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?

What do Machiavelli and Dr. Seuss have to do with Knowledge Mobilization?

Concludero’ solo che al principe, e necessario avere ilpopolo amico – I will conclude then that it is necessary for the prince to have the people as friends.

Lesson: No silo research. Research partnerships must be broad and most importantly, engage the people impacted by the outcome.

ResearchImpact and a key community partner, the United Way of York Region recently published an article in Issue 22 (June 2009) of Research Global, the magazine of the Global Research Management Network published by the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

All we could do was to sit, sit, sit. And we did not like it, not one little bit. Then something went bump. How that bump made us jump.

Lesson: Enter all partnerships with an initial plan, a willingness to change depending on the circumstances and, when something goes bump, be present. Full commitment, engagement and openness are critical. If not, do not enter.

The article titled “Lessons learned from knowledge mobilisation: turning research into action” is a whimsical look at 10 lessons learned from 3 years of growing Canada’s first institutional knowledge mobilization unit broadly serving the needs of university faculty, graduate students and their non academic research partners.  Each lesson is inspired by and offered with apologies to either Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli’s The Prince or Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat and we back up each lesson with a real life example drawn from our own knowledge mobilization practice.

The lessons are instructive and the stories are real.  The article concludes “Universities need to work hard to develop relationships that include but also transcend individual researchers, projects and partners, in order to maximize the impact of the university on its communities, both local and global. Collaborating is not easy and you will encounter bumps along the road. The key to riding out the bumps is trust, a shared commitment, and never forgetting to communicate, communicate, communicate with funders, faculty, students and collaborators.”

Read the article and all 10 lessons here and see a PowerPoint presentation of the 10 lessons here.

KM, KMb, KT, the other KT, KTE… now consider KI

OK, so we didn’t see it when it came out last year but Sandra Nutley and her team (including Huw Davies and Isabel Walter) associated with the University of Edinburgh’s Research Unit for Research Utilization published another excellent article on KM. They published “Why ‘knowledge transfer’ is misconceived for applied social research” in the Journal of Health Services, Research & Policy (Vol 13 No 3, 2008: 188–190). As leaders in the theory of research utilization, Sandra and her team point out why terms such as knowledge transfer and knowledge translation under represent the complexities and iterative nature of most strategies aimed at facilitating or enhancing research utilization. Such terms privilege “scientific” knowledge and marginalize other forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. They also ignore the frequent need for un-learning as part of the research utilization process. As an alternative they suggest:

“While any term is likely to open itself up to fresh critique, we suggest that ‘knowledge interaction’ might more appropriately describe the messy engagement of multiple players with diverse sources of knowledge. We also suggest that ‘knowledge intermediation’ begins to articulate some of the managed processes by which knowledge interaction is promoted.”

KM isn’t mentioned and we use it to describe a suite of services that enhances the two-way connection between researchers and research users so that research and evidence can inform decisions about public policy and professional practice. KM encompasses methods of knowledge transfer, translation and exchange and extends them to include the co-production of knowledge. This managed process could be described as knowledge intermediation…or knowledge mobilization…

Whatever we call it, it is clear that the communities engaged in such practices are growing and over time we are confident we will coalesce around a term or terms on which there is substantial agreement. Until then such dialogues are interesting but we know what we mean and know it when we see it so as practitioners, let’s get on and “just do it”.

Getting to Maybe

On June 4, 2008 I wrote about Using Evidence by Nutley, Walter and Davies. This book has been my principal KM reference but I have a new, equally favourite, book to recommend to you: Getting to Maybe by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman (of York’s Schulich School of Business, ) and Michael Quinn Patton. Using Evidence is about the science of research utilization (=knowledge mobilization) for policy and practice (=social innovation). Getting to Maybe is about the actors (=social innovators) who operate within a system of social innovation. Using case studies of successful social innovators, Getting to Maybe illustrates how social innovators can maximize the chances of creating an impact and it provides numerous recommendations for social innovators, their organizations (usually NGOs), their funders (usually Foundations) and their receptors (usually policy makers). Getting to Maybe doesn’t guarantee success or present a formula which, if followed, will generate results. Getting to Maybe focuses on key learnings that are important for all social innovators and their stakeholders.

Finally Getting to Maybe about creating the right conditions where maybe, change might happen.

This book contains valuable lessons and will inform much of the work of knowledge brokers. Order your copy here.

Some KM relevant messages from Getting to Maybe:

• Social innovation is a complex (as opposed to complicated) problem. Complexity science can guide approaches to social innovation.
• Relationships, amongst other attributes, are key for social innovation
• Individuals operate in systems and successful social innovators examine their own role in those systems
• Premature evaluation can stifle social innovation by seeking end points; developmental evaluation focuses on learnings not end points
• All systems must go through cycles of exploitation → conservation → release (=“creative destruction”) → reorganization in order to remain innovative and avoid the “rigidity gap”. This is why “success is not a fixed address”.
• Social innovation is catalyzed through connection, confrontation and collaboration.
• It is important to stand still, to reflect and analyze. Reflection is action. This is a particularly important message for me, personally, as I tend to race more than I reflect.
• Social Innovation is like improvising jazz: every player listens, understands and everyone leads from their own place of understanding.

