Talking about Social Innovation / En parlant d’innovation sociale

by David Phipps, RIR (York)

Knowledge mobilization is a process that enables social innovation (outcomes) but social innovation remains a persistent gap in Canada’s innovation agenda.  Recent conversations in Ottawa and Montreal suggest that there’s a new voice that is speaking to Canada’s innovation agenda.

La mobilisation des connaissances est un processus qui rend possible l’innovation sociale (extrants), mais l’innovation sociale constitue toujours une faiblesse dans l’agenda du Canada en matière d’innovation. De récents échanges ayant eu lieu à Ottawa et Montréal laisse entrevoir qu’un nouveau courant influence l’agenda canadien en matière d’innovation.

May and November. These are busy travel months because the academic calendar has breathing room in November (after the tri-council grants rush and before Christmas) and May (after exams and before summer holidays). May and November are conference months and ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) was spreading the gospel of knowledge mobilization and social innovation.

This year we weren’t alone.

The Canadian Science Policy Conference is a national conversation among researchers, innovation policy makers and industry seeking to enhance the application of Canadian science to innovation policy.  Traditionally the thinking ground for science and innovation policy (i.e. hard science that works with industry to benefit the economy), CSPC was in Ottawa this year and featured a panel on knowledge mobilization and a panel on social innovation. Two days later and two hours down the road Innovation 2011 was held in Montreal. The traditionally university-industry conference invited a panel on social media for innovation and a panel on people centered innovation – focusing on people, their needs and their behaviours as drivers of innovation.

That’s nice but so what? RIR was at Innovation 2010 and were part of a knowledge mobilization workshop at CSPC 2010.

What was different this year is it wasn’t just RIR beating this drum.  RIR (York) was pleased to be joined by the Canadian Water Network, United Nations University, Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Knowledge Network for Applied Education and Research, Ontario Centres of Excellence, Social Innovation Generation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences. We were part of the program not just a satellite workshop.

Researchers, funders, government agencies and intermediary organizations were speaking to traditional university-industry, innovation and economy audiences – and they listened. Whether it was standing room only in Ottawa, 42 conversations in 12 hours at the RIR booth or +60 people in Montreal there is a growing appetite for this new conversation.

As my background is technology transfer, Innovation 2011 (which is the annual conference for ACCT Canada which was AUTM Canada) is like homecoming for me.  In 2005 I mentioned social sciences to the AUTM crowd and someone laughed at me (“We can’t make money off THAT”). In 2006 we received our first tri-council grant and someone sat next to me and said “so what is it you’re doing?”.  In 2008-2009 we focused our outreach efforts on the Canadian Association of University Research Administrators. At the ACCT Canada directors forum in 2010 knowledge mobilization was part of the “hot topics” And in 2011 the conversation is about knowledge mobilization and social innovation and includes, but is not led by, RIR.

There is now a voice in the Canadian innovation conversation.  It’s still a quiet voice but like all things social, word gets around.

A Knowledge Mobilization Lunch at UVic / Un déjeuner de la mobilisation des connaissances à UVic

Dale Anderson, RIR-UVic

Knowledge mobilization and the public: That was the theme of the inaugural event in our KMb Lunch Series held on October 19 at UVic.

La mobilisation des connaissances (MdC) et le public: tel était le thème de l’événement inaugural de notre série Déjeuner de la MdC à UVic du 19 octobre.

Our kickoff speaker, Dr. E. Paul Zehr, shared his story of the very successful Café Scientifique he and colleagues from the Centre for Biomedical Research have established. The Café features talks (and he stressed they are talks, not PPT lectures) by university faculty on their research, held for a small group of up to 70 people at a local pub. Faculty talk, participants listen, beer and other beverages are consumed, and questions and discussion ensue. Paul believes sharing research with the public this way actually serves the interests of researchers, as it helps the public see the value of research dollars, and also helps them apply research findings to their own lives. The Café has been so successful, it has folks who sign up for all nine sessions, and has led to a spin-off Café organized by Physics and Astronomy.

