It’s Time for Tech Transfer to Grow Up

I am posting from Victoria, BC (staying at the lovely, historic Empress Hotel) where I am attending Canada’s national technology transfer conference hosted by the Alliance for the Commercialization of Canadian Technology. I have a few days to reflect on Canada’s technology transfer (TT) industry where I began my story many years ago, my story which was recently told in “From Broker to Broker in 17 short years” posted on Peter Levesque’s blog at Knowledge Mobilization Works! Over the next few days I will join some of my former colleagues from my former lives as we consider the state of the TT nation. This is what I think going into the conference:

It’s time for TT to grow up.

TT has done some wonderful things for industry, academia and for society. Don’t just look at the money reported by StatsCan’s “Commercialization of Intellectual Property in the Higher Education Sector” which reported $52M in royalty revenue for Canadian universities in 2007 (Read the report here) but look also at the Better World Project that tells the stories of societal impact of TT. Nonetheless, The Council of Canadian Academies recently released its report “Innovation and Business Strategy: Why Canada Falls Short” (Read the report here). Canada continues to under perform on innovation metrics. This shouldn’t be news but academic TT needs to examine its role in this innovation system. Canadian institutions spent $41.8M to generate the $52M in royalty revenues (http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/scte04-eng.htm) not to mention all the investments in managing research contracts, Material Transfer Agreements and Confidentiality Agreements and support for internal and external legal counsel. The system isn’t running on all cylinders, or, as Ron Freedman of The Impact Group says, we need a new paradigm for research and innovation (http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/686405).

It’s time for TT to grow up.

By this I mean it is time for TT to grow, expand and explore new value propositions. The unilateral push of patents into the hands of industry is only one space where the university and industry interact. It’s time the talented TT workforce applied its skills in brokering university-industry relationships to the many other spaces of university-industry engagement. Some universities already take a more holistic view of these spaces. The Co-operative Education & Career Services administers the co-operative education system for the University of Waterloo. Luc Lalande (@LucLalande) at Carleton University spends only about 5% of his time pushing patents out the door. The other 95% of his time he is supporting innovation and entrepreneurship of his faculty and graduate students. Penn State recognizes the broader roles of university-industry engagement in local innovation systems (http://oewd.psu.edu/tre/files/Proceedings-10-06-08.pdf) and the Rochester Institute of Technology has set up a centre to support student lead innovation (http://www.rit.edu/news/?v=47022). Look for York University to soon launch Innovation York that will learn from may of these experiences and develop a hybrid of technology transfer, industry liaison and knowledge mobilization.

As we described in Evidence & Policy, KM isn’t a discrete activity but a suite of services. Why do we continue to rely on TT as the principle means of mediating the university-industry relationship? Imagine the potential for impact if we further increase the flow of people, ideas, money and materials between universities and industries by allowing the substantial talents of the TT workforce to support a broader range of university-industry engagement. Imagine the increased quantity and quality of industry matching research grants from CIHR, NSERC, OCE and yes, even SSHRC whose business, management, finance, legal and design scholars are very much relevant to industry.

As I previously wrote (KM & TT: Chapter 3), TT has something to learn from KM and that is why I am here at ACCT. Over the next 2 days I’ll blog and I’ll tweet (@researchimpact) from the conference. In addition to re-connecting with old friends I’ll be looking for new ideas and new friends who I can grow up with. I’m ready to grow up.

Are you?

Knowledge Brokers and the Metaphors They Love

The following is a guest blog from Jason Guriel. A Research Assistant in the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University, Jason works to summarize and communicate the results of York research. He is also a PhD Candidate in English at York and has published two collections of poems.

As a graduate student at York University, the Knowledge Mobilization (KM) Unit has provided not just summer work but an opportunity to learn about some of the more policy-relevant research being carried out on campus. But as a PhD candidate in York’s Department of English, my relationship to KM is a bit murkier. Scholars, critics, professors, and graduate students who study literature are not typically engaged in research that is obviously policy relevant or that has much of a direct, material impact on, say, a local community. The same is probably true of academics in other areas, such as the fine arts. KM encompasses a pretty broad suite of services, but what can it offer disciplines like English – disciplines where research, though valuable in and of itself, does not necessarily always aim to have an explicit social use?

