00:00
My name is Prue Williams. I am the General Manager for the Science Investments part of MBIE, and I’d really like to welcome you all here today to the Endeavour Fund Roadshow.
00:12
I have with me today three of my colleagues. I have Alan Coulson with us. He's the manager of Contestable Investments. I have Willy-John Martin, our Pou Pūtaiao, our Director Māori RSI, and I also have Alison Slade. Alison is the Principal Investment Manager who's the Fund Lead for Endeavour.
And our hope for today and for this Roadshow is that this presentation will be of assistance from all of us here at MBIE to you.
00:41
I’m going to start today’s presentation by giving you an update on some of the recent initiatives influencing the science system. I will then hand over to Alan, and he'll talk about the 2022 Endeavour round and give you a bit of a wrap up.
Then we'll hand over to Willy-John, and he'll talk about how the Vision Mātauranga policy relates to the Endeavour Fund, and then Alison will talk to you about the 2023 round and give you some tips for applicants.
At the end of the session today, we are very happy to answer any questions that you have. So, please, as we go through the presentation type your questions in, use the Q&A function not the chat function. We'll only be monitoring the Q&A function, and then we’ll pick those questions up at the end.
This is the first of three of these Roadshows, and after the third one, which will be next week, we'll be putting up a copy of the slides on our website.
We are also recording the session, and we will transcribe this recording and put that up on our website too in a few weeks’ time. So, then you'll have a really rich resource to help you understand everything you need to know about the Endeavour Fund.
02:01
So, first of all, I’m going to start by [describing] some of the science initiatives under way, and I’m sure that you'll all be aware of Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways. This is a multi-year programme that's underway focused on the future of our research system for Aotearoa New Zealand.
It started off with a Green Paper that was released last October.
And the Green Paper talked about how, although our science system has served New Zealand really well for the last 30 years, the world has changed since it was set up, and now it's time to consider how best to position our research system to respond to the most important challenges and opportunities and also to support our researchers and our workforce going forward.
We had a lot of feedback on the Green Paper, and also the sessions that we had, some workshop sessions we had last year, and we really want to thank everybody. And some of you may have been involved in those sessions.
We can really see from the feedback that we had, that there's a strong desire for change.
So, our next step is to release the White Paper which will be setting out the direction for the future of the RS&I system, and we expect to release that paper by the end of the year.
Reform takes time. So, there are no immediate impacts of those reforms on the Endeavour Fund. Having said that, there was one change that we will be making.
That is the introduction of a narrative CV.
We've heard a lot from the sector about creating a research system that's more diverse and inclusive. And we recognise that as funders, we can foster this in a number of ways. And one way is to recognise the broader set of skills and experiences that people have that we need to contribute to research.
So, this year we're including an option for a narrative CV as an alternative to the more traditional academic CV. And you'll hear more about this in this presentation today.
04:13
Many of you will be aware that the decision-maker for the Endeavour Fund is our Science Board.
This is an independent group of eight people, and we really appreciate the role that they play. The Endeavour Fund is a very competitive fund. So, it's not easy making those decisions, and we really appreciate the efforts that they go to and their role.
This year, we've had a number of new appointments to the Board; had five new members join.
04:42
So, we thought it would be worthwhile pointing out to you that this is the new Science Board, these are our new members, and if you’re wanting to find out any more information about them, you can find that on our website.
04:56
So, now we come to the Endeavour Fund, and this is our largest contestable fund in the Research Science, and Innovation system in New Zealand.
And just to remind you what we're looking for here is any research that will lead to a broad range of impacts across the economy across the environment and across societal outcomes.
05:18
And, just to show you where it fits amongst all the other funds that the Government invests in, it's shown on this diagram here, with the little pink centre, down in the bottom row, indicating that it's a competitive fund. And it's mainly for investigator-led research, but which will deliver impact. So, it's sitting right between the Marsden Fund and between the mission-led research.
05:46
For some of you who are familiar with the Endeavour Fund, you’ll know this. It’s got two mechanisms, Smart Ideas which are smaller projects of about two to three years in length, and that's set up to test innovative ideas. What we aim to do here is to have a diverse portfolio of ideas in the system.
