Grants

The NSF's Innovation Organizational Change program (IOC) is a new program, the successor of earlier programs more oriented toward manufacturing, and toward industrial partners. It's jointly sponsored by directorates of Social and Economic Sciences, Engineering and Education at NSF. We have posted a wealth of information -- about preparing and submitting proposals, about the IOC program and others that may be of interest, and about research that was funded in the past - through the NSF websites. The "front door" site is http://www.nsf.gov; the IOC site is

www.nsf.gov/sbe/ses/ioc/start.htm. If one starts at the front door, and follows Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences, one can scan the many programs in Social and Behavioral Sciences that may be of interest, as well as the IOC information.

As the IOC website suggests, we're especially interested in interdisciplinary work that applies or extends theory in the world of practice. Practically, that suggests collaboration with both colleagues and research sites -- industry or education, for example, or not-for-profit organizations. Examples are provided on the website. What has often captured the imagination of reviewers, and thus won support, are projects that truly utilize methods of inquiry not hitherto applied. Or projects that demonstrate genuinely cross-disciplinary integration of theory, so that their attack on the issue of inquiry has an extra level of sophistication. Or projects that demonstrate evident mastery of prior literatures to build upon them and inform inquiry in a new way.
Also, we're particularly interested in interdisciplinary work that applies or extends theory in the world of practice.
Since both innovation and organizational change as individual areas each have long and rich research traditions, what we're looking for is something that goes beyond the "old news" that innovation has implications for organization. Blending research traditions to provide new ideas is especially attractive. NSF's Innovation and Organizational Change program (IOC) seeks to improve the performance of organizations (industry, education, non-profit and other) through partnerships between organizations and researchers that focus on theories, concepts and methods of innovation and organization change. Targets include organization learning and redesign, strategic and cultural change, quality and process improvement, new product and service development, and technology integration, among other topics.