Maximise the impact of your transformational research by closing the feedback loops that delight your stakeholders
Transformational research is a collaborative effort that leverages the insight, experience and problem solving capabilities of academic and research partners to deliver outcomes that create the future
Outstanding transformational research delights all its stakeholders with;
Emergent insights that deliver:
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timely real-world impacts that industry partners value highly and highly cited contributions to the academic corpus
Collaborations that all are eager to repeat because:
- the problems push the frontiers of knowledge both individually and institutionally,
- the outcomes significantly and positively transform our world, and
- it was fun and grew personal capabilities
Collaborations that all are eager to repeat because:
- the problems push the frontiers of knowledge both individually and institutionally,
- the outcomes significantly and positively transform our world, and
- it was fun and grew personal capabilities
Eliciting the satisfaction of your research stakeholders with a simple question on each of the three critical drivers of success, immediately closes the feedback loops that unlock your full impact potential
Responding to stakeholder satisfaction feedback has proven highly effective in both the commercial and academic domain.
Publication of the Australian Graduate satisfaction surveys, for example, immediately accelerated investment in and deliver of significantly better student outcomes over the last decade.
If you care about maximising your transformational research impact now, three simple questions will immediately catalyse best possible outcomes.
These 3 simple questions reveal critical short and long term research impact drivers
The short term success of your industry research depends on problem solving:
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- in close collaboration with industry partners that focuses on highest value issues
- with the objective of delivering outcomes that will translate into highest possible real-world impact
The long term success of translational research also depends on the reputation of institutions and teams for the reliable and timely delivery of great outcomes with industry partners eager to do more.
Industry and academic stakeholder ratings of three simple questions provide immediate, explicit feedback on these critical issues:
Experience
How satisfied are you with the collaboration process?
Grappling with complex real-world problems can be tough and stressful; certainly not always fun. But there are no excuses for it not being an highly worthwhile experience you would be keen to repeat because it effectively leverages and grows the skills and insight of all stakeholders.
Activity Focus
How satisfied are you that effort is being focused effectively on the most important issues?
Real-world problem solving demands exploring beyond the current frontiers of knowledge. You may not find the high value insight you hope for; you can only follow the evidence and bring creativity and insight to the problem solving challenge.
You can however maximise the potential for great outcomes through problem solving disciplines that actively and continuously align effort with the issues that are critical to realising best impact
Expected Impact
How satisfied are you that the research outcomes will deliver high value to the all stakeholders?
Insight potential is not the same as insight impact. Much of the value of great ideas can be literally “lost in translation”, to the extent they fail to reflect the demands of implementing them in the real world.
The process of crystallising insight through the problem solving process needs to be driven by the imperative to maximise real-world impact
As a research collaborator committed to delivering great impact you must know the answers to these questions:
It is impossible without the insight this feedback elicits.
By closing the satisfaction feedback loop;
You create a virtuous value cycle
Feedback loops are the key for the optimisation of systems of all complexities.
By asking stakeholders open questions about their satisfaction with the key drivers of research performance, you catalyse conversations that enable you to work together to:
- understand what is driving the gap between their expectations and perceptions, and
- respond effectively to issues and capture opportunities to maximise impact as they emerge
Delighting stakeholders will demand teams have clear, comprehensive and compelling frameworks to communicate both what they are doing and how it will deliver great outcomes. These are of course an essential foundation for all collaborative problem solving. The next page shares links to proven best practices that are certain to enhance delivered impact.
Regularly closing the feedback loop during the course of research:
- synchronises and aligns the understanding and expectations of all stakeholders
- optimises the alignment of resources and activity with highest value outcomes, and last but most importantly,
- fully leverages stakeholder talent and experience to develop new and validate emerging insight
This creates VIRTUOUS VALUE CYCLES
- within projects as they respond to the feedback that makes them both more efficient and more effective
- across projects as collaborative impact-driven capabilities and culture grow
Your competitive success depends on “just doing it”!
Zero Barriers
There are absolutely zero barriers for active industry research teams wishing to immediately adopt the survey to accelerate their impact potential. All it requires is the courage to ask, the humility and patience to understand what your stakeholders are telling you, and the willingness to work with them to deliver best possible outcomes. If you are interested leveraging best practices from collaborative research outside the sector, reference material is readily available through the resource tab below. There you will also find a super simple template you can use directly or to create an online form for your project.
Immediate Benefits
Regular feedback on the questions ensures research is actively focused on maximising impact – all the time. For in anticipating future feedback, teams will, every day, focus rigorously on the most critical short and long term performance drivers.
No Downside
Investing effort in research without real-time stakeholder feedback on these critical performance drivers cannot possibly deliver your best possible outcomes.
Competitive Imperative
The feedback from the questions catalyses the development of increasingly competitive value-driven collaborative transformational research capabilities.
Teams and institutions that do so will consistently outperform those unable or unwilling to make real-world impact the dominant, active focus of their research.
Further, academics – and their students – with the skills to collaboratively solve problems in ways that consistently deliver outstanding real-world impact, are highly sought by industry employers.
Those that consistently delight their industry partners will capture and secure the most exciting, highest impact and profitable relationships and research challenges
The sector has invested in capturing and published satisfaction metrics for the primary stakeholders of its education services – its students. Over the last decade, this has driven a serious focus on and investment in improving the performance – particularly in Go8 laggards who had previously assumed their research reputations alone secured demand and who did not place value on their student’s experience. All students have benefited.
Our nation continues to make huge direct and indirect investments in transformational research. The ARC’s obligation to ensure this is well invested, will inevitably demand they also establish this class of feedback mechanism for its industry stakeholders. It is in comparison with QILT, trivial in terms of scale and complexity. Doing so will create a long overdue market for research services that will allow industry, based on the judgment of their peers, to identify the most effective academic research partners.
You could wait for the ARC to commit to such a mechanism, before closing the feedback loops that are critical to unlocking your own impact potential. But waiting will both leave that potential untapped – and ensure that others that do tap their full potential will “leave you in the dust” in the competition for the most exciting challenges and the funds to tackle them.
The questions immediately unlock best outcomes for all active research.
Broad adoption will put Australian tertiary industry research on a new, high impact trajectory.
The questions it poses and the response they demand are long overdue.