Research Programmes are larger investments, about three to five years in length, and these are aimed at fulfilling critical needs for existing sectors, but also for new future opportunities as well for New Zealand. And you'll hear more about these during the presentation today.
So, now I’m going to hand over to Alan.
06:32
And he'll talk to you about the 2022 Endeavour Round.
Thanks, Prue. Kia ora koutou katoa. Ko Alan Coulson tōku ingoa. I am Alan Coulson, manager of the Contestable Investments team and Fund Manager of the Endeavour Fund. So, I am [covering] the 2022 round, not too much detail, but just a little bit of a taster of some of the things that we particularly noticed this year. So, in general
07:10
the quality of the applications continues to be very high.
We were very pleased to see proposals increasingly giving effect to Vision Mātauranga.
And the fund this year continues to extend a broader reach across the sector. So, what we saw this year, was a number of IROs who put in high quality proposals, and were funded.
The success rate has increased over 2021, partly as a response to the rebound from COVID and the cancelled Smart Ideas around. But we are pleased to see that the success rate has increased. You can see the average size of Research Programmes this year, and we had a range of sizes funded around that average.
07:57
So, this slide gives the spread of investments across SEO areas in the 2022 round. This is not the snapshot of our overall investments across SEO codes for Endeavour, that's in a following slide.
And this slide really highlights where we saw some concentration this year, and in high quality proposals. So, notably the mitigation and adaptation to climate change SEO codes was very well subscribed, and that's fantastic, because that's a really good response to our investment signal in that area.
Also, this year we were pleased to see a number of proposals in non-traditional areas, such as biosecurity and also construction. And this year, we also received a lot of proposals in the social sciences area, particularly around housing.
Compared to previous years, we didn't receive so many proposals in the manufacturing space and also natural hazards. We weren’t able to fund as many as previously, primarily due to there being few of proposals submitted in the natural hazards space.
09:05
So, in all we received 443 applications, roughly one quarter were Research Programmes and three quarters were Smart Ideas.
Of these 443, 71 were successful: 51 Smart Ideas and 20 Research Programmes. So, the overall success rate was around 16%, slightly lower in Smart Ideas than for Research Programmes
09:33
This year there was a requirement for the first time for the Science Board to aim to fund a minimum number of both Smart Ideas and Research Programmes, and this is partly a response to the increasing size of Research Programmes over time, and an indication that we wish to still support a breadth of activities rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. We were very pleased this year that the Science Board was able to fund 51 Smart Ideas exceeding the target there, and also funding 20 Research Programmes, also exceeding that target.
Because of this additional desire to fund a minimum number of programmes, the largest Research Programmes received additional scrutiny. In some cases the Science Board chose to fund some smaller proposals instead of larger programmes because they were able to, through this, fund programmes which responded to a greater variety of investment signals.
10:36
Just tracking the success rates for Smart Ideas over the last few years. So, this year, at 15.5%, we exceeded the previous year, and of course the COVID hit year.
Not quite back to pre-COVID times, so, I suspect we're still seeing a little bit of hangover from the COVID hit year in 2020. But heartening to see that success rate increase.
11:02
In Research Programmes, we also saw a rebound pretty much to pre-COVID time. So, that is also encouraging. Transform proposals.
11:15
So, this year, 45 of 112 proposals, were assessed for impact, of which 42% were Transform, 40% of the Transform projects were funded.
Now this is below our target of 50%, which indicates that the Science Board chose to still fund high-quality proposals above those necessarily responding to the Transform investment signal.
So, I guess a message to take away is that ticking Transform in your proposal is not a fast-track to being funded, you also have to have a high-quality proposal.
11:57
The all-important Science Board portfolio approach where decisions are based on a mix of factors. So, in some cases, the Science Board declined to fund proposals due to their size. And there was an example of a high-merit proposal which was declined due to its size and lower value compared to funding two smaller programmes.
Some programmes were declined due to concentration. As I mentioned in the intro, we had a number of applications in the biosecurity [and] construction areas. We weren't able to fund all of the high-quality proposals in those areas.
