How to survive and thrive in the knowledge pond
29 January 2011
"Knowledge
sharing and communication professionals now inhabit a much more crowded workspace than 15 years
ago. There is more noise, more competition and more strategic thinking needed to make your
knowledge stand out and be heard. However, this community is far better networked than ever before.
There are opportunities to build knowledge-brokering relationships across the globe."
These are among the highlights of discussions at a recent workshop on ‘Improving the impact of development research through better communication and uptake’, as reported in a blog post by Andrew Clappison from the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN). The workshop was co‐hosted by AusAID, DFID and UKCDS on November 29th and 30th in London and involved 80 participants from around the world.
A full report of the workshop as well as a background paper, are available for download (follow links below).
In the workshop report, the lead facilitator of the workshop, Louise Shaxson of Delta Partnership, summarizes a number of emerging themes from the discussions, namely that:
Research is but one voice in the knowledge ‘ecology’ relating to policy and practice. This is not to dismiss its importance and the strength of messages which emerge from research, but to recognise the wealth of other types of knowledge with which research must collaborate (and, at times, compete). Thus the field of research communication is moving away from a reliance on the linear model to one which appreciates the contribution made by a wide variety of actors – some of whom may be indeed conducting their own research. Local groups can be assisted to conduct their own research, and where there are shared interests it may be possible to collaborate with the private sector to build common understanding around mutual or overlapping agendas.
There is need to balance between supply and demand for research. There is still much to do to improve the supply of robust research and other types of knowledge to policy and practice. This should not only focus on strengthening large, national‐level research institutes but should enhance local capacity to supply research and other types of knowledge to fulfil specific development needs. There was also general agreement that we know more about how to improve supply than we do about how to improve demand for evidence, particularly in the policy sphere.
There is still room to improve capacity to assess the impact of research. There is increasing pressure to demonstrate that research is having an impact; creating value, affecting decision‐making, and having a positive effect on people’s livelihoods. The particular challenge faced by people involved in research communication is to collect evidence of impact that is generalisable, particularly where local context is felt to play a large part in achieving impact and where research can only contribute to a wider debate. What emerged from discussions was the need to strengthen work in two areas: a greater use of case studies, and a sharper focus on theories of change.
Steps can be taken to better understand and raise standards of knowledge mediation work. While there are many organizations who identify themselves as knowledge intermediaries and have been working in this way for many years, it is only in the past decade or so that the intermediary function has begun to be recognized as something separate.
In moving from a focus on ‘informing’ to ‘building sustainable institutions’ the measures of impact shift from content analysis and Google Analytics‐type information on issues such as hit rates, downloads and citations (informing) to measures of inclusivity and stakeholder involvement in project and programme plans and institutional strategies. While there is still a considerable way to go in developing a robust framework for assessing the impact of knowledge intermediaries, the outputs from the workshop provide a useful start by developing some indicators to help improve standards and share understanding of impact and effectiveness (pages 26‐32 of the report).