Well, one thing KM offers – or, at least, one thing it has offered me – is a better understanding of the nature of collaboration. There’s a lot of chatter, in the world of research, about the need to break through the silos in which academics are often isolated, and to bring these supposed hermits blinking into the light, into contact with others. Of course, the image of the researcher in the silo has become a cliché, and clichés can grate a bit, especially when you study poetry, as I’m fortunate enough to do. (Poetry, see, often tries to avoid clichés in pursuit of some more memorable way to say what amounts to the same old thing.) But when I really think about the cliché of the silo, I can’t help but picture an academic in an actual grain silo, up to his Adam’s apple in sorghum or something. As I picture it, this poor professor (or graduate student, or researcher) is talking and talking, saying important things even though the words remain trapped in the silo, caroming around, echoing uselessly. Outside of the silo, passing pedestrians hear only muffled noises, if they hear anything at all – if they even notice the silo! The silo, I should add, isn’t necessarily the academic’s fault; it may be the result of a discipline’s insularity, or the rigidity of institutional barriers, or any number of roadblocks for which there may be good reasons.

Knowledge brokers would seem to be those folks intent on knocking some holes into the silo – not just to let some beams of light in but also to let some beams of light out: out of the silo and into the community. They don’t want to dismantle the silo per se; they just want to help spread the sorghum. Or something.

So the silo metaphor, though a little cliché and unwieldy, is not so bad, if you really think about it (and, by doing so, rehabilitate it). And KM people, like poetry people, are always, it seems, thinking in metaphors and analogies and similes. One of the better metaphors sees knowledge brokers as agnostics: in other words, they believe in collaboration but have no firm, orthodox ideas about the form that collaboration should take. Another good one: knowledge brokers are especially imaginative matchmakers. They’re always looking to manufacture novel matches between researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners. They’re open to different, Twister^®-like relationships.

Whatever else KM represents – and this may include many things – it surely represents the potential of two-way relationships, the potential to learn from others even as they learn from you, the opportunity not just to mobilize knowledge (like the cliché of the rolling, moss-less stone) but to share knowledge. To engage in activities that are mutually beneficial. To make, I suppose, metaphors. A metaphor, after all, enables us to see one thing in terms of another. It enables a connection.

What’s old is new again – test your knowledge about knowledge systems

Many of us think that KM (KT/KE/KTE/KI/KMb… whatever) is an emerging discipline.  It may be an emerging academic discipline but the practice isn’t new.  Jonathan Lomas [Brit Med J (2007) 334:129] reports that KM-like networks of industry and academics were active in the German dye industry in the late 1800s (side bar, this might have been more like industry liaison than KM, for more on that see our blog August 6, 2009).  Also, the University of Wisconsin State Agents performed a KM-ish role for local agriculture at the turn of the 20^th century [Educational Record (1992) 73(2): 12].  Nonetheless, I still get pleasantly surprised when I read an “old” article that reads like it could have been written today.  In 2003, David Cash (then at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) wrote “Knowledge systems for sustainable development” [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 100: 8086].  Read the full article here.

How many of these key points from the article sound familiar to you?

1. Effective knowledge systems engage in communication, translation and mediation
2. Efforts to mobilize are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action
3. Active, iterative, and inclusive communication between experts and decision makers proves crucial to systems that mobilize knowledge
4. Mobilizing requires active mediation (at ResearchImpact we call this knowledge brokering)
5. Mediation works through increasing transparency (for more on transparency, see our blog on August 25, 2009)
6. Systems mobilize knowledge for action by translations that facilitate mutual comprehension
7. Mediation activities help make the boundary between experts and decision makers selectively porous

If you got 7 out of 7 congratulations, you’re new knowledge isn’t so new!

Employing these methods of communication, translation and mediation enables an organization to become a boundary organization.

“These functions can be institutionalized in ‘boundary organizations’, organizations mandated to act as intermediaries between the arenas of science and policy. As originally conceived, boundary organizations have at least three features: (i) they involve specialized roles within the organization for managing the boundary; (ii) they have clear lines of responsibility and accountability to distinct social arenas on opposite sides of the boundary; and (iii) they provide a forum in which information can be co-produced by actors from different sides of the boundary through the use of ‘boundary objects’”

Note the emphasis on co-production, something we highlighted in our recent paper in Evidence & Policy.

