This thinking and the conceptual framework described below, provides insight into the unique “Nature of Broader Impacts” ^(CN3).  The conceptual framework illustrates that broader impacts is a way of thinking, knowing, understanding, and acting. 

Accepting the Nature of Broader Impacts (NBI) can help faculty and everyone in the academy move beyond a defensive response to a perceived agency requirement. This way of thinking, knowing, understanding, and acting helps all, meaning irrespective of discipline and research, teaching, service, or occupational focus, to acknowledge their role in positively impacting the present and the future. 

In the Broader Impacts Conceptual Framework (BICF) there are four (4) major domains, each having seven (7) subdomains. The four major domains are research, teaching, service, and society. The central domain being society. 

The seven subdomains found in each major domain are: i) developing knowledge; ii) communicating knowledge; iii) disseminating or sharing knowledge; iv) change learning; v) changing behavior; vi) changing condition; and vii) discovering knowledge.  As we enter any one of the subdomains, we first have to ask: “Why have I selected this subdomain? What specific purpose and impact will this subdomain support?”. Figure 3 (Fig 3.) provides an overview of the entire framework.