Impact Workshop Delivery

Cultivate Innovation collaborated with the Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) to conduct a series of tailored half-day impact workshops. These sessions, crafted in partnership with the IDRIC team, were designed to foster an ‘impact-based’ approach among IDRIC researchers. Using the Mural online platform and leveraging Mike’s extensive knowledge in research and innovation, the workshops aimed to guide researchers. They focused on creating effective research outcomes, engaging relevant stakeholders, and defining benefits that align with stakeholder needs.

Activities undertaken

• Shift academic focus from just research to having a clear pathway to impact, considering end-user needs from the start
• Emphasise creating impactful research outcomes rather than just project outputs
• Help researchers understand the importance of continuous engagement with industry, moving away from the traditional approach of engagement only at project completion
• Facilitate reflective and interactive sessions, enhancing researchers’ abilities to critically assess and develop their projects
• Impart skills beneficial for researchers’ future projects, beyond the immediate scope of the workshop

“The workshops were a really nice way of getting people to sit and reflect on their projects and on what they were trying to achieve. We got really good feedback from the participants as well. Mike is a really engaged subject specialist, so it wasn’t like employing this kind of generic consultancy who do different kinds of impact. It was very targeted at the energy transition. And you know, he’s an engineer by background, which was really helpful. I think their level of subject knowledge was really strong compared with what you would get from a lot of other consultancies.”