Polivery (or, if you prefer Delivercy)

The KM Unit at York was present on Thursday, October 8 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre along with over 400 Ontario Public Servants to learn about the intersection of public policy and program delivery (hence the catchy title!). York’s KM Unit was present as both an exhibitor and as delegates. With 21% of our brokered opportunities being initiated by government, the opportunity to have such a captive audience was one we took full advantage of. The Policy Innovation and Leadership Roundtable within the Cabinet Office coordinated this event and we are pleased to continue to build our relationship with this important unit of the Ontario government. The theme of Polivery was Wicked Problems (such as climate change, poverty, addicitons, domestic violence…) which continue to challenge policy development and delivery.

As delegates, we had the chance to attend sessions on Web 2.0, Horizontality (another new term to add to the lexicon and impress friends at dinner parties) and Finding the Evidence. Horizontality highlighted the Toronto Waterfront development and focused on challenges, barriers and successes to work horizontally, often within an organization that has several departments/units. Finding the Evidence featured a presentation by the Climate Change Secretariat that illustrated the challenge of coordinating cross-Ministry responses to a wicked problem like climate change.

York was the only university present at this event. Early in the planning stages York’s KM Unit held a couple of conversations with Policy, Innovation and Leadership to help frame the conference and to introduce them to York’s Brenda Zimmerman who has written about wicked problems and spoke at the conference. We had a prime, strategic location for our booth (close to coffee!) and enjoyed numerous conversations with government staff from numerous ministries. We shared examples of how we have worked with OPS, how we can tailor our services to meet the research or knowledge needs of policy makers or government program officers, and demonstrating how we are leading a national network, which gives the province access to research experts from across the country. We spoke to about 100 people and many of those that we spoke with signed up for our monthly newsletter. While we are active knowledge brokers, we are also proud to support informed polivery here in Ontario and throughout Canada!

ResearchImpact pleased to help Canadian Policy Research Networks provide an update on Social Innovation in Canada

In 2004 the Canadian Policy Research Networks (CPRN) released their first review of Canadian social innovation titled “Social Innovation in Canada – how the non profit sector services Canadians and how it can serve them better”. On October 9, 2009 CPRN released its update called “Social Innovation in Canada – an update ” (no marks for snappy title!). Funded by SSHRC and authored by Mark Goldenberg (who authored the 2004 report) and colleagues with an introduction by CPRN President Sharon Manson Singer, the report presents a snapshot of Canadian social innovation through literature review, key informant interviews and provide recommendation for enhancing social innovation in Canada. York’s Vice-President Research & Innovation Stan Shapson and ResearchImpact’s David Phipps were pleased to be among the Canadian leaders engaged in social innovation to be interviewed by CPRN. York’s KM Unit and our ResearchImpact partners University of Victoria and Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador got a shout out from Mark Goldenberg and his team.

Sharon Manson Singer

Key findings include:

• The role of the non-profit sector in social innovation remains critical.

• There is increasing acceptance of social innovation and a broadening of our understanding of the concept.

• New forms of collaboration, both within and across sectors, new ways of working, and new models are emerging in the social innovation field.

• Canada is lagging behind other countries on some fronts.

• Further research, study, and work with respect to social innovation will be important in order to increase our understanding of it, including how to encourage it.

Stan Shapson

In addition to these key findings the report identifies that the for-profit sector has moved into the social innovation space in a way that was not seen in 2004. No surprises but the report identifies there is a lack of agreement on the definition of social innovation (read our previous blog post on this topic ). The report also offers 13 pages of references on social innovation providing a valuable resource for any reader. For ResearchImpact, key amongst these findings is the observation about new forms of collaboration. Since KM brokers relationships between researchers and their non-academic research stakeholders KM is itself a means of enabling those new forms of collaboration. We would add to CPRN’s report an examination of social media as an emerging infrastructure to increase transparency and thus enhance collaboration between social innovators (read the paper by Christian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen on the use of social media in learning environments ).

David Phipps

“Social Innovation in Canada – an update” concludes by making six recommendations for governments, funders, universities, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations and the social innovators who work towards a better world. The last of these recommendations is “Knowledge transfer strategies and their adoption by social innovators need to be profiled and shared. This would help build capacity for social innovation”. For ResearchImpact this final recommendation is critical. Social innovators are natural knowledge mobilizers brokering relationships between social need and innovation capacity. We need to get our stories out and heard so that our KM practices can be themselves evidence based. Thank you Sharon, Mark and the rest of your team for keeping the conversation on social innovation going….what’s next?

Read the full report here.

After 12 years… I’m back!

You’re used to reading about York’s KM Unit and ResearchImpact in this blog as well as on Twitter @researchimpact. Occasionally we get some press that we don’t have to write like the article on KM in Canada done by University Affairs (April 7, 2008). Now we’ve passed peer review. In the August 2009 edition of Evidence & Policy, David Phipps and Stan Shapson published “Knowledge mobilisation builds local research collaborations for social innovation”. Read the abstract here. The paper positions York’s KM Unit amongst other initiatives to link research to practice including the ubiquitous technology transfer office but also offices such as the University of Brighton’s Community University Partnership Program (shout out to Angie Hart for her wonderful work). We ground our work in Lavis’ KTE methods of producer push, user pull and knowledge exchange [J. Health Serv. Res. Policy (2003) 8(3):165] and we extend those to include the co-production of knowledge.

From the paper, key lessons learned (ok, learning) include:

• Developing an institutional capacity to support KT (as institutions support technology commercialization) results in benefits to the institution, researchers, graduate students and research users
• It takes time to break down community–university barriers and develop trust. Care must be taken to manage expectations on both sides.
• The use of broadband technology to connect stakeholders over distance and over time can facilitate research utilization over a large geographical area
• Community/government partners are earlier adopters of the services of the KT unit than faculty
• Decision-maker partners must be engaged throughout the planning, funding, delivery and evaluation of the KT Unit

We are delighted that Evidence & Policy agreed to receive our article and that its peer reviewers recommended it for publication. Evidence & Policy is an important journal for KM. “Evidence & Policy is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between research evidence and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners, as well as researchers” (Read more here). We are delighted because our work is hitting a wider audience. We’re delighted because of the validation this provides to our work. And I am delighted because this is my first peer reviewed publication in 12 years but I remain grounded because I recognize that recognition of peers is nice but the continued validation provided by partners is more valuable. As Kathleen Bloom wisely points out, “impact is determined by the user” not by academic peers.

Aboriginal Policy Research Forum

“An exciting experiment,” is how David Phipps, Director of the Office of Research Services (ORS) at York University, described the Aboriginal Policy Research Forum, on January 14, 2008. The forum, the first of its kind in Canada, used broadband technology to bring together researchers, policymakers, and citizens from across the country to discuss Aboriginal issues. A key focus of the forum was knowledge translation: the sharing of knowledge between diverse audiences, from academics to community decision-makers….Click here to read more.