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

Why this research matters for health and discovery

Behind every new treatment or medical breakthrough lies a web of research labs, universities, and institutes competing for scarce funding. This study asks a simple but powerful question: what makes some biomedical research organizations grow quickly and thrive, while others stall? By looking at real funding data from tens of thousands of scientists across the United States, the authors uncover concrete patterns in how institutions support their researchers—and show that quietly backing your own people may be more effective than chasing big-name hires.

Following the money across a decade

The researchers examined records from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), the main public funder of biomedical research. They tracked 93,703 lead scientists, known as principal investigators, at 254 universities and research institutes over ten years. Instead of just looking at who had the most money, they ranked organizations by how fast their NIH funding grew in percentage terms. The top half formed the “fast growers,” and the bottom half served as the comparison group. This approach allowed the team to study growth dynamics in institutions of very different sizes, from large research universities to independent institutes.

Big budgets and brand names are not enough

One might expect that already wealthy universities or those with elite research labels would automatically grow fastest. The analysis tells a more nuanced story. While top-tier research universities and some specialized institutes are well represented among fast growers, simply having a high starting budget or a prestigious classification did not reliably predict rapid growth. Nor did success in recruiting already funded scientists from other institutions. In other words, reputation and current wealth alone did not distinguish places where research funding expanded most quickly over the decade.

The hidden power of the researcher pool

The heart of the study is a detailed portrait of each institution’s “talent pool”—everyone employed there who had ever been an NIH-funded principal investigator during the ten years, whether currently funded or not. Fast-growing organizations built much larger pools of such researchers and, crucially, were better at turning unfunded or previously funded scientists back into active grant holders. They showed higher growth in the number of investigators, the number of awards, and the average funding per scientist. A key signal was the balance between active and non-active investigators in the final year: institutions with a high ratio of unfunded to funded researchers tended to have slower growth, while those that kept more of their investigators funded grew faster.

Supporting your own people pays off

Looking more closely at how these pools changed over time, the authors found that the fastest growers did several things well at once. They retained many investigators with continuous funding, helped scientists who had lost support regain it, and “raised” new principal investigators from within their existing staff. In fact, nurturing internal talent—researchers who had not previously led funded projects—contributed more to growth than recruiting already funded stars from outside. Fast growers roughly doubled the size of their talent pool over ten years and often increased the average grant size per investigator, suggesting a shift toward fewer, stronger projects per person rather than spreading resources thin.

What this means for the future of medical research

For universities, research hospitals, and institutes hoping to boost their impact on health, this study sends a clear message in plain terms: invest in the people you already have. High and sustained growth in grant funding was linked not to a single magic trick, but to a culture that values persistence, reduces “one-and-done” research careers, and provides consistent support for scientists as they move from one project to the next. By focusing on the entire pool of researchers—especially those between grants—leaders can build more stable, productive environments that are better positioned to deliver the medical advances patients need.

Citation: Balas, E.A., Abdelgawad, Y.H., Aubert, C. et al. Comparative analysis of organizational and leadership success factors associated with fast-growing biomedical research. Sci Rep 16, 8662 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-41471-w

Keywords: biomedical research funding, research culture, principal investigators, university research growth, science leadership