Valuing the project: A knowledge-action response to network governance in collaborative research

The delegation of research to self-directed networks is a relatively new strategy to focus academic endeavour on public priorities. Networks involve policymakers, knowledge producers and knowledge users in unfamiliar governance and management relationships. Here we reflect, as practitioners, on research networks as complex governance systems and on their projects as knowledge-action systems designed to deliver public value. Projects represent the currency in which delegated research is issued, but their conversion into monetary grants and awards diverts attention from their potential as boundary organisations or communities of practice in the production of societal knowledge and understanding. Recognising and supporting projects as scalable components of enduring knowledge-action systems, rather than as transient instances of research funding, is key to sustaining delivery of public value under conditions of network governance.