Making an Impact Revised Framework
The Making an Impact Series is tailored to provide researchers and research-related staff access to development activities focused around research impact and knowledge exchange. The Series provides access to sessions and resources on;
- How to engage public audiences with your research.
- Collaborate with policy-makers
- Work with businesses and industry
- Build key skills and collaborations to make your research translational.
The Making an Impact Framework is embedded into the design of the Series, ensuring that multi-disciplinary research-impact related knowledge, skills, attributes and competencies are covered across the programme.
How does the Making an Impact Framework enable researchers and research related staff to build a tailored experience based on their respective research impact needs, ambitions and interests?
The Making an Impact Framework brings together key aspects of Research England’s ‘Knowledge Exchange Framework’ (KEF) and Innovate UK’s ‘Action Plan for Business Innovation’ (further details below). In so doing, the Making an Impact Framework supports researchers in developing a broad range of knowledge-based interactions (not only within the University of Liverpool but also the wider community) which result in economic and social benefits.
Understanding framework can help you navigate the Making an Impact programme to engage with sessions that fit your research impact needs best.
The Knowledge Exchange Framework is a key element of Research England’s benchmarking of Universities and seeks to quantify and celebrate the many different ways universities in England interact with the wider world.
The knowledge and skills axis part of the Making an Impact Framework therefore provides insight into the broad range of Knowledge Exchange activities researchers can engage with and are listed below.
- Research partnerships
- Working with business
- Working with the public and third sector
- Skills, enterprise and entrepreneurship
- Local growth and regeneration
- IP and commercialisation
- Public and community engagement
- Personal and professional research impact skills
The activities outlined above can be covered by five innovations themes drawn from Innovate UK’s action plan for business innovation.
Understanding and aligning activities that are also recognised to support business innovation helps researchers to fully understand the impact their research can make to society.
The five themes are listed below and provide further details on what the themes cover.
Theme 1 – Future Economy
- Tackling wider adverse environmental impacts
- Health and wellbeing
- Creating and benefitting from advance in technology
- Horizon scanning
Theme 2- Growth at scale
- Leadership skills
- Commercial capabilities
- Business-led collaborations
Theme 3- Global Opportunities
- International opportunities
- Global challenges
Theme 4- Innovation ecosystem
- Commercialisation
- Collaboration
- Project management and design
Theme 5- Government levers
- Intellectual property
- Policy
By mapping all sessions to the Making an Impact Framework, researchers can clearly see how each session can provide insight into a particular knowledge exchange area(s) (such as IP and commercialisation) as well as how it will provide information and understanding that can be applied to the principles and values that have a positive impact on business success (Growth at scale – commercial capabilities).
How do I use the Making an Impact Framework to navigate the Making an Impact programme?
All sessions are mapped to the Making an Impact Framework with a key on the programme highlighting which knowledge exchange area and innovation theme will be covered in each session. For example, if you would like to know more about working with businesses globally using the framework, you would look for sessions that are mapped to B and coloured green.