Katy Nelson and Inba Kehoe from the University Library were our second speakers. They told us about UVic’s open access publishing options, including UVic Space and UVic’s online journal hosting service. Getting research into the hands of those who don’t have access to peer-reviewed journals is becoming a requirement of many funding agencies, and is one of the first steps in the knowledge mobilization journey.  UVic Space helps meet this need, and the library’s webpage lets you see how many people from across the world do access these documents: Russia, China, Switzerland … who knew?  

Sharing KMb knowledge and experience with colleagues was important, but equally important, the event gave participants an opportunity to make those connections we all realize are critical to KMb. While we gathered for just an hour, in that short hour we planted the seed for yet another Café Scientifique … and thus KMb grows, and researchers and the public all share the benefits.   

For more information, check out:

Café Scientifique 

Open Access Publishing at UVic

Online Journals hosted by UVic

Learning from International Knowledge Intermediaries

The follow blog post by David Phipps, RIR-York, was originally posted on Research into Action’s KTExhange Knowledge Translation Weblog on November 17, 2011. It is reposted here with permission.

On October 6, 2011 I wrote about knowledge intermediary organizations in Canada, US and UK:  York University’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit (KMb Unit, Canada), The Research Into Action project of the Institute for Health Policy at The University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, Texas (US), Community University Partnership Program at the University of Brighton (UK) and Centre for Research in Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh (UK). These four are examples of universities investing in a capacity to link academic research to non-academic organizations so that research can inform professional practice and public policy. Each employs a number of professional staff engaged in a variety of knowledge brokering/knowledge intermediary functions. After some very quick and dirty analysis (don’t kick at the table in the blog too hard) we see that although each has some similarities there are some differences.  The four organizations fall into two groups as follows:

Cupp and KMb Unit: university wide; primarily hard money from the university; high degree of social, exchange based, interactive strategies for knowledge brokering; focus on engagement with the community sector.

 RIA and CRFR: located within research units but reaching out within the university; primarily project (soft money) based; engage in contract research on behalf of partners; some social and exchange based strategies (CRFR>RIA) but knowledge transfer/translation more prevalent; focus on engagement with policy makers and professional practitioners.

This gives us a basis for comparison.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and interacting, and sometimes working, with all of them.  Unfortunately they don’t know each other but hopefully I can act like KMb crazy glue.

If I had the pleasure of sitting down with the lead staff from each of these units, Rick Austin (RIA), Dave Wolff (Cupp) and Sarah Morton (CRFR) this is what I would ask them:

• Tell me your story from bright idea to implementation.
• How do you measure success?
• How do you use social media: as a communication or engagement strategy?
• What has been your biggest surprise (good or bad)?
• What has been your biggest disappointment or ongoing challenge?
• What is your 5 year vision?
• If you could change one thing what would that be?

These are nice qualitative questions. Quantitative analysis would include our usual metrics:

• Number of information sessions with faculty
• Number of information sessions with non-academic audiences
• Number of faculty and students involved
• Number of projects brokered
• Number of knowledge exchange events
• Funding received for projects
• Social media metrics (followers, klout/twittergrader, page views, downloads)

And if we really wanted to get serious doing a compare/contrast among our units we would survey our user communities: faculty, students, government partners, community partners and probe around costs/benefits, barriers/facilitators and reputational gains for the university.

Although some are relatively new to knowledge brokering I would also include the other five ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche universities in this analysis: University of Victoria, University of Saskatchewan, University of Guelph, Université du Québec á Montréal, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador as well as the four New Brunswick universities who are investing in the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network, a province wide knowledge mobilization initiative. All of them have invested in an institutional capacity for knowledge mobilization but each has unique aspects to their implementation.

The goal of this analysis would not be to say who has the best broker model because they all work well in their own environments. What we lack now is an understanding of why these different models work well and what can others learn from our experience so they can inform their own decisions about their own investments in knowledge mobilization.

I am, in fact, sitting down with Sarah Morton on November 30 and Dave Wolff on December 2. I sense we will have something to talk about.

Why Knowledge Mobilization? / Pourquoi la mobilisation des connaissances ?

By David Phipps – RIR (York)

Why is knowledge mobilization emerging as an institutional paradigm for community university collaboration? Limited resources and increasing public accountability require that university researchers and their non-academic partners collaborate to accomplish more with less.

