Towards a Transformative Impact Framework for Research and Technology Organizations: designing an integrative and adaptive framework for a changing world

Description

Research and technology organizations (RTOs) serve a broad range of actors and societal priorities. The conditions in which they operate, require RTOs to continuously adapt, balancing long-term orientation with responsivity and agility under changing needs. While expectations towards RTOs change, the established approaches to assessing the contribution of RTOs to impact creation remain primarily focused on scientific and economic indicators. And the emerging conceptualizations of transformative impact have mostly regarded other organisations. As RTOs strive to enhance their contribution to transformative change, they need to position themselves favorably in terms of their new and emerging roles in the R&I ecosystem. This paper responds to the identified challenges by conducting an integrative and critical literature review as the foundation for creating the RTOs’ Transformative Impact Framework. The paper addresses three inter-related research questions: (1) How do and should RTOs contribute to transformative impact creation? (2) What frameworks, competencies and capabilities enable and capture RTO's contribution to transformative impact? (3). What governance models and collaboration formats are needed to enhance the transformative impact potential of RTOs?

The core building blocks of the framework address specific aspects such as its purpose, intended users and applications, transformative impact criteria and indicators, prospective governance models and approaches for design of intervention portfolios, transformative roles and capacities of RTOs, as well as guidelines on tailoring to specific contexts and considerations regarding institutionalization. The transformative impact framework can serve different purposes, including (1) informing strategy development and design of transformation-oriented portfolios in RTOs; (2) fostering critical reflexivity around the governance models shaping the RTO positioning, collaborations and roles and (3) aiding the development of context-responsive operational and monitoring frameworks that would enable tracking RTO contribution to transformative impact.

Period	11 Jun 2025 → 13 Jun 2025
Event title	EU-SPRI Conference 2025: Shaping societal futures with STI Policies
Event type	Conference
Location	DortmundShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International