CIFAR STRATEGY: Bold Exploration to Transform Futures
TO THE GLOBAL CIFAR COMMUNITY
I am delighted to share with you our refreshed Strategy.
The Strategy comes at a time when we are experiencing rapid and sweeping changes in the global research community. Since COVID-19, the research world has seen greater cross-border collaborations, particularly in combating pressing issues such as climate change. Meanwhile, AI and machine learning are poised to open groundbreaking paths in research. What these trends indicate is that there is no better time than now for CIFAR to strengthen its unique model and build a blueprint that enables us to make greater contributions to Canada and the world.
I take great pride in how our community’s shared purpose shines through in this Strategy. It is a culmination of deep collaboration and comprehensive input from our members over the course of a year. I hope you enjoy learning about our new and ambitious directions for the next few years. Together, we have an opportunity to explore boldly, help transform the world around us and make tangible, meaningful impact in our communities.
STEPHEN J. TOOPE, OC, LLD, FRSC
President & CEO
WHAT WE DO: OUR UNIQUE MODEL
For over 40 years, CIFAR has pursued a unique research model. Unlike traditional research agencies that fund research projects and labs, CIFAR builds and continuously challenges global networks of researchers who want to push boundaries and take risks. We convene the world’s greatest minds to solve the most pressing, complex questions facing science and humanity. We bring in promising early-career researchers to ensure that the freshest, boldest thinking is at the heart of our work. We support interdisciplinary and deeply collaborative fundamental research that inspires new directions of inquiry, builds new knowledge, and yields breakthroughs across borders and disciplines. We stick with ideas over the long term if they yield positive results, always insisting on intellectual renewal and rigorously assessing outcomes. We minimize red tape and value nimbleness.
Our global community of researchers has transformed the world around us — from launching a revolution in artificial intelligence (AI), to changing how we understand the critical early years of human life. Today, CIFAR is a global powerhouse, enabling researchers to generate exciting new ideas, insights and knowledge that improve lives and help ensure a better future for generations to come. Partnerships with other research organizations, foundations, corporations, media, philanthropists and governments are critical for amplifying our impact.
The work conducted in CIFAR programs contributes to a platform of robust, reliable knowledge that can feed new technologies, processes and public policy. In an era when the very concept of ‘fact’ is widely doubted, when scientific knowledge is treated as just another opinion, CIFAR’s work is more important than ever.
Our new Strategy supercharges the CIFAR model to be even bolder and more impactful over the decades to come.
The long-term commitment of CIFAR to fundamental scientific progress and its fostering of collaboration instead of competition made it possible to solve important scientific problems in my field of superconductivity and quantum materials. The most important discoveries in my research over the years would not have been possible without CIFAR.
CIFAR unrestricted funding allows me and my trainees to pursue blue-sky, curiosity-driven research, which is very unusual in the current climate. The CIFAR meetings are really creative and stimulating, leading to new research insights and connections that are very valuable for our field and my own productivity.
CIFAR is an extraordinary organization, and I am grateful and humbled to be part of it. It brings together people across various disciplines and has the potential to change global policies for the better.
An incredible meeting of minds across a broad spectrum of science and humanities. This is one of the few truly interdisciplinary formats in which I participate.
Our program connects researchers who would not typically attend the same meetings, enabling new connections and research directions in areas of critical need.
CIFAR is unique among research institutions anywhere in the world in that it gives a space for creative magic to happen by facilitating regular and intense conservations between scholars from different disciplines, who are interested in a broad topic, but because because of the sociology of disciplines would probably never otherwise get a chance to meet and exchange ideas.
CIFAR’S NEW DIRECTIONS
Over the last year, we have consulted with our staff, researchers, partners, board members, funders and experts from across the global research community. We heard that the foundations of the CIFAR model remain inspiring and profoundly important, that the model has produced real breakthroughs, and that it can lead to exciting new ideas, insights and knowledge in the future. We also heard that, with some important adjustments and reorientations, we could have even more impact. Here, in summary, are our new directions, designed to position CIFAR for its next few years of work, followed by a more complete explanation of the Strategy, which will be reviewed and revised as needed through the coming years. We will:
Double down on our pinnacle aspiration, to convene and mobilize bold, forward-looking researchers who work across geographic and disciplinary borders on some of the toughest issues facing science and humanity.