Similarly, across the SEO balance. So, manufacturing, environmental, and societal, we received an unusual number of societal proposals this year, and the Science Board wasn't able to fund all of them.
And, of course, preference is given to those proposals which meet the investment signals, such as the transition to the low-carbon economy and the knowledge-intensive industries.
This year, in your detailed
13:06
feedback information, you will have seen some changes from previous years. So, the first change was to provide feedback directly from Assessors. Assessors were asked to provide one main strength and one main weakness for each programme, and we've already had early feedback, that this has been well received.
Previously, we have used quintiles as a way of representing where the programme fell. This is in response to your feedback. Many people felt that quintiles weren’t giving a very clear picture of what was happening. Also, we were a little bit concerned that while we labelled the quintiles as quintiles, in fact, not all quintiles had the same size, and so, the term quintile itself was misleading.
This year we have provided your rank order in cohorts of ten, and the disclaimer here is that where there are a number of proposals with equal score some cohorts could have been slightly more than ten, and some cohorts would have been slightly less than ten.
Hopefully, this gives you a better idea of where your programme sat with finer granularity than in previous years. Now, you receive no information on your rank if you are successful.
Additionally to the rank order in cohorts, we gave you this year four reasons for declining.
The first was “Declined due to portfolio approach”. And this is for programmes that were sufficiently high quality to be funded, but the Science Board, in applying the portfolio of approach in the previous slide, chose not to fund that particular programme.
The second reason was “Decline due to funding cap”. Here the programme was not of sufficient merit to be included by the Science Board in their portfolio balancing activity. However, the programmes were still of sufficient merit to be funded, had more funding been available.
The third and fourth are the same as previous years: “Insufficient merit declined after Impact assessment”; Insufficient merit, declined after Excellence assessment”.
Mātauranga
Now a little bit on diversity information. So, you'll be aware that we have a Diversity in Science statement in order to try and capture the demographics of diversity across the science system to ensure that the science system is realising its full potential.
I want to emphasize that this information is not used for decision making in the Endeavour Fund. We are simply using this information to track demographics over time. So, it's really useful for us if you are able to fill in this information.
15:53
So, data has been collected for team members and Assessors since 2018, and this year in February we launched the Diversity Data Dashboard on our website, and the data is updated monthly. So, please, can you update your diversity data through IMS. And Research Offices, please encourage researchers to fill this out. “Prefer not to say” will always be an option.
And obviously, we don't want to make people uncomfortable, but we would also like to reassure you that this information is always depersonalised and anonymised. It's only used for demographic purposes. So, we would prefer, if people were able to provide their demographics that they do so, because this provides us with a richer data set, and allows us to track changes over time more accurately.
16:43
So, here's an example of the diversity dashboards which are on our website; breaking down diversity by gender, ethnicity, age and career stage. These things are all available.
16:58
In the 2022 round, we had at least one female Science Leader, Key Researcher, or Key Individual in 53 of the funded programmes, three Research Programmes and 11 Smart Ideas had a female Science Leader, at least one person identifying as Māori as a Science Leader, Key Researcher, or Key Individual in 46 of our funded projects and four Research Programmes and one Smart Idea had a Māori Science Leader.
Those are tracking in a good direction.
This detailed information
17:30
will be put up on our website, and you can go to town looking at all of the breakdowns across all of these categories, and seeing how we're tracking over time.
So, I will now hand over to my colleague, Dr Willy-John Martin, to take us through Vision Mātauranga.
17:55
Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Willy-John Martin tōku ingoa. Ko au te Pou Pūtaiao, Hīkina Whakatutuki. Hi, I’m Willy-John Martin, I’m. The Director of Māori Research, Science and Innovation here at MBIE.
As many of you will know, Vision Mātauranga is a science policy that is about realising the innovation potential of Māori people, resources and knowledge.
Vision Mātauranga also encourages partnerships and looking for new opportunities to find solutions to the issues and needs facing Aotearoa New Zealand.
Those of you who submitted applications last year will have seen that there were new questions relating to Vision Mātauranga that were included in those applications. These will continue to be part of Endeavour in 2023.
