connections as a key impact - learning from the Sfti national science challenge

Recently the Science for Technological Innovation National Science Challenge published a report summarizing findings from one of their longitudinal pieces of research – exploring how to build the capacity of New Zealand’s innovation system.
 
This informative report does a really good job at summarizing some of the key trends that have occurred overseas, and then outlines four key trends, before detailing their findings.

What jumped out at us?

​The whole report is worth a read if you have time, but what jumped out for us in particular was their reflection that ‘traditional science’ is no longer sufficient to address todays challenges, and the shift to ‘mode 2’ ‘post-normal’ science required a different combination of people, skills, and approaches.

“Despite their significant differences, addressing missions and global challenges require individuals, teams and organizations to operate across multiple modes.” (p. 17 emphasis original).

​They note (trend 3) that New Zealand’s unique bi-cultural context has already set us on this journey, but they also note that this comes with many challenges and constraints and summaries many of the key issues, from the effectiveness of diversity policies, challenges associated with protecting indigenous knowledge and data sovereignty, and the challenges associated with genuinely supporting Måori researchers.
 
Their expanded typology of roles a researcher or scientist we found particularly useful as it clearly and succinctly describes some of the key mindsets and behaviours different ‘types’ of researcher use, and what this means for where and how they might engage with industry (see below, on page 25), and talk about how individuals (and organisation) might need to shift between modes. 

Impact (including innovation) is a team sport

​This report coincided with our own systems analysis of the barriers and enablers of impact. We were happy to read that our own findings are consistent and complementary. We also reflected on the different ‘tone’ of the report findings which we would attribute to their application of systems thinking to this work. The importance of considering things like values and norms is a clear example of how considering mindsets is a useful way to unpack why we see what we see. 
 
One area that this report complements iPEN’s own systems analysis (and our experience in supporting researcher) is that impact (including innovation) can only be achieved through the efforts of many.

​The report identified the importance of integrative capacity and critical role ‘intermediaries’ play. These intermediaries can be people, groups, and organizations, they may hold this role either explicitly or implicitly, and play a central role in ‘brokering’ and boundary spanning. 

We thought it was especially helpful how the barriers to effectively engaging was linked to tensions and differences in things like norms, values and industry. In our own training we encourage researchers to try and ‘empathise’ with their collaborators, which is all about trying to better understand their values, language, and pain points. 
 
It was refreshing to see the report highlight that researchers aren’t binary and that instead many have multi-personalities / identities. Recognizing that researchers have complex interests and drivers means better teams can be assembled, where peoples skills and talents can be leveraged in ways that complement others.

“Intermediaries at all levels are crucial to a well-functioning science-based open innovation system”

Our own analysis highlighted the absolutely fundamental role trust and partnerships play. SfTI’s findings reinforce and complement this, and express how this is achieved through the lens of roles actors play in the system.
 
We loved reading the report and we’re now looking at ways we can forge our own opportunities to integrated with SfTI and other NSCs to share learnings and insights like these. 
 
Only got 5 minutes? We suggest reading pages 8 – 9 as a great starting place where the key questions and summary of actions are outlined. The four global research trends are summarized on pages 17 – 27. The full observations, findings and insights are on pages 28 onwards.