Extend more and richer opportunities to early-career researchers from around the globe, connecting them to the leaders in their fields, both in Canada and abroad.
Achieve greater focus in our work by identifying profoundly important issues and opportunities, and creating a portfolio of Impact Clusters to address them.
Expand our capability to explore issues and opportunities ‘on the horizon’ that could be productively addressed through the CIFAR model.
Reinforce our capability to identify talent wherever it is found, widening the geographic scope of our research community, with particular effort to engage more talent from the Global South and from communities that face barriers to accessing top-flight research teams.
Develop more robust strategic partnerships with other research organizations, foundations, corporations, media, philanthropists and governments that share complementary ambitions to help deepen and scale our work.
Focus our work where there is potential for greatest impact, enabling our programs to identify their own impact agendas (in both knowledge creation and sharing), and then facilitating their efforts.
PINNACLE ASPIRATION
CIFAR convenes and mobilizes the world’s most brilliant people across disciplines and at all career stages to advance transformative knowledge and solve humanity’s biggest problems, together.
After a thorough review, CIFAR adopted a modified version of the strategy framework
developed by Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley, which requires clear answers to a few key
strategic questions. This methodology keeps the analysis focused and forces choice. It also connects high-level aspirations to concrete operational capabilities.
WHERE WILL WE WORK?
WE WILL DEEPEN OUR COMMITMENT TO FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH
CIFAR targets fundamental, high-risk/high-reward research that may take time to reveal its full potential. When combined with diverse groups of exceptional minds, this focus on fundamental research creates great promise of new ideas, insights and knowledge that can reshape fields and enable exciting possibilities for humanity.
Although we have the rare ability to focus on more speculative but potentially high-reward research, we will look to identify impact at every stage of a program, and work with impact partners to move new ideas, insight an knowledge into the world as they emerge.
WE WILL EXPLORE CHALLENGES ON THE HORIZON
CIFAR will target areas that are likely to be at the forefront of attention in 10, 20 or more years as serious threats to, or opportunities for, the health and prosperity of people around the world.
WE WILL BUILD MORE DIVERSE AND INCLUSIVE GLOBAL RESEARCH NETWORKS
Given our current networks and relationships, deliberate efforts will be required for broader community and institutional outreach, while being ever mindful of research security imperatives. In particular, we must reach further into the Global South.
We will need to more effectively deploy existing CIFAR networks more effectively and draw upon the talent identification of other organizations that have well-established networks in geographies where there is currently a small CIFAR presence. We will set clear geographic priorities as we implement this Strategy.
WE WILL IDENTIFY AND SUPPORT NEXT-GENERATION RESEARCH LEADERS
With our long-term focus, CIFAR supports and draws extensively on the ideas, passion and forward-looking orientation of early-career researchers. These researchers are an exceptional source of insight on potential futures and we will take advantage of this by helping them assume an active leadership role in scoping and articulating new ideas, insights and knowledge across disciplines and geographies.
We will expand opportunities for early-career researchers to lead collaborations with scholars across career stages, giving them freedom to follow their instincts, and highlight the potential of their work.
WHAT IS A CHALLENGE ‘ON THE HORIZON’?
This refers to a challenge or opportunity which:
- Is likely to dramatically increase in importance over the next decade or two
- Is unlikely to be resolved through incremental improvements or purely technical progress
- Has significant implications for humanity’s collective well-being and welfare
- Is not the target of major investment by others, often because the challenge or opportunity has not yet been clearly recognized
- Is more targeted than themes, disciplines or topics; is amenable to deep questions
FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH FOR SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIETAL IMPACT
CIFAR embraces the extraordinary contributions that fundamental research can make towards transformative impact. We will leverage these opportunities through a portfolio approach. Most of CIFAR’s research programs will be clustered around future-oriented challenges or opportunities where they could unlock entirely new knowledge and new opportunities to change the world for the better.
