Assessing emerging institutional innovations and the development of new innovative institutional frameworks and institutional arrangements promoting research-driven sustainable development in increasingly complex network systems in a way strengthening autonomous research and innovation institutions.

This is because analysis of higher education institutions and large transnational and intergovernmental scientific organizations and their worldwide science networks suggests that the practice of independent and open science calls for effective networks of scientific institutions with external actors, including private foundations, disruptive startups, and other business institutions, if adequate internal integrity routines and self-imposed codes of conduct are established at institutional level. In other words, the analysis will focus on emerging organizations able to promote human-centered innovations, in association with emerging societal discussions about wealth creation and distribution.

The institutional features of these, and others, transnational institutions are such that autonomy and research integrity are the glue that emerges to bind the different partners and individuals together. Autonomy and integrity are self-enforced within the organization, and not based on coercion imposed from the outside or mandated by ethical principles. Overall, they require a clear and adequate financial and economic structure of incentives, properly defined among member states and in a way to avoid dependence from any external source of funding.