So, we might as well all go home as in 2003 David Cash and his colleagues wrote all that I could ever want to write in 2009.  The challenge now is to practice what he preached.  York University, the University of Victoria and ResearchImpact are boundary organizations.  Our knowledge brokers have a foot in both (ok, many) camps and seek to continuously make boundaries pourous by increasing transparency allowing knowledge to be co-produced by researchers and decision makers.

Hold the date of February 9, 2010 for our 3^rd annual KM Expo that will feature discussions of boundaries and means of overcoming them.

Social Innovation – What Does this Mean?

A week or so ago we sent out a request for alternatives to “Social Innovation” as the output of knowledge mobilization. Faculty, knowledge brokers and community partners responded.  Since knowledge mobilization supports relationships between researchers and non-academic research stakeholders (community, voluntary, government and private sectors) the term “social innovation” failed to embrace some of the broad social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits that can result from engaged scholarship.  The idea of (re)defining “social innovation” was popular but our suggestions relating to the bottom line (or triple bottom line) were not.  This is fine as they did what they had to do.  They got you thinking.

Some identified concerns
-bottom line sounds like a static thing and I see what your trying to get at as an ever moving, ebbing and flowing concept
-Bottom line implies money saving to me which seems the antithesis of what you’re working towards
-I worry that the bottom line will predominantly resonate with private sector – with government and broader community it may not have the same appeal.  My interactions with government (provincial and municipal) suggest that while “bottom line” may be a factor it is often not the sole or primary one.
-The challenge with labeling as social innovation or any other term comes from the creation of a constraint that excludes
-If SI or KM cannot meaningfully contribute to social justice and decent livelihood’s for all

Some offered advice:
-you should take careful note of what your community partners think your description should be
-you want to come up with something that is a) understandable and b) easily connects with or has an impact on the group affected
-The core of what you are trying to do is create value for the sectors that are of most interest to you: economic, social, cultural and environmental.

Some provided analysis:
-There seem to be at least two kinds of things going on: 1) a concern by universities (and their funders) that the investments made in research are seen to have application to our communities and to society in general in more direct ways than they have traditionally done (KM) 2) efforts by universities to build new mechanisms for the creation of community-university research partnerships (and other kinds of partnerships as well)

And some provided perspective
-I like social innovation and I have no aversion to its association with business/commercialization. The only disadvantage is that it doesn’t include the natural sciences, or economic impacts. The impact of  KMb is broader than social

Many offered alternative suggestions which I have reframed as “Does Knowledge Mobilization…”
-Inform the triple bottom line
-connect Knowledge for Maximum Benefit
-create connected Knowledge that Swarms Bottom Line Thinking
-connect Knowledge to Assets that are Everlasting
-create connected Knowledge that Drives Positive Growth Everywhere
-produce socioeconomic impact
-result in benefit creation (offered twice, independently)
-produce community-University partnerships for change (ResearchImpact would need to modify community as KM embraces government and industry partnerships)
-support societal impact
-support change for society
-produce benefit capital

Now we’re on a second iteration of this effort and I am adding a few names to our list.

1. What do you think about this debate?  Is it valuable or should we just go away and use social innovation as the output of engaged scholarship because we all know what it means?

2. Do we need a term to more comprehensively yet clearly communicate the impacts of brokering relationships between researchers/students and their non-academic research stakeholder collaborators?  If so, what do you think of the other terms provided above?  What is the output/outcome of KM?

The KM Solution Pt 2: “So What”

The KM Solution Pt 2: “So What”

So what if cultural transparency is a problem: KM services, infrastructure and evaluation

In a previous blog we developed the thinking that cultural transparency (or a lack thereof) between researchers and their non academic research stakeholders is the underlying problem that challenges knowledge mobilization (http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/the-km-solution-part-1-%E2%80%9Cwhat%E2%80%9D/).  Despite this sushi inspired analysis, one is forced to ask “so what”.  We know KM works.  We have published on the top 10 lessons learned from knowledge mobilization (http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/what-do-machiavelli-and-dr-seuss-have-to-do-with-knowledge-mobilization/) so how does knowing the problem help with implementing the solution?