Pourquoi la mobilisation des connaissances émerge-t-elle en tant que paradigme institutionnel pour la collaboration université-milieux ? Les ressources limitées et l’imputabilité face à la population exigent que les chercheurs universitaires et leurs collaborateurs non académiques collaborent afin de faire plus avec moins.

Mobilizing Minds is a knowledge mobilization project that is lead by then University of Manitoba and hosted at York University’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit. We are pleased to support the KMb activities of Mobilizing Minds who have been previously featured in Mobilize This! on November 8, 2010, February 24, 2010 and March 6, 2009 among  other entries. Mobilizing Minds recently held a meeting involving researchers, community partners and young adults. The three day long event was in part retrospective assessment of progress part prospective planning and part the necessary renewing of bonds among a group spread over 6 universities, 2 provinces and about 8 community partners. One of the activities was a lecture by Cameron Norman. Cameron is Assistant Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.  Cameron tweets as @cdnorman and we have been following each other on twitter long before we were connected through Mobilizing Minds. Cameron spoke to us about Design Thinking.

Cameron and his colleague Andrea Yip (@andrealyip) gave us first an orientation to design. “Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impost meaningful order” (Victor Papanek, 1985). Design Thinking therefore “refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning fields. As a style of thinking, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context” (thank you Wikipedia).

One of the design thinking tools we learned and practiced was the 5 Whys that help you get close to your subject matter by asking “why” five times. I did this with Maria Luisa Contursi of Mind Your Mind (@mindyourmind_ca), the principle community partner for Mobilizing Minds. Both of us did this for the same project and came up with different reasons for why we were doing the project. There is no right or wrong answer. This exercise helps you get close to your subject.

I tried this imagining the “why” of knowledge mobilization from the perspective of different KMb stakeholders.

University researcher: Why do I engage in KMb?

• Because I want partners for my research
• Because I want other people to use my research
• Because I want my research to make a difference
• Because research and knowledge should not be held inside the academy
• Because society expects a return on investment in my research

Graduate student: Why do I engage in KMb?

• Because I want partners for my research
• Because I am considering options to an academic career
• Because I don’t think there will be faculty jobs for me
• Because there are pressures on academic budgets
• Because everyone needs to do more with less

Community/Government partner: Why do I engage in KMb?

• Because I need research and evidence to help me make decisions
• Because I need to have greater confidence that I am making the right decisions
• Because I need to demonstrate my programs are producing results
• Because my stakeholders are demanding greater accountability
• Because resources are increasingly limited

Interesting. If I imagine their perspectives correctly then we put our efforts into KMb because society expects a return on tax dollars, because we need to do more with less and resources are limited. All three are related to operating in a climate of limited resources. In such a climate we turn to collaboration to take advantage of complementarity and create opportunities together that we would not have been able to accomplish working in isolation. This is a very different motivation than that other university based knowledge transfer: technology transfer and commercialization which started in the 1980s with the promise of financial return to the university and the economy.

KMb is the process of identifying, creating and sustaining collaborations between university researchers and their non-academic partners.  KMb is a process that results in social innovations arising from those collaborations. In a climate of austerity we turn to collaboration to do more with less and create a return on investment in research and health/human services.

Why knowledge mobilization? That’s why.

Meet Karen Follett, KMb Coordinator at The Harris Centre

The following blog story was first published in The Harris Centre’s newsletter The Regional, Fall 2011. It is reposted here with permission.

When I started with the Harris Centre three years ago, I remember being very confused at my first meeting by the onslaught of acronyms and strange terms. KMb, brokering, knowledge transfer, stakeholder, lay summary, Yaffle. Even my title seemed daunting: Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator.

So, how exactly was I supposed to coordinate the movement of knowledge? When you boil it down, my job is to connect the university with the rest of the province.

Thankfully, I soon got the hang of it, becoming fluent in “community engagement” speak and getting to work on bringing Memorial expertise into Newfoundland and Labrador communities.

The thing I love most about my job is it’s never boring. Some days I help a non-profit group enter their research needs into Yaffle, our online research database, and then help find a match for them at the university. Then there are the days I get to travel with researchers to a remote community in a twin otter airplane.

One of the most exciting ways I connect people is by bringing people together face-to-face through workshops and other events. I could open up my own travel agency with the knowledge I’ve gained in planning logistics with the Harris Centre. We bring Memorial faculty, staff and students into different regions and communities of the province to interact with community leaders and decision makers.

