"It's about management capacity," Huidekoper says. "It's whether we continue to do really good research and really good teaching."

With new opportunities cropping up every day, Rudenstine says the sheer volume of ideas he gets makes it impossible to do them all.

"You have to say no," he says. "The awareness of limits is very powerful."

So Harvard has to be picky. Global and intellectual trends help shorten the list; so do the University's financial and managerial limits.

Rudenstine says recent initiatives focusing on Latin America illustrate this point. According to Rudenstine, this region is especially academically relevant right now, so Harvard focused its global research efforts there.

"You always have to judge where you are and what you can take on--it's an intuitive art," he says. "We knew we couldn't do three new regions of the world--that would be overreaching."

But Rudenstine, the deans and other senior administrators are careful not to draw the line too conservatively either.