RE$EARCH MONEY publishes on Knowledge Mobilization

RE$EARCH MONEY recently published an article by David Phipps. The article provides a brief theoretical framework for KM and illustrates KM activities with examples of how KM can create value for faculty, graduate students and research users. The article makes a distinction between project based KM and institutional KM services such as those supported by York and UVic. In addition the article ends with a call to action.

“To sustain [KM] activities, research funding organizations need to invest in KM through institutional programs such as Intellectual Property Mobilization (IPM) and Knowledge Impact in Society (KIS). Foundations need to look to social innovation as a target area for support and institutions need to invest in institutional KM practices as they currently do for technology transfer.” Read the full article here….

RE$EARCH MONEY is Canada’s premier source of intelligence on research and development, science and technology and innovation. See www.researchmoneyinc.com for more information.

AUCC Releases 2008 Report on University Research and KM

The following media release, which references ResearchImpact partners YorkU and UVic, was taken from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada’s Web site. You can view the original article here.

AUCC report shows universities are major contributors to Canada’s economy and quality of life

Ottawa, October 21, 2008 — The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada has launched a report on the state of Canadian research and development (R&D), with a particular emphasis on university research, at an event that included partners from government, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector.

The report, entitled Momentum: The 2008 report on university research and knowledge mobilization, shows universities are major players in R&D in Canada, performing more than one-third of the country’s research and contributing at least $60 billion to the economy in 2007. However, analysts agree that the world competition for talent, knowledge and innovation is fierce and Canada cannot be complacent with its accomplishments.

“The rest of the world is not standing still and the global race for research talent is becoming more and more intense,” says AUCC chair Tom Traves, president of Dalhousie University. “We expect this report to stimulate public debate on the required level and mix of support for university research in Canada.”

“This is a time when we cannot afford to cut back on public investment, but should instead see the potential for stimulating economic growth at the local and the national level by investing in people and knowledge. Having a highly skilled labour force is undeniably a major asset for any country,” notes AUCC president and CEO Claire Morris. “In these uncertain economic times, Canada must continue to improve its innovative capacity to ensure long-term prosperity,” she adds.

Momentum 2008 focuses on the importance of partnerships in university research and looks at the variety of forms collaboration takes – from university partnerships with private companies to research projects with governments, communities, the not-for-profit sector and international partners. It provides a comprehensive account of Canadian R&D, particularly the activities of the university sector and the resulting progress achieved. It also presents detailed research and analysis of national and international trends that will drive changes in university research and the Canadian R&D landscape in the future.

Momentum 2008 documents the wide range of benefits to Canadians such as new products, services, processes, policies and new ways of understanding society.

This is the second edition of Momentum produced by AUCC. The first was produced in 2005 as a way of providing information to decision makers and policy-makers about the benefits from investments made in university research.

The Momentum report is available online. Download the report.

KM Resources

Knowledge: we all mobilize, transfer, translate and/or exchange knowledge between knowledge creators and knowledge users. Research funders and stakeholders are demanding increasing accountability. Researchers are increasingly engaging research users in all aspect of the research cycle from design to execution, evaluation and dissemination. Research users are looking for more information but in accessible formats. In an attempt to provide assistance to a variety of stakeholders many organizations, we are now offering support services to enhance research utilization and knowledge mobilization.

ResearchImpact has undertaken a thorough scan of Canadian and some International organizations supporting KT/KM/KE, and has summarized the services offered by these organizations. We present this information with permission from the organizations reviewed. You can access the searchable database of KM resources here.

This is a growing list that gives a snap shot in time of a growing KM community. If you know of an organization that belongs on this list, if you find a dead link or if you just have comments, please contact us.

KM Resources

There are a number of books that could be captured under the broad rubric of knowledge mobilization.  These include The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Practice; Community University Partnerships in Practice and Knowledge Mobilization in the Social Sciences and Humanities.  All have their strengths but one book that I can highly recommend is Using Evidence – How Research Can Inform Public Services by Sandra Nutley and her colleagues Isabel Walter and Huw T.O. Davies from the Research Unit on Research utilization (University of Edinburgh).

 

This book is an exhaustive survey of the research utilization literature and includes chapters on the meaning of research use, factors that influence research use, models of research use, strategies to enhance research use (in policy and in practice) and evaluating research use.  Of particular use is the extensive bibliography (33 pages long) underscoring the thorough nature of the review and providing lots more material to review should the reader wish to go to the source.  Using real examples this book presents different models of research utilization showing the weaknesses of linear models of research utilization in favour of iterative and interactive models.  Importantly the book describes research utilization as a cumulative, social undertaking which suggests efforts to enhance research utilization need to focus on active engagement of researchers and research users over passive producer push methods that provide enhanced access to research evidence. Chapter 9 (“How can we assess research use and wider research impact”) summarizes the literature on evaluating the impact of research utilization and strategies to enhance research use; however,  this chapter starts out “To date, studies of research use and research impact have shed much interesting light on the former but have to make significant inroads into the latter”.  Not overly satisfying for those looking for the magic formula to evaluate research impact but an honest evaluation of the literature nonetheless.

 

This book is not an easy read but it is an important read and a must have companion for everyone interested in knowledge mobilization as a vehicle for enhancing research utilization.