This deeper understanding allows us to refine services and develop infrastructure aimed at increasing cultural transparency and allows us to develop more robust evaluation protocols so that we can better demonstrate the impact of turning research into action.

Services: Understanding the problem of cultural transparency allows us to develop specialized services to address this barrier and foster research based relationships between researchers and their non academic counterparts.

• knowledge brokers to serve as cultural ambassadors supporting often challenging conversations and partnerships between researchers and non academic research stakeholders.
• support for engaged scholarship such as the Major Collaborative Research Initiative and Community University Research Alliance programs of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (www.sshrc.ca)
• training academics in clear language writing that makes research and researchers accessible to non academic research stakeholders such as ResearchImpact’s ResearchSnapshot series (www.researchimpact.ca/researchsearch)

Infrastructure: As identified in Part 1 (“What”), social media has a role to play in facilitating transparency by helping to form and support distributed networks in a community of practice model where loose connections must form before collaboration can begin. We have previously written (http://researchimpact.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/researchimpact-says-o3-is-an-overall-outstanding-opportunity/) about one social media platform, O3 that ResearchImpact is starting to use to link researchers and their partners.  Infrastructure can also include databases such as yaffle (www.yaffle.ca) and should link to existing tools that support access to research such as Canada’s Synergies project (http://www.synergiescanada.org/) and the CANARIE broadband network (www.canarie.ca).

“networks are the infrastructure for doing business in the future.”

Wierarchy, June 27, 2009

Evaluation: A better understanding of the problem (cultural transparency) allows us to develop a new logic model for KM.  Investing in services and infrastructure will result in one specific output: an increase in cultural transparency.  This allows us to construct outcomes based on increased cultural transparency including: collaboration, sharing (of people, information and resources), trust, relevance, access, awareness and engagement.  These outcomes then allow for the identification of impacts including changes in: behaviour of researchers and decision makers; reputation of the university and placement of HQP.  For each of these outcomes and impacts indicators can be developed and measured.

Application of social media to support communities of practice also allows consideration of an emerging metric, Return on Investment on Interaction (http://blog.wirearchy.com/2009/06/27/productivity-in-a-networked-era-assessing-roii-return-on-investment-in-interaction/) as a means of evaluating the impact of KM.  ROII is a way of measuring the creation of economic value out of intangibles including the value of an organization’s networks.  Intangible assets that are affected by interactions (networks, part of KM infrastructure) include brand, reputation, ideas, relationships and know-how but evaluating these softer assets requires social science evaluation methods such as surveys and focus groups rather than counting tangible assets such as dollars or square feet.  York is currently engaged in just such an evaluation employing social science methodologies to evaluate the last 3 years of York and UVic’s KM units and the ResearchImpact partnership.  Stay tuned closer to the end of 2009 for the results of that evaluation.

Understanding the “so what” of cultural transparency creates a theoretical underpinning of KM allowing us to develop and evaluate better KM services and infrastructure.  By enhancing cultural transparency knowledge mobilization is your passport to social innovation.

Stay tuned to Mobilize This! for the third and final installment of this series -The KM Solution: “Now What”

Cage Match: Tapscott vs. Weinberg (I’ll take them both, and the margarita…)

I just finished two books that have received a lot of press of late – Dan Tapscott’s “Grown Up Digital” and “The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web” by Tamar Weinberg.  “Grown Up Digital” is an exploration of the Net Generation (31 years old and younger) who grew up in the digital age while “The New Community Rules” explores the social media tools those NetGeners use and how they can be applied to marketing your business.

Let me say off the top that I enjoyed both books but for different reasons.  “New Community” gives detailed descriptions of social media tools including blogging, microblogging, social networking sites, social bookmarking, social news, new media (videos and photography) and informational social media such as wikis – and check the end of each chapter for the chapter summaries and a snapshot of key messages.  Each chapter explores a different aspect of social media with leading product offerings and case studies of how businesses have used each tool for marketing purposes.  “Grown Up” explores how NetGeners different from previous generations in education, work, consumerism, family, democracy and civic engagement.  Of note are the eight NetGen norms: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation.