18:50
So, there are many ways to give effect to the Vision Mātauranga policy. Very strong applications give effect to Vision Mātauranga by being Māori-led or co-led, but it's important to note that it is not a requirement for all applications to be very strong or even strong in Vision Mātauranga.
Some of the strong applications may have Māori researchers or traditional knowledge holders as part of the team or be working with Māori communities, or doing a number of other things in the way that they have constructed their programmes of work.
And it's important to know that different types of research activities and different subject matters would approach Vision Mātauranga in a different way. So, we're expecting, as we did in 2022, we'll expect in 2023 to see many ways of doing Vision Mātauranga not just one way.
Some applications will, particularly in areas for which there is low Māori capacity, you might expect to see that there is an incorporation of Māori principles or perspectives, rather than what we might see in some areas where there is a lot of Māori capacity.
To give you some highlights of 2022.
20:08
There were a majority of proposals that gave effect to Vision Mātauranga, and there was a high proportion in both Smart Ideas and Research Programmes that were led or co-led by Māori. and again, to reiterate, it's a movement in a really positive direction.
Those applications that were co-led by Māori mostly used Mātauranga Māori as the central knowledge system.
And there were a high portion of those that used Kaupapa Māori methodologies. And again, that is very positive. But other applications also do not need to be at this level. There’s a lot of different ways to approach Vision Mātauranga.
So, just casting more towards the future. MBIE is working on a number of aspects of Vision Mātauranga and Mātauranga Māori that we've been asked to from other submitters from people in the Māori research world and from the Waitangi tribunal, and other aspects of input to strengthen the way in which we manage Mātauranga Māori our applications, and in our contracting. So, we are looking at pieces of work to understand how to strengthen these approaches.
Thank you. Willy-John. Kia ora koutou. Ko Alison Slade tōku ingoa.
I am the Principal Investment Manager, as Alan has mentioned, and the Fund Lead for the Endeavour Fund.
22:06
Today I’ll be talking to you about the 2023 round, the key documents that you'll need to help put together your proposals, what has and hasn't changed, will touch briefly on technologies of special interest and key dates for the round.
22:24
So, the key documents are listed here. The first is the Investment Plan which sets out the broad context for the fund. It's a three-year document, and we are currently in the second year of the Investment Plan.
The Gazette Notice is the set of instructions from the Minister to the Science Board around how the Science Board make decisions around your proposals. It sets out the assessment criteria, the funding available and various other information that is useful for you in thinking about putting proposals together.
The Call for Proposals has the detailed information you'll need to fill out the application form in IMS.
And the last document there is the Assessment Guidelines. So, please familiarise yourself with these guidelines. These are what the Assessors use to guide the assessment of your proposals, and it's really important that you understand what the assessors have been asked to look for in assessing your proposal.
23:21
So, what hasn't changed? The funding available is still the same at $57 million per annum. That’s split between Smart Ideas at $18 million and Research Programmes at $37 million.
The portfolio targets as set out in the Investment Plan have remained the same. And we continue to exclude proposals that are predominantly health, defense and expanding knowledge. You can include some of these research outcomes in your proposal, but the sum of them must be less than 50% of the proposal’s outcomes.
So, what hasn't changed for 2023?
23:55
The investment signals are still the same. The Vision Mātauranga information and assessment that was introduced in the 2022 round has remained, the targets for the numbers of proposals to be funded, as Alan described, have also remained the same.
We will continue to publish team member details when the round is concluded and the slimmed-down profiling is also remaining.
24:24
So, what has changed for 2023? I will cover these in more detail. Two new eligibility criteria, the narrative CV has been introduced as Prue talked about earlier, we have added risk sections to the end of each assessment criterion, provided better guidance on words and images, we are allowing you now to change your title post registration. This has been locked in for a number of rounds. And finally we are providing feedback to applicants, and anyone who was part of the 2022 round will have just received this feedback. We were providing this following Smart Ideas Concepts.