It’s amazing what you learn and experience by leaving the university environment and going into a community to talk with residents about their real-world issues.

The thing that keeps me on my toes is problem solving and learning from others on-the-job. For example, I could never have been taught in school the lessons I learned when I had to get a group back to St. John’s (including myself), and were met with weather delays in Nain, Labrador during one of our workshops.

I’m also thankful for the lesson I learned about sharing knowledge: it sometimes comes from unexpected places. I now know that those inside the university community gain as much knowledge and experience from community-university engagement as do those from outside the university.

Please feel free to contact me with your questions or projects at kfollett@mun.ca – I’m here to help!

Karen

Mobilizing Knowledge Inside the University / Mobiliser les connaissances dans l’université

by David Phipps (RIR York)

Bugs and ballet make for an interesting combination and they illustrate that knowledge mobilization can happen within the university as effectively as between university and community.

Insectes et ballet forment une combinaison digne d’intérêt. Ils illustrent que la mobilisation des connaissances peut se produire au sein même de l’université aussi bien qu’entre cette dernière et la communauté.

ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche (RIR) has posted 279 blogs on Mobilize This! Our readers have viewed the blog 73,133 times (as of November 6, 2011). Every single one of them dealt with some form of knowledge mobilization (KMb) and advocated connecting university research and talent with non-academic audiences to inform decisions about public policy and professional practice.

Until now.

KMb is a process that connects researchers to decision makers.  Sometimes decision makers are other researchers.  Sometimes knowledge brokers need to broker relationships inside the ivory tower. That’s where Bugzzz comes in.

On August 25, Y File published, “Dance and theatre professors begin work on ‘Bugzzz’”.  As reported by Y File “Bugzzz aims to challenge the notion of progress, particularly our uncritical obsession with technology. The project proceeds as if human civilization has self-destructed because of our over consumption of resources. Only insects remain and it is they who take an archeological look at the value of civilization through art, specifically through Giacomo Puccini’s opera, Tosca.”

Side bar: my PhD was in invertebrate (ie bug) immunology and I recently started dancing again after a 7 year break from the ballet studio. That’s why Bugzzz caught my attention.

I contacted one of the principals behind Bugzzz, Gwen Dobie, and asked if she had ever spoken to any of York’s entomologists (bug experts) to inform her creative work. Gwen replied “We’d be pleased to meet with any bug researchers you may know. It would certainly enrich our process.” I was offering to help her connect to scientific research and expertise to inform her creative and artistic decisions about movement, sound, behavior and design (costume, lighting, stage etc.).  Very knowledge mobilization. All inside the university.

On October 13 I had the pleasure of introducing Gwen Dobie (Theatre) and her colleagues William Mackwood (Dance), Barbara Evans (Film) and Teresa Przybylski (Theatre) to three faculty from the Department of Biology: Andrew Donini (mosquitoes and midges), Amro Zayed (bees) and Laurence Packer (dead bees…with over 100,000 specimens of bees he  has the largest bee collection in Canada with bees the size of the head of a pin and bees bigger than 3 cm….some black and yellow…some black…some blue!!!).

The scientists showed off their facilities, pictures and bugs and the artists asked lots and lots and lots of questions, about colony vs. individual behaviours (do bugs have empathy?), what/how do bugs hear and the waggle dance (see video below).

The scientists were incredibly giving of their time and expertise. The creative artists were engaged, intrigued, enthralled. I had a blast since it allowed me to reflect on two interests: bugs and ballet.  The scientists and artists all felt that the morning was valuable. Feedback from participants included:

• I’m so pleased we were able to have this opportunity to receive a small insight into your very interesting investigations. It will deeply inform our own research/creative process (Gwen Dobie).
• It was fun. Best wishes for your production and feel free to visit again if you wish (Andrew Donini).

Thanks to all for their interest. Thanks to Amro who gave us honey from his bee hives and thanks to Barbara Evans for the pictures from the morning. Be sure to check out the following video about how bees communicate and manage to give directions all without a GPS.

