Welcome to Real World Impact

Stephen Kemp, an independent consultant providing advice and training to universities and researchers to help them win research funding and boost the impact of their research, shares his thoughts on 'Pathways to Impact' and the importance of embracing impact focus. Stephen's background includes a PhD and postdoctoral research in chemistry and positions as an EPSRC portfolio manager, university funding development manager and university impact manager. Next year the UK Research Councils’ infamous “Pathways to Impact” will be 10 years old. But who will be celebrating? Who even realises? I started working at the Research Councils in 2009 when “Impact Plans”, as they were known in the beginning, were born. The idea was that given the amount of public money going into research, partly on the back of lobbying placing universities as engines of the economy, academics should be prepared to articulate the wider potential benefits of their work and how they might help thin...

Harriet Barker has a strong understanding of impact from different institutional and disciplinary perspectives thanks to her career in varying sectors of research.  Here, she shares her thoughts on the 'who' in impact, encouraging us to think about who has the power to implement research in order to benefit the real world. Having worked in Academic Publishing, as an Impact Officer at a University and currently at an Independent Research Organisation, I have gained a rich insight into impact from different institutional viewpoints and disciplinary perspectives. One constant component, however, has been the ‘who’ of impact. Who will be most interested in this research? Who is the main audience? Who has the decision-making power in this area and can mobilise change? Having conversations with the right people will help to inform your impact plan and tailor it to the ‘end-user’ or ‘beneficiary’ - the individual, group or organisation that will ultimately benefit from your...

Analyzing the cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions is key to unlocking the potentials of bridging the industry – academia research collaboration gap, says Dr. Riad Shams, Senior Research Fellow, Ural Federal University, Russia.  How could we envision a prospective scope that could proactively justify the need of industry – academia collaboration?  Why should the industry pay to buy academic research or be interested in industry – academia research and development collaboration, whereas many public and private corporations run their own research and development unit?   How would the industry – academia collaboration be instrumental to effectively contribute to socioeconomic and/or ecological development?  These questions are now central in the debate of industry – academia collaboration.  Thus, exploring insights on these questions would be instrumental to unlock the further potential of reciprocal development towards...