25:02
For proposals to be eligible under the Endeavour Fund, they must not be for activities already funded elsewhere. This has always been a consideration, but we have now introduced it as an eligibility criterion.
And consistent with the Government's stance on the conflict in Ukraine, your research must not benefit a Russian State institution or an organisation outside government that may be perceived as contributing to the war effort.
25:36
Prue has introduced the narrative CV. And just to give you a little bit more context here, there is a global shift towards the narrative CV as part of responsible research assessment, and we are really responding to this, together with clear guidance from the sector that the current academic CV did not suit everyone that was applying to the fund.
So, this allows people to broaden the definition of perhaps an academic Māori or Pacific researcher in a way that suits their progress through their academic career and their contribution to the programme and allows us to include work experience along with academic achievements in the assessment process, and again acknowledges the career journey of under-represented researchers and people who have perhaps not taken quite such a linear approach to their career. And this is particularly important for working mothers who may have had to take a career break.
So, if you are using the narrative CV, you must still provide evidence for excellence. You could provide ORCID ID, publications. Describe the role that you are playing in the project and be succinct. And please limit your narrative to examples that support the project you are applying for. But however you must still provide evidence of that experience, but it can be in the form of links, perhaps, or people that we may be able to contact, or may be able to be contacted, for reference about the work.
So, both templates are available on the website and in the team section on IMS and we will be providing training to Assessors as to how to assess these narrative CVs.
27:18
Now, I don't expect you to be able to read this slide particularly well. The point is that we have provided a lot of guidance in the CV template to help you fill it out. And everything circled in red there, please, delete from the template before you submit it. It's really important that that your story is not interrupted by the guidance.
27:47
We've also added risk sections to the end of each assessment criterion. This will allow a clearer description of risk, as risk and its management is a really important part of the Endeavour Fund.
So, these sections cover the risk aspects outlined in the Gazette Notice. And we've provided you 280 words per section. So, if you're familiar with an Endeavour Fund proposal, you'll understand that this is an extra section at 1120 words in total. So, we are recognising that this is an area that we would like you to be clearer with us about how you are identifying risk, and how you are managing it.
28:30
So, in the 2022 round we saw an increase in the use of words in images.
So, this could be in a number of ways. It could be lengthy tables uploaded as images. It could be concepts that have been introduced into the proposal, because there just wasn't enough room for you to to actually get it in there. So, put in a figure and introduce a new idea, or extensive explanatory text associated with the figures. So, this actually represents a fairness issue, as these words are not counted in the word Count. We are unable to count words in images. So, we do acknowledge that the table functionality in IMS is not ideal. So, if you upload an image, a table as an image, then we ask you to account for those words in the word count. So, therefore we would expect that word count not to be totally used up.
So, as I've said, the images must be explanatory only, and not introduce new information.
And more sections have actually had images excluded.
29:39
So, in previous years the title has been locked in after registration, together with the proposal information, the ANZSRC codes and the keywords, and this was deliberate to make sure that the direction of the proposal didn't change between registration where we are searching for assessors, and then the final proposal. But we do understand that in the development of your proposal quite often the title that you came up with at registration actually isn't fit for purpose by the time you submit the proposal. So, we're allowing you to change the title, but only the title, the rest of those parts of the registration will still be locked in.
30:27
So, Assessors have provided feedback to applicants - directly to applicants, one main strength and one main weakness. And again, as Alan has mentioned, If you were an applicant in the 2022 round, you will have just received this. We'll be providing this information to applicants at the end of Smart Ideas, Concepts. So, that body of feedback will be provided at that time, and applicants invited to progress to full proposals can incorporate this information into their proposals.
But anybody unsuccessful will have more time to develop their proposals should they wish to submit in a subsequent round.
And this again is following quite a lot of feedback over recent rounds about the desire to see this feedback. And again we will be providing feedback verbatim, just to note that feedback for Research Programmes and Smart Ideas Full will be provided at the end of the round, as we have done [previously].
31:25
So, just touching on technologies of special interest. So, we're asking applicants to declare any technologies of [special] interest that may be used as part of the research methodology. And this is in the profiling section. So, this covers a range of historic and emerging technologies, including gene technologies, working with children or vulnerable adults, developing algorithms, human data mining, xenotransplantation, that sort of technology, technology of military use, potential military use.