If you want to learn how to maximize your use of (and maybe return on investment in) social media you should read “New Community” but if you want to learn how to work or live with someone under 31 (and a lot of people over 31 as well) then you should read “Grown Up”.  Face it, you should read them both.

ResearchImpact has been blogging for over 1 year and on twitter since May 2009.  We have launched some knowledge mobilization videos and have more in production but I found the advice from Tamar Weinberg particularly useful, especially the chapter on blogging which has some great tips for new and experienced bloggers.  But working with ResearchImpact and the rest of the Office of Research Services at York University (www.research.yorku.ca) I work with a lovely and diverse group of staff from 20 to 62 years old.  The description of the Net Generation in “Grown Up” helps me manage the different work and life experiences that all staff bring to their jobs.

However, the comparisons need not stop at these books.  Both Tamar Weinberg (@tamar) and Don Tapscott (@dtapscott) are on Twitter and have 8672 and 8167 followers respectively (as of August 16, 2009) although Tamar has posted 3100 tweets to Don’s 858.  Both also have social media sites connected to their work.  Tamar can be found at www.techipedia.com and Don Tapscott’s site for his book is www.grownupdigital.com.  Both of these sites dig into their subject matter in different ways allowing the consumer to contribute and in Tapscott’s words become the prosumer.

If I were to be stranded on a desert island which book would I want?  If I had access to the internet I would want the “how to” information provided in “New Community Rules” but if I were trapped on a desert island with internet access and people under 31 I would want “Grown Up Digital”….of course if I were trapped on a desert island with internet access I’d just swim up to the pool bar of the resort and order another margarita because why else would I be on a desert island in the first place?

The KM Solution Part 1: “What”

If knowledge mobilization is the solution then what is the problem?

On June 18 I was at lunch with my friends from SSHRC Wayne MacDonald (Director, Corporate Performance and Evaluation) and Craig McNaughton (Director, Knowledge Mobilization and Program Integration).  We were enjoying sushi at Festival Japan discussing all things KM and research impact evaluation when Wayne asked me, “What is the problem to which KM is the solution”?

I stopped mid maki.

Having been a KM evangelist since I wrote our first KM grant application late in 2004 this should have been an easy question to answer.  After I finished masticating my maki I promised Wayne I’d get back to him with an answer.

I asked the knowledge brokers in the ResearchImpact network and we started a wiki and associate discussion.  I tweeted and got the following feedback from @petertwo:

“Sustaining innovation – nurture trust, design & implement collaboratively, monitor & adjust in real-time, share value”

I asked my friend and colleague Charles Ungerleider of the Canadian Council on Learning (Director, Research and Knowledge Mobilization) who said, “Put as succinctly as I can, the question to which knowledge mobilization is an answer is: How might the benefits of investments in research be enhanced?”

We then turned to the electronic equivalent of the library stacks and started reading some really interesting literature that took us to the “two communities” work of Nathan Caplan (American Behavioral Scientist (1979), Vol. 22, No. 3: 459-470).  Sandra Nutley and colleagues (www.ruru.ac.uk) pointed out the limitations of the two communities approach (Journal of Health Services Research & Policy (2008) Vol. 13 No 3: 188–190) so we looked to the university-industry literature on cultural difference to inform our thinking about KM as a bridge between the different cultures of research and action.

Julie Ferguson at CHSRF also discussed the cultural divide between researchers and policy makers in international development (www.chsrf.ca/brokering/pdf/digest_20070201_e.pdf).

If KM bridges this cultural divide then knowledge brokers are cultural ambassadors.

We were getting closer but still had a little way to go. What is the problem that manifests in cultural differences?

Transparency: Digging deeper we propose that a lack of transparency between researchers and decision makers reinforces this cultural divide. While researchers and decision makers might co-exist even within co-creative collaborations, our institutions continue to reinforce barriers to full participation. These cultural barriers include tenure & promotion, academic jargon, academic publishing, exclusivity of university libraries, exclusivity of graduate student dissertation committees which all privilege academic scholarship.

