tostructure the foundation's activities to achieve the following goals:

à A concentration of e¡ort.à Cross- and interdisciplinary programs.à Networks and more permanent forms of collaboration nationally and

internationally.à Collaboration between universities and industries.

The ¢rst invitation and our broker's role

The initial call for proposals to the Swedish research community in March 1994emphasized MISTRA's intention to support broad-based and problem-orientedresearch programs with a long-term perspective. Programs were to be com-posed of various projects from di¡erent disciplines within and between univer-sities. Industry and international research centers were encouraged to joinin, too. Each program proposal was required to envision how it could bringabout a ¢ve- to tenfold improvement in environmental quality and resourcee¤ciency.

Initially, researchers were invited to present outline ideas for programs. Out-lines that were judged to be possible candidates for MISTRA support werethen awarded planning grants to enable investigators to complete researchprogram proposals. By the end of 1994, MISTRA had received some 136 out-line proposals, very few of which met the conditions or satis¢ed the goalsestablished by the foundation.

Rather than rejecting most of these outline proposals, we decided instead toact more constructively. Researchers sharing common problem interests wereinvited to discussion meetings to present their ideas to one another and toMISTRA sta¡.Where grounds for cooperation appeared to exist, the founda-tion acted as a broker to encourage collaboration and to fund planning groupsto prepare full-scale program proposals. This sort of brokering was essential to

323Policy Sciences 32: 323^326, 1999.ß 1999Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

encourage researchers to change their usual ways of doing business. As usual,the most e¡ective incentive for change was money ^ the provision of whichallowed researchers to talk about shared interests and common problems.

Cooperation across disciplinary boundaries, between natural and socialscientists for instance, proved to be an uphill struggle, however. Researchers¢rst had to learn each other's language and then to understand each other'sthinking. This took time; only when such bases of communication and respectwere forged could they formulate integrated combinations of projects, the sumof which resulted in a viable program.

Of the roughly 200 outline ideas MISTRA has so far received, about halfhave been turned down as insu¤ciently interesting. Of the remainder, some 40full-scale proposals have been prepared and presented to panels of interna-tional experts for their comments and judgments. As of the end of 1999, therewere 22 funded MISTRA programs underway.

New forms of management and collaboration

A conscious decision to minimize sta¡ size at MISTRA means that more fundsare available for research. Six professionals sta¡ the foundation: an ExecutiveDirector, three program o¤cers, a ¢nancial and administrative o¤cer, and abusiness and o¤ce manager.

Once a program proposal is funded, according to the steps outlined previously,as much operational responsibility as possible is lodged within the programitself. This is necessitated not only because the foundation sta¡ is small, butalso because MISTRA programs involve collaboration between researchersand research groups at di¡erent universities, colleges, and institutes. A typicalprogram is composed of ¢ve or six groups and around a dozen projects with atotal annual budget of about SEK 10 million. Here, too, an innovative manage-ment structure has been created as a consequence.

Each program has an Executive Committee, a Management Group, and aProgram Director.

The Executive Committee has far-reaching powers and a heavy responsibilityfor the research. Composed of representatives from potential users of theresearch, the committee decides on priorities and allocates funding to individualprojects. Its work is often enriched through ad hoc consultations and advice onan as-needed basis.

The Management Group forms the scienti¢c nerve center of the programand includes individual project leaders working very closely with the ProgramDirector. Strong management is needed to achieve the integration required toensure that the program's value is more than the simple sum of its individualproject parts.

Speci¢c and focused responsibility rests heavily on the shoulders of theProgram Director. Cooperation with industry and public agencies, integrationof the component projects so that common goals are attained, and myriad

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other operational requirements essentially describe the job of Program Director.It is usually a full-time, and most demanding, job.

Lessons from the ¢rst ¢ve years

We have learned a great deal in the ¢rst ¢ve years of MISTRA. Some of theselessons may be the consequence of uniquely Swedish circumstances; othersprobably are not, but are more general and thus may be useful elsewhere. Allare listed in the spirit of sharing what we have learned in hopes of makingcomparable e¡orts somewhere else just a little bit easier.

Its visions, then its long- and short-term objectives in that order, shoulddetermine the design of a program. It is important to have a systematicapproach to focus the program.Why priorities are assigned as they are must beclear, too. There also needs to be an understandable, logical progression fromthe overall vision, to program goals, and then to project priorities.

The ¢rst step in any program is a clear de¢nition of the problem^somethingachieved through consultation of the researchers and the `stakeholders' forwhom the problem has genuine signi¢cance and meaning. Researchers frommany disciplines must be involved in the problem de¢nition from the verybeginning. The humanities and social sciences must be integrated with skilland care to reveal the complexities and subtleties and thus attain useful systemsolutions. Simple solutions, e.g., new technological ¢xes, are rarely possible formost important environmental problems.

We at MISTRA often ¢nd ourselves saying that A building consists of a lotof bricks, but a pile of bricks is not necessarily a building.' Programs must notbe made up of a number of stand-alone projects linked only by a common label.Individual projects must support and enhance one another.We believe that it isbetter to have fewer, but larger, projects rather than many small ones.

Integration of the constituent projects into a meaningful programmaticwhole is a never-ending and very challenging responsibility for everyone. TheProgram Director especially must work to ensure that individual researchers donot revert to type, once they have funds in hand, by retiring to their o¤ces andnot interacting with others in the program. If participants cannot see all thedi¡erent parts of the whole, but only their own, then it will be impossible forthem to be part of or to contribute much to the common endeavor.

Programs ^ and projects especially ^ must be conceived in terms of concrete`deliverables' de¢ned according to di¡erent periods of time. Research, by de¢ni-tion, raises and then tries to answer new questions. It is not always successful.When questions are not answered and problems are not solved, then researchersmust be prepared to explain why and to come up with new questions andapproaches for the future.

Not everything is new in the world, and a concerted e¡ort must be made tostay abreast of the `state of the art,' in Sweden and around the world.What workexists or is in progress and how does this a¡ect the current problem at hand?

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Contact with user groups in industry and government is important, duringplanning and throughout the life of a project and program. Better understandingand improved chances of putting new knowledge into practice are the two mainbene¢ts of such contact. Cofunding by industry, while sometimes helpful, is notessential to help assure relevance of the research to concrete circumstances.

Communication and information are critical elements in an e¡ective researchprogram. Internal and external plans must be formulated early and used withcare.

Above almost everything else, a successful research program requires leader-ship. A leader does the right things, rather than simply doing things right. Aleader must have a clear sense of the ¢nal destination. He or she must be a`pragmatic dreamer,' but one who dreams according to a deadline. Leadershiprequires the courage to pursue a chosen course, while at the same time beingreceptive to other people's good ideas and methods.

In sum

The MISTRA experience is a true experiment in trying to address and solvesome of society's most complex and important problems. As is the case withmost experiments, not everything works as expected or according to the initialplan. Being open to the unexpected in order to learn and adapt is important.But being willing to share what one learns is perhaps the most importantaspect of all. These comments and the papers included in this special issue ofPolicy Sciences are all presented with this goal in mind.

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