iPEN IS CHANGING

Like many other organisations across the science system, iPEN is adapting and transitioning to a new operating model.

While iPEN will be continuing as a network committed to our core vision around 'turbocharging impact' we are gearing down some of our activities. As part of putting a 'full stop' at the end of this chapter or our work, we've summarised a bit more about who we are and what we have achieved over the last 5 years for the history record.

WHO IS IPEN AND WHAT HAVE WE BEEN DOING?

Since 2014 New Zealand’s 7 Crown Research Institutes have collaborated on an innovative network to support our collective capability and capacity to deliver more impact from our science and research: The Impact Planning and Evaluation Network iPEN. 

In 2019 iPEN scaled up its efforts to turbocharge research impact by engaging specialist advisory support and ramped up our activities. This included the design and delivery of a tailored workshop series free of charge to any staff in any of our CRIs, a webinar series (which we will transfer to our new YouTube channel) to share other insights in learnings from how to best support research impact, a newsletter, website, and the development of other tools and resources.
 
iPEN has also responded to gaps in our knowledge around how to best support research impact and undertook two targeted projects to address these gaps.  The first used systems thinking to examine the systemic barriers and opportunities for delivering research impact in New Zealand’s RSI system. The second has seen the production of new guidance material regarding impact pathways to give practical advice to anyone who wants to know how to successfully navigate the research valley of death. The outputs of these projects have been powerful. The conceptual frameworks and explanations we’ve developed continue to be referred to and referenced by others in our system when identifying and explaining what interventions are needed, where, and why.
 
iPEN’s collegial network has also expanded and strengthened over time, in particular with KiwiNet and our university colleagues via URONZ (University Research Offices of New Zealand), as well as with various government agencies with an interest in Research Impact. Through our engagement with these colleagues as we tested and developed our systemic barriers and enablers paper, and later our impact pathways guidance material, it was clear that our mantra that “research impact is a team sport” was a view understood and shared by us all. Together we committed to ‘teaming up’ more, which most culminated in us co-hosting an inaugural Aotearoa Research Impact Community of Practice (ARICOP) in Wellington, November 2023 (click here to read the write up).

The quality and value of iPEN and its work has been recognised by international leaders in research impact, including Professor Mark Reed and David Phipps.

what have we achieved?

iPEN's scope of work has included a set of ongoing capability and capacity building activities - our training workshops, our webinar series, our website, and our newsletter - as well as a number of one-off more in-depth pieces of work. These have included our work examining barriers and enablers or research impact, the impact pathways work, and organising cross-sector hui which have evolved into the ARICoP - the Aotearoa New Zealand Research Impact Community of Practice.

Since launching our workshops in late 2020, we have run 56 training workshops, delivered 30 free webinars (which have reached 1,636 registrants - including over 30 non-CRI organisations) and a global reach with our newsletter which has over 1,500 subscribers.

The quality of our work, including the testimonials of the impact these have had on our colleagues has been incredibly gratifying and motivating.

What's Changing?

We are returning to being a collegial network only

​With the current changes occurring across New Zealand government and our system our sponsors (the Science New Zealand Board of directors) have reviewed our activities and have opted to scale down some of our more resource intensive work.
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In a nutshell, this means our free workshop programme, webinar series, and newsletters have finished for the time being, as well as some of our more intensive engagement with colleagues across the system on specific projects aimed at wider capability and capacity building. 

But iPEN will continue. One of the greatest successes of iPEN has been building a broader network of colleagues across our organisations sitting in a wide range of roles who are all committed to supporting research impact. The value of consistent messages, tools, and approaches; and sharing learnings with each other that helps build our understanding of what it takes to deliver great research impact remains as relevant as ever, as it benefits everyone.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR OUR WORK PROGRAMME?

No more workshops, webinar,  newsletters, or specialist support but all our tools and resources and our network continue!

​We have been in a transition phase this year, as we have move to a model of operation that is less focused on hands-on support and more back to our now strengthened roots where we focus on sharing via collegial discussions. While our workshop program has finished,  all our materials remain, and each CRI still has these at their disposal to deliver training internally to their staff.

Our website will also stay active, and we will continue to encourage people to refer to this as it is a repository for our tools and resources, contains lots of useful information and refers people to many other hugely valuable resources made freely available by others. Feel free to use and share this content widely. 

We have also said  goodbye to Kara Scally-Irvine (KSI Consulting) and Chanel Partridge who helped transform our lawn-mower engine to something more like a V8. We are enormously grateful for the commitment and passion for research impact they have brought to our mahi.

The iPEN team is hugely proud of the work we have done to date. Our award win last year for our work remains a testament of the quality and value of what has been done.

​Although iPEN is changing once again closer to its configuration when it first established itself, the commitment to supporting research impact through collaboratively building our collective capability and capacity remains, just in a slightly different format.

If you work in a CRI, you should contact your iPEN rep if you are interested to learn anything more about what has been communicated here.