Knowledge brokers increase transparency by acting as guides to researchers seeking to step out of Ivory Towers and to decision makers reaching in. Etienne Wenger illustrates how to increase cultural transparency through participation in communities of practice (www.ewenger.com/pub/index.htm) and Christian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen illustrate the power of social networking to enhance transparency in learning environments (International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (2009) Volume 10, Number 3:1-22).

So, Wayne, cultural transparency (or lack thereof) between researchers and decision makers is the problem to which knowledge mobilization is the solution.

An effective KM infrastructure including investments in knowledge brokers and social media to support communities of practice will increase transparency between researchers and decision makers and help turn research into action.

This is the first in a series of blogs on knowledge mobilization and cultural transparency. You’re read the “What”. Stay tuned for the “So What” and then “Now What” (thank you Levesque Peter Levesque)

Knowledge Mobilization & Technology Transfer – Chapter 3: KM as an emerging paradigm for university-industry engagement (and a shout out to Bea Arthur)

No, I haven’t forgotten.  On October 2, 2008 I posted chapter 2 in the series KM & TT (read it here) and now, better late than never, Chapter 3.  I have previously written about how KM and TT are different but there is a common ground where TT officers and knowledge brokers might find they have something in common.

As part of my preparation for this post I tweeted the following on July 31:

1. Simplified: knowledge mobilization is an iterative 2 way socialized exchange that fosters collaboration between researchers and community

2. Simplified: technology transfer is a 1 way push of university research to industrial licensee(s)

3. If knowledge mobilization is analogous to dating then tech transfer is analogous to what?  Suggestions please…

There are many names by which university Tech Transfer Offices (TTO) are known but among them is the name “”University Industry Liaison Office” (UILO).  In a brief phone survey of colleagues in Canadian TTO/UILO I inquired about the balance between tech transfer (the push of patents to licensees) and industry liaison (the brokering of research based relationships between university and industry).  The balance was overwhelmingly on the business of patents and licensing and much less on the active brokering of research collaborations, which is surprising when you look at the stats. In 2006 research contracts attracted $286,667,000 for Canadian university research compared to $59,689,000 received for commercialization of IP (Statistics Canada).  However these relationships generate more than just money.  University industry collaborations are eligible for matching programs from NSERC, CIHR and OCE and provide great training opportunities for graduate students. They also contribute to the university’s reputation.  Furthermore, university-industry engagement doesn’t need to start with IP for science & technology companies.  Companies that derive their inputs from social sciences and humanities (management, law, finance, cultural and heritage industries) account for $696 billion of annual GDP output for Canada exceeding by half the GDP output driven by firms associated with science, technology, engineering and medicine ($431 billion)(http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/site/about-crsh/publications/impacts_e.pdf). Universities can support the broader innovation system by engaging their fine arts departments, business schools, law schools, computer science departments and service learning units with local business and support business and process solutions as well as technology and product opportunities.  But with this opportunity comes a responsibility to invest in and develop an institutional capacity for knowledge brokering (KM and industry liaison) as they currently do for technology transfer.

As Larry Huston (who led Procter & Gambles P&G Connect Develop) said, “What we’re talking about is moving from inventing to connecting” (http://terrydata.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/innovation-through-villaging/) which is what KM is all about.  With its focus on brokering research based relationships through connecting not inventing, KM is an emerging paradigm for university-industry engagement across the broader innovation system.

By the way, in response to my tweeted question, @luisemarie weighed in suggesting that if KM is dating then tech transfer is a forced marriage.  I suggested that if the IP is owned by the institution this is likely correct but if the IP is inventor owned perhaps it is more like an arranged marriage.

