Mission-driven research: opportunities and challenges for Canada

Public funding of academic science has long been premised on the idea that scientists are best left to govern and direct themselves. There is growing unease with this idea, and mission-driven research—a broad set of policy ideas for funding this science, each imposing “direction” on the scientific enterprise—has become increasingly popular. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature on mission-driven research and its cognates, we offer an analysis of the role it might play in Canada as well as a stricter definition that we hope will be more useful to scientists, policymakers, and society in figuring out how Canadian science can move forward. Our conclusions are broadly supportive of missions as precision, targeted tools but not as a panacea for all the challenges we face.