Building successful research partnerships

1. Building successful research partnerships

2. How can you make the most of partnerships? • Thinking about why partnerships are important • Identifying appropriate partners for your own work • How to build successful partnerships

3. Why are partnerships important? • Not a one-way process – mutual benefits for all involved • Research can be enriched – can help develop knowledge and uncover new areas to explore • Enhances innovation in research and connects academics to key issues beyond the university • Very hard to deliver impact without them

4. Why are partners important? • Partners can: • Apply your research directly • Bring it to a wider audience • Exert greater influence

5. Identifying the right partners: Why do you want to partner? • Research benefits: • External perspectives • New data, resources, audiences, equipment & expertise • Real world testing • Funding • Personal benefits: • New, transferrable skills and experience • Networking and job opportunities • Satisfaction of making a genuine difference • Profile and reputation

6. Identifying the right partners • What are your goals? • Who to achieve it with/through? • Who to engage with? • How best to engage these partners? • Co-producing plans and futures?

7. Identifying the right partners • The type of impact(s) you identify for your research will affect decisions you make when thinking about building partnerships. • Policy design and/or implementation • Public understanding/attitudes/ debate • Economic prosperity • Civil society • Cultural life • Health and wellbeing • Other…?

8. Identifying the right partners: Why would they want to partner? • Enhance their offering (products, services, information, policies…) • Help people • Become more efficient or effective • Stay relevant/cutting edge • Make/save money out of it

9. Making the initial contact Put yourself in their shoes: what do you think are the boxes you need to tick in that first contact?

10. Making the initial contact • Why is your research relevant to them? • How can you present it to clearly demonstrate this relevance? • When is the best time to approach them? • What are the best channels to approach them? • What are their specific constraints or characteristics? • What about the potential partners that you don’t know about?

11. Building successful partnerships • Listen to your partner’s needs • Articulate your own needs clearly • Find the common ground. • Create a win/win • Make sure you have a common understanding of aims, resources, roles, obligations, ………. • Take the time you need to build up trust • If it doesn’t feel right, walk away – nicely!

12. Planning for impact and building partnerships in your own work

13. Why think about impact and partnerships now? • It’s never too early to start thinking about this! • Shaping your research ideas • Improving your knowledge • Identifying what’s important to your beneficiaries/end users • Relevant policies/legislation/practice • Impact and relationships take time to build • Future career trajectories

14. How can you develop your own impact plan? • What will help you in your research? • How can you make an original contribution? • What ‘difference’ can you make (be realistic!)? • Impact costs money! • Time and other pressures

15. The PhD experience: what I did • Attend (and present!) at workshops and conferences • Present (and recruit participants) at practitioner-focused events/network • Subscribe to a learned society • Join a committee/volunteer/relevant work experience

19. The PhD experience: what I would do next time! • Think about impact before setting research questions/focus • Think about potential beneficiaries/end-users (i.e. practitioners in my case) • Keep talking to your participants/partners! • Keep talking to colleagues, presenting, blogging. Have a plan!

20. Thinking about partnerships at this stage in your career • Speak to your supervisors/mentors – who do they know? What do you want/need from a partner? What would be the mutual benefits? Why should they engage? • Think about dealing with negative findings! How would you present/discuss this? What could this do to future relationships? • Where could this lead?

21. Some tips! • Think early about a) who would be interested and benefit from your work b) what you could do to offer them benefits (and make an impact!) c) what is achievable • Talk about your work…criticism/negative responses ≠ your work is wrong! (& can help to justify arguments and choices – good viva prep.!) • Use social media: it’s a fast, efficient and affordable way to get your message out, make contacts, learn/find papers, events, workshops and test ideas in a [relatively] safe environment • Get involved: sign up to mailing lists (for example https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/), attend events/workshops (in your department, institution and externally), organise events, reading groups…

22. Workshop

23. Workshop example

24. Q&A If you have any questions after the session, please do get in touch: Sarah Geere, Impact Consultant, Research & Innovation Services, s.geere@sheffield.ac.uk Gareth Young, Research Impact and Partnerships Officer, gareth.young@sheffield.ac.uk