Critically, programs are not tasked with solving specific predetermined problems. The work is highly exploratory and focused on developing transformative knowledge. In many cases, that new knowledge will be actively diffused during the life of a research program to give the world new ways to shape the future towards one we desire. In other cases, the impact of new ideas, insights and knowledge will take longer to unfold.
Organized into Impact Clusters, programs will identify very different questions to explore, using a wide range of disciplines, informing a variety of pathways towards addressing our biggest problems or unlocking tremendous opportunities. Each of these programs can contribute to transformative impact in a bottom-up fashion, identifying their own core questions for investigation. In parallel, we will retain a small collection of stand-alone programs that are even more high-risk and might identify entirely new Impact Clusters for the future.
HOW WILL WE ACHIEVE CIFAR’S HIGHEST VALUE?
WE WILL CONVENE UNIQUE COMBINATIONS OF INCREDIBLE PEOPLE
As international, interdisciplinary collaboration and team-based research is recognized more and more to be essential for disruptive progress, CIFAR creates unique value by building research networks of exceptional people who would not otherwise interact. We will facilitate introductions and draw people together from well beyond ‘the usual suspects.’
We make progress on difficult questions by thoughtfully constructing diverse and extraordinarily talented research groups — with established leaders and emerging talent from various sectors, lived experiences, disciplines and geographies — to approach questions from different perspectives and traditions. We will embrace diverse ways of knowing to create insights for the future from every possible angle. Our activities will be guided by an updated Action Plan on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
WE WILL EXPECT AND ENABLE BOLDNESS
As an independent not-for-profit with diverse funders and a relatively low-cost model, we have the opportunity to embrace a higher risk threshold than most other organizations. We take advantage of this unique positioning by expecting bold new ideas that can make the world take notice.
We are bold in choosing to support research that other organizations may consider too risky. We also create conditions to share knowledge and challenge accepted ideas, through trusted networks and flexible research support that allow more adventurous exploration.
WE WILL LEVERAGE PARTNERSHIPS
We look for ways in which the capabilities of other organizations can complement ours to advance our mutual or respective goals. Building on our strong history of partnerships in research and communications, we will seek to expand this approach to new areas.
The primary pathway by which CIFAR can achieve heightened impact is through partnerships with organizations that are interested in and can benefit from the diffusion of new ideas, insight and knowledge generated in CIFAR programming. We will work with organizations in the public, private, academic and civil society sectors.
WE WILL RALLY FUNDERS TO ADVANCE SHARED AMBITIONS
CIFAR’s funders — whether individuals, foundations, corporations, governments or research partners — have been instrumental to our success. They have supported existing and new research programs, and helped us build new lines of programming, dramatically extending our impact. Critically, funders are not simply sources of financial support. They provide advice, extend our networks, help identify talent, and participate in the diffusion of new ideas, insights and knowledge.
CIFAR will focus on leveraging the expertise and networks of existing supporters, while also engaging new allies that can drive impact through financial, intellectual and strategic contributions.
CONCLUSION
CIFAR and the world face profound challenges as well as significant opportunities — and that is why CIFAR must evolve. As we bring the CIFAR Strategy to life over the next few years, some things will become clearer and new uncertainties will arise. A strategy is not a ‘plan’. It is a framework that must be adaptable and open to reconsideration. The Strategy provides CIFAR with an exciting frame for critical choices. We will assess progress each year, but in three years we will undertake a more thorough strategy review to see how we are doing. We will consider what course corrections may be required. Meanwhile, our strategy consultation reaffirmed that CIFAR is a strong organization with a unique model of global research convening. We will look to our whole community and to our expanding group of strategic partners to help us explore boldly for new knowledge with even greater societal impact.