So, we go through a robust process to evaluate proposals in terms of technologies of special interest. But again to point out, this does not affect the scoring or assessment of the proposal. This process is carried out after the Science Board decision. So, it's just allowing us to incorporate more monitoring to make sure that appropriate measures have been taken to limit, direct or indirect harm from using these technologies in our investments.
32:32
So, the all-important dates, I’m not going to go through these. These are listed in the Call for Proposals, but noting that registration for Smart Ideas is coming up very soon on the 2nd November.
And this is mandatory for everyone who wishes to submit to the Endeavour Fund. You must register your proposal first. Similarly for Research Programmes, registrations are due
32:58
on Wednesday, the 7th December.
33:03
So, we do get quite a lot of questions around the decision-making process,
33:08
and Alan has alluded to the portfolio approach in his part of the presentation.
And Prue also has talked about the Science Board being the decision-maker. So, the Science Board invests in two mechanisms and must balance between these two mechanisms: Smart Ideas and Research Programmes.
For Smart Ideas, the Science Board typically invests in the best proposals based on a rank-order list.
And this is based on the Total Median Weighted Score. So, a total weighted score is the sum of the Median Weighted Score for each criterion multiplied by the weighting, and then those individual scores are added up to make a total score.
So, this information is contained in the Gazette Notice, and noting that the weightings for Smart Ideas and Research Programmes are different.
And for Research Programmes again, we produce a ranked list, but because the size of Research Programmes tends to be an order of magnitude larger than Smart Ideas, there is a lot more scrutiny from the Science Board in choosing which ones are funded, and this is the portfolio approach. It is outlined again in the Gazette Notice.
So, I mentioned that the Science Board must also balance the funding between the two investment mechanisms, but also now an added complication of the minimum number of proposals. So, there are a large number of considerations that the Science Board must take in carrying out the portfolio approach.
34:33
I will cover these in detail, but just wanted again to reiterate the complexity. So, the Science Board takes into account: the portfolio targets in the Investment Plan; the overall mix of investments that meet the investment signals - again, in the Investment Plan; consider value, which Alan has described in his part of the presentation; avoiding duplication and excessive concentration, both in the Endeavour Fund, but also the broader science system - we do check with the our sister agencies that, for example, we are not duplicating any area of work; and that there is not excessive concentration in the system where there are quite a few proposals already being funded. But noting that although duplication remains as part of the portfolio approach, it is an eligibility criterion for the 2023 round.
The Science Board must also think about broader policy objectives, including the Vision Mātauranga policy.
35:32
So, the portfolio targets are again outlined in the Investment Plan. The Science Board is aiming to fund a mix of Protect and Add Value and Transform impact categories within Research Programmes aiming for 50:50; aiming for a 70:25:5 spread across Economic, Environment and Societal research outcomes; and then a balance of Smart Ideas and Research Programmes of 20:80 in terms of funding.
36:03
So, the specific investment signals are where the Science Board is looking for opportunities to fund proposals, which sit within the transition to a low-emissions economy and climate-resilient economy, and those that support new or existing industries to be knowledge intensive.
Now it's important to differentiate knowledge intensity associated with the research versus knowledge intensity associated with the target industry that that research is being undertaken within. So, we are looking, sorry, the Science Board is looking for opportunities to support work that will contribute to the development of a knowledge-intensive industry.
Again, the signals apply to all areas across the economic environment and society [research outcomes].
36:53
In the general investment signals, there was some discussion last year around the inclusion of discussion of general investment signals at the beginning of the proposal in the section that covers specific investment signals.
We are again asking you to think about the general investment signals in the body of your proposal, and we have attempted to make this clearer in the guidance and the Call for Proposals this year.
So, the Science Board also looks at how well proposals respond to the general signals. That is excellent, highly connected research with potential for impact and areas of critical need for New Zealand, and this is actually determined by the score.
