Comparative analysis of organizational and leadership success factors associated with fast-growing biomedical research

Life sciences discoveries drive public health improvement and consequently expanding research is great societal interest. The purpose of this study is to identify what measurable qualities of institutional culture point to fast growth of biomedical research. This cross-sectional study analyzed data on NIH funded research of 93,703 contact Principal Investigators (PIs) of 254 US research universities and institutions. The sample was ranked based on percentage growth of funding over a decade and subsequently split into an upper half of fast growers and lower half of controls. The multidimensional comparisons indicated that neither current funding levels nor academic classifications of organizations nor success in recruiting funded researchers appear to be useful identifiers of above average research growth. On the other hand, there is a significant inverse relationship between the percentage growth in funded research and the ratio of non-active versus active principal investigators. Here we show that the essence of most productive growth strategies is "support your own people" by helping past successful researchers to regain funding as PIs, increasing project size per PI, and internally raising PIs who were unfunded but become newly funded.