Mobilizing Knowledge to Parliamentarians / Mobiliser la connaissance pour les parlementaires

by David Phipps (RIR-York)

Philip Kelly was on Parliament Hill recently speaking about his research and its policy implications for New Canadians seeking employment and social mobility. Phil was mobilizing knowledge to Parliamentarians.

Philip Kelly était récemment sur la colline du Parlement afin d’y présenter ses recherches et les implications politiques de celles-ci pour les Néo-Canadiens cherchant emploi et mobilité sociale. Phil mobilisait les connaissances pour les parlementaires.

Thursday morning, October 20, Philip Kelly (Department of Geography, York University) spoke as part of the Big Thinking series of the Canadian Federation of Humanities and Social Sciences on Parliament Hill. “Big Thinking is a lecture series featuring the best Canadian research and scholarly work in the social sciences and the humanities. Held on Parliament Hill up to six times a year, the Big Thinking lectures bring research directly to the attention of elected officials, policy-makers, government officials, NGOs and the media. While reaching Parliamentarians, these talks demonstrate the importance of humanities and social science research in the development of public policy and in contributing to the quality of life of Canadians. “

Philip Kelly demonstrated the importance of social sciences research by talking about Generation Next: Social mobility of the children of immigrants.  While Philip is a geographer he is also Director of the Toronto Immigration Employment Data Initiative, a SSHRC funded Knowledge Impact in Society project that practices knowledge mobilization providing community and government immigration “organizations with free access to statistical data and analysis on various aspects of immigrant labour market integration. The goal is to help organizations access the quantitative data they need in order to identify priorities, develop programs and services, compose proposals and reports, and carrying out advocacy and public education endeavours.” Phil is also a member of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement, CERIS – The Ontario Metropolis Centre, a SSHRC and CIC funded knowledge mobilization collaboration led by York University.

I asked Phil to tell me about speaking to Parliamentarians.

I discovered that the day starts early for a knowledge mobilizer.   We started with an interview on CBC’s Ottawa Morning radio show at 6.15am.  The producers had picked up on my talk later in the morning on Parliament Hill and the discussion focused mostly on what my research had found that was unexpected about social mobility among second generation Filipino-Canadians.  The breakfast lecture in the ‘Big Thinking’ series then followed with a collection of MPs, Senators, parliamentary staff and Ottawa community folks present.   The talk focused on my current research through the Filipino Youth Transitions in Canada project, examining educational and employment outcomes for Filipino-Canadian youth.  Conscious that this was rare exposure to Geography (as an academic discipline) for many of those listening, I also tried to emphasize a geographical perspective in my approach to the issue.  The lecture will be posted at http://fedcan.ca/content/en/323/Big_Thinking.html.  The first question, about immigrant deprofessionalization, came from Senator Art Eggleton, who I think I might have referred to as ‘Art Eglinton’, but he didn’t seem to mind.  The lecture was followed by a meeting with Kevin Lamoureux MP, who represents Winnipeg North – one of the field sites for my study and Canada’s largest Filipino neighbourhood.  After lunch with SSHRC VP Gisele Yasmeen, I met with Statistics Canada staff to discuss data sources and ongoing research projects at the agency concerning second generation outcomes.

In addition to his CBC Radio interview, his talk picked up some press in iPolitics, “an independent, non-partisan and committed to providing timely, relevant, insightful content to those whose professional or personal interests require that they stay on top of political developments in Ottawa and the provinces.”

See also the Federation’s blog on Philip’s talk including a video.

Talking to a group, one-on-one meetings, radio and on line media kept Phil busy practicing multiple forms of knowledge mobilization to multiple audiences all in one day.  A recent systematic review by Annette Boaz and colleagues shows that such multi-faceted methods of knowledge mobilization are more effective than single methods. We recently profiled this systematic review titled Effective implementation of research into practice: an overview of systematic reviews of the health literature in a ResearchImpact-RéseauImpactRecherche journal club.

SSHRC VP Gisele Yasmeen (@gyasmeen) tweeted from Phil’s presentation. CFHSS Director of Policy and Communication Alison Hebbs not only accompanied Phil throughout his day but phoned me to tell me what a great job he had done mobilizing academic research about an important Canadian topic to MPs, senators and bureaucrats. Phil was talking to Parliamentarians. Which is easier than (but not as funny as) talking to Americans as Rick Mercer found out.