Also, looking at the potential of Māori people, knowledge and resources that reflect genuine, fit-for-purpose approaches for enabling that potential. And in this space, the Science Board is thinking about how the proposal gets effect to the Vision Mātauranga policy as well.
So, the Assessors are asked to assess the depth of the science in your proposals, and this signal is actually asking the Science Board to think about how broad that science is, and how well connected you are to both the national and international research context. And are you leveraging additional value from that wider research, science, and innovation community? So, if you can think about that and your proposal - and the Assessors are thinking about depth and this signal is addressing breadth.
And we also want you to reflect government, policy, strategy, and roadmaps when that is relevant.
38:30
So, value, concentration, and duplication. Value is not an assessment of value for money. It is an assessment of the value of the funding. For example, for one large programme could two small proposals offer broader benefit for New Zealand than that one single proposal?
And large proposals can be funded, but they need to be of the highest quality to receive that investment, and the Science Board does pay particular attention to them. So, if you think about all of the other investment signals, and giving a effect to Vision Mātauranga, large proposals must do very well in all of those areas to be funded.
Concentration is looking at what has already been funded in the portfolio, and whether or not we actually have quite a few proposals that have come into an area that either already has investment or we've received a significant number of proposals in the portfolio. And that did happen this year in a couple of areas where we already had existing investment, and then we received quite a few proposals as well, and some proposals were declined on concentration.
I did talk about duplication, which is several proposals seeking funding for the same research, and, as mentioned, this will be also considered as an eligibility criterion.
So, when you're looking at putting your proposals
39:52
together, have a look at this slide, which is on our website. I’m not going to go through it. It just demonstrates where the existing investment in the portfolio sits. So, you may want to think about this when you're putting together your proposal.
40:11
So, now, to finish off, just to give you some thoughts around what you might consider in putting together your proposal. So, as Prue has described,
40:20
the Endeavour fund is a mission-led fund transforming New Zealand's future.
It is a broad fund. So, it accepts proposals from across the research community. So, it's important for you to think about where that sits in terms of our current investment.
So, it's a really good idea to start early and co-design with your end-users. Get everyone in the room at the beginning, so that you can get input from your end-users about the kind of work that they need done in order to deliver impact for New Zealand in their area.
Design your project with the end in mind. Always work backwards from the desired impact and difference that you intend to make with the work.
And there are some really useful tools out there. For example, you could develop a programme logic which talks about the issues and allows you to draw a line of sight from those issues all the way through to impact and becomes a really useful tool as you're working through your proposal development. It allows you to be reflecting back to where you started your thinking and you can update it, and then it can be a tool that you can take through to your programme if it is funded.
Talked about the investment signals and the priorities signaled in the strategies. This is really important when it comes to the portfolio approach. The government, the Science Board will be looking for opportunities to invest in the specific signals that have been listed the Investment Plan.
It is important to describe how you align to government strategies, but don't, just name them. You have to tell us how your work will make those strategies more effective.
Study the Gazette Notice
42:09
and Assessment Guidelines carefully. I have talked about Gazette Notice and Assessment Guidelines and Investment Plan quite a lot in this presentation. They are the foundational documents for the round and for your proposals. So, you should understand these and know these documents well. They give you a lot of useful information as to how you can put together a strong proposal.
Don't rush the registration process. This process allows us to define appropriate Assessors for your proposal. So, choose carefully your codes.
Think early about how to position the proposal - which industry sector, and which codes best characterise your work. And please be authentic in choosing these codes.
Willy-John has talked about Vision Mātauranga. Think about the extent to which you are giving effect to Vision Mātauranga. Some areas have more potential than others, and it is perfectly fine that you are working in an area that doesn't give effect to Vision Mātauranga terribly strongly. But we do need you to justify this in the Vision Mātauranga section.
It may seem a simple point, but make sure your Executive Summary contains all the key points. This is a real reference document, not only for the Assessors, but for the Science Board as well in decision making. So, you need to really outline the important points of your proposal in the Executive Summary.
43:34
So, what is the science? Excellence is always assessed first. So, describe your science clearly. Make sure that you give enough details So, that Assessors can understand what you are thinking and provide evidence for your arguments. Your reference list should be reasonably extensive if you want to demonstrate that you know that state-of-the-art knowledge.