Let’s send our faculty out on more research dates and support more of these research marriages. Bea Arthur played Yente the Matchmaker in the premiere of Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway in 1964. Let’s hire more Bea Arthurs for research and as the song says:

♫“Matchmaker, Matchmaker make me a match…”♫

The Power of Social Networking: Knowledge Brokers Broker Knowledge about Knowledge Brokers

Peter West uses the name WestPeter on Twitter. According to his Twitter profile he lives in London, ON and is interested in “scholarly articles, books & proceedings of interest to knowledge workers.” On July 1 he posted the following:

WestPeter Matching knowledge brokering strategies to environmental policy problems & settings http://is.gd/1jy44 (Environ Sci & Pol) #KM $

http://is.gd/1jy44 is a shortened url that takes you to the following url:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VP6-4WN1YKP-1&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F2009&_rdoc=2&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236198%239999%23999999999%2399999%23FLA%23display%23Articles)&_cdi=6198&_sort=d&_docanchor=&_ct=28&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f6f3b208e4367a1200b1273437d0f658

… which is why we use shortened urls but that’s not the purpose of this blog… this url is an abstract of a paper from Sarah Michaels (U. Nebraska) titled “Matching knowledge brokering strategies to environmental policy problems and settings”. Only the abstract was available so I contacted Sarah who was kind enough to send me the pre-print (thank you Sarah). Two things are important here:

1. There is a whole body of literature on knowledge brokering for environmental policy that I never knew about. I have never heard of the scholars (except Lindquist) listed in her references yet it appears that knowledge brokering for environmental policy aligns well (see table below) with those of us who inform our practice using a health frame of reference. ResearchImpact draws its knowledge brokering practice mainly from Lavis et al [Journal of Health Services Research and Policy (2003) 8(3):165] using the producer push, user pull and knowledge exchange methods plus our description of co-production [Evidence & Policy (2009) 5(3):211]. But Sarah introduces us to a new term – capacity building: “intensive knowledge brokering is about creating and sustaining capacity for innovation”.

It is nice yet surprising to see a whole body of literature that has arisen independently but consistently with our practice and yet to learn something new.  I wonder if Sarah is aware of the work we draw from: Lavis, Landry, Estabrooks, Grimshaw, Nutley, Levin…

2. The second important observation is I found this on Twitter.  Sarah published her paper, WestPeter found it, tweeted, and because ResearchImpact follows WestPeter I saw the tweet, got the link, e-mailed Sarah, read the paper and now you’re reading the blog and maybe you will read her paper.  That is the power of social networking.  Sarah’s paper found a wider audience, I read some new literature and I “met” a like minded colleague – all thanks to less than 140 characters.

Unlike how it markets itself, Twitter should be “what do you want to share” not “what are you doing”!

Go on… log on to Twitter and connect to lasting value in less than 140 characters.

Those who can do…

CIHR does a great job creating training spaces for emerging KT (their acronym for KM) researchers. CIHR has posted KT learning modules on line and they hosted a KT summer institute which was recently written up from the perspective of some of the students at the institute, available here. Michelle E Kho and her fellow students wrote about some of the take home messages learned at the CIHR KT Summer Institute:

• KT is interdisciplinary and collaborative
• Negotiation skills are integral
• The KT process is complex, confusing, and multifaceted
• Use the most rigorous methods of inquiry to answer different research questions

They conclude by recognizing “the importance of relationships, the complexity of interactions, the significance of timing, and the potential for ingenuity and innovation in the field of KT.”

As a practitioner of KM I want to say, “Well, duh!”. It is great that CIHR creates these learning environments for new KT researchers but why hasn’t it occurred to those of us in the field to publish these conclusions that are evident to us on a daily basis? I think we spend so much time “in the trenches” that we forget there is a body of academics and their literature that we need to embrace to inform our practices. As practitioners of KM we need to practice what we preach. If we don’t use theory and evidence to inform our own practices what good are we as role models to researchers and their partners?

This is doubly important for those few university based KM practitioners who are “in the trenches” within the ivory tower. We always talk about bridging the theory-practice gap but we’re so busy practicing we forget the theory is being made just down the hall. Conversely the KM theorists and KT researchers need to look down their hall and recognize the amount of evidence on their own door steps. ResearchImpact is a network of KM Units that are each KM laboratories. We’re testing and trying things out all the time. We work with community and government based practitioners who have their own data, stories and expertise but for our own reasons we don’t get around to writing it up (except look for a forthcoming paper from York University’s KM Unit in Evidence & Policy 5(3):211-217).

So, a challenge to KM practitioners everywhere: practice what you preach.

And an invitation to KM researchers: talk to us, please. Break down those barriers you write about.