Research program assessment from research and social impacts

Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX) [14] started R&D programs focusing on the creation of social technologies, science and technology for social systems. This paper summarizes the mid-term assessment results of the completed R&D programs at RISTEX. The assessment of the R&D program has two levels of assessments, i.e. a research projects' level and a R&D program level assessment. Each R&D program at RISTEX includes more than one research project. One of characteristics of RISTEX R&D programs is the existence of the management system which stimulates interactions between research projects and the management team aiming at the project success. The R&D program assessment investigates how the management system works to meet the R&D program goals. Our current assessment shows that the research maturity, such as existing academic societies, affects the research project selection as well as the portfolio management. When the research maturity is low, then a R&D program tends to focus on social issues. As the result, the research project portfolio is managed from problem-solving viewpoints. Even though the research maturity is low, activities to link research projects led by the management system has a good potential to influence positively to create strategic research themes from the bottomup research projects. In the future study, we will look at the management system at RISTEX whether it works positively for the research theme creation and social impacts.