And avoid empty sentences. Your word count is precious. So, every word should count. So, please, if you read a sentence, and it really doesn't add value to your proposal, consider taking it out.
Be specific to show which part of the proposal is ambitious. We're not expecting the entirety of your Excellence argument to be really moving the knowledge forward in the area that you're working in. We also, want to see some evidence of work that is going to allow that new knowledge to be translated into impact. So, you've got to balance that in your proposal.
And manage risk with a suitable plan. We have provided quite a few extra words for you this year. So, please focus on this and tell us what you think your risks are, and how you're going to mitigate them.
Build your best team with the right mix of skills, researchers, and end-users, and you can actually use the funding to support offshore collaborators up to 50% of the funding. However, that work must be used to achieve impact in New Zealand.
And also consider diversity and capability development in your proposal.
And for impact,
45:12
consider which impact category is most appropriate, and this is outlined in the documentation. Would you be better suited to be in Protect and Add Value or Transform?
Think about broad benefit to New Zealand and consider spillover benefits as well as the direct benefit of your research.
Ensure your work programme includes activities that allow impact to be delivered. This is a fund that is 50% science excellence and 50% impact. So, we need to see that you have thought about how you're going to translate that work into impact.
And ensure your proposal describes how you meet the investment signals, and we've talked about this.
Co-funding is not mandatory, but it is potentially useful, the nearer you are to market.
45:59
Talked quite a bit about ANZSRC codes. These are the codes that we used to classify your research, and new codes were introduced into the last round.
There are three classifications: your Fields of Research, or FOR, and these are defined at registration; Socioeconomic Objective, defined at registration as well; and Type of Activity which is your FRASCATI definition which is a profiling question.
Just a plea please to keep these to a minimum.
46:29
and use no more than three. It's really not very helpful if we get five or six of these codes. It just splits the opportunity to try and find Assessors for you. So, please keep it to the key codes, and no more than three. And we use these to find Assessors as I said.
The SEO codes are used by the Science Board to balance the mix of investments as described. So, again, please keep these to a minimum and really make sure that they are reflecting your work.
47:03
So, it’s just some final points from me. We have talked about knowledge intensity as the specific investment signal.
Again reiterating, this applies to the target industry and not the science.
Please answer your Vision Mātauranga profiling with care. It helps with Assessor selection, and in the portfolio approach.
And we've noticed quite a lot of extensions, particularly to Smart Ideas in relation to students. So, students should input into a Smart Ideas programme rather than the programme being designed around them.
Be specific in identifying conflicts of interest, please. We have seen whole organisations being excluded as a conflict. Again, this is not terribly useful in trying to find Assessors for you, because we do have a limited Assessor pool. So, by identifying conflicts which may be more tenuous, then it does make it more difficult to find Assessors for your proposal.
48:09
And please right size your work programme. Think about whether your Critical Steps are actually critical.
And I know Max used to talk about rule of thumb one Critical Step per Research Aim per year. This is actually a really useful rule of thumb to help you right size the number of Critical Steps, particularly for Smart Ideas. One example we had recently had about twelve Critical Steps in a Smart Idea which in the end was causing issues through the delivery of the programme. So, just dial it back and right-size it.
And finally, please ensure your Public Statements accurately reflect your programme, and that no confidential information is included. Last couple of rounds, we've come back to you prior to publication of the results of the round and asked you to check these Public Statements. We won't be doing that next year. So, we need to make sure that your Public Statements are accurate.
So, if you want to know more about Endeavour,
49:06
we can explain the process and help with use of the portal, and resolve any issues with the portal. But we cannot interpret the Call for Proposals, and we cannot provide specific advice about your proposal, and this does include questions around eligibility.
Our contact details
49:26
are here, and you will be provided with this presentation on our website in due course.
49:34
And that wraps up the Webinar, and if you have any questions, please use the Q&A function and not the chat.
And I will now hand back over to Alan.
Endeavour Fund 2023 Call for Proposals [PDF 1.3MB]
