Session 3.3
Formative evaluation of transdisciplinary innovation processes. Opportunities and challenges of impact-oriented adjustment of regional innovation management
Emilia Nagy, Martina Schäfer
Technische Universität Berlin / ZTG Center for Technology and Society, Germany
The consortium WIR region4.0 brings together various actors from science, business, politics and society to initiate technical and social innovations in a rural structurally weak region. The overall activities of the consortium are guided by a regional innovation strategy, coordinated by an innovation management and supported by an advisory board. Transdisciplinary processes are taking place in projects in two strategic thematic fields of infrastructure and public services, as well as of agriculture and regional food. For example, one project deals with the improvement of transport and mobility in rural areas and another with value chains for regionally produced food. In both projects, groups of actors that do not otherwise work together have been linked: A municipal public transport company has been cooperating with local enterprises for the delivery of regional goods and local farmers, meat processors and canteens have established a prototype for a new value chain, which strengthens regional sustainable beef production.
The consortium's impact-oriented evaluation concept is based on theoretical approaches of regional development and literature on effects of transdisciplinary research. The set of process and impact criteria was developed in a participatory manner involving regional actors as well as external experts of regional development processes in other regions. The process criteria relate transdisciplinary quality criteria to the overarching goals and intended effects of the innovation strategy. The indicators for the projects were identified by applying the theory-of-change-approach, exploring the projects’ particular contribution to regional change processes in the context of the innovation strategy.
Formative evaluation has been engaged with providing feedback to the innovation management and the projects on the basis of continuous data collection and monitoring. So far, the empirical findings have shown that the consortium operates in a field of tension between implementation-oriented processes in focused thematic areas (projects) and the initiation of far-reaching regional innovation processes with comprehensive claims. Close transdisciplinary exchange and producing knowledge for action is only possible within projects, which involve a certain (small) number of actors and relate to a particular problem. As long as these projects do not have concrete results, their potential for regional innovation cannot fully unfold. The envisioned overall picture of the innovation strategy has not yet been apparent for those regional actors that are not part of the projects. However, those actors are relevant for the continuation of the regional strategy in the long term. For this reason, the formative evaluation recommended better communication of the consortium's goals and scope for action as well as involvement of key stakeholders in strategic decisions of the consortium.
At this point of time, we can summarize that a project-internal formative evaluation has been able to support the projects’ impact orientation and to carry out a bridging function between them and the overall innovation strategy. However, the prevailing challenge remains to enable regional actors to locate themselves in the ongoing comprehensive regional innovation process. The formative evaluation therefore recommended an adjustment of the structure of the steering group of the consortium and a narrower thematic and spatial focus of the innovation strategy, corresponding to ongoing and future project objectives. In the video, we reflect on the challenges of assessing the success of context-specific projects and of developing the innovation strategy further on the basis of context-specific data, using the example of one of the projects.
Scientific Room-Cleaning or The Practice of Research Management in Inter- and Transdisciplinarity
Sabine Toussaint
LMU, Munich University, Germany
From the point of view of a management office for inter- and transdisciplinary research associations, with a pre-crafted short video presentation we intend to foster the know-how-exchange on id/td-research management. The aim is to contribute to professionalizing it, to provide best practice examples of tangible id and td research structures and processes and to receive advice from science on id/td research management.
The management offices, located at Munich University and Augsburg University, gained expertise by providing the coordination for the Bavarian Research Associations ForChange (2013-2017), ForDemocracy (2018-2022) and ForDigitHealth (2019-2023). Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and Arts, this funding line requires an external coordination office, which is not involved in the research process as such, but plans and organizes the internal communication- and working-process, the external communication (science communication) and the controlling of the budget. Out of these nine years of working and learning, we want to contribute to the joint learning process at the ITD.
In three steps, we will discuss:
1. General information about the funding line of the Bavarian Research Association (targets, proposal, funding, working structure and process) and the specifics of the role of the management office
2. Best practice examples out of the communication and working processes
a. Involvement of partners from practice: “Practice-Conference” (targets, settings, impressions)
b. Different methods and products of the interdisciplinary process:
the responsibility of PhD students for cross section research subjects and their outputs;
circulating methods – the example of measuring stress hormones and its impact on the association
3. Science communication
Scientific blogging, Twitter & Co.: Requirements to establish constant content and interesting formats: process, working structure, competences, budget
Examples of innovative formats
Resuming, we offer some general statement on research management for further discussion: Research management requires competences in communication and process management, which are fundamentally needed for good id/td-research. Research management and the research on the scientific topic have to take place in separated fields of responsibility and budget. At the same time, it is important to involve researchers in the management decisions at all stages of the process and of all statuses of scientists involved.
Research modes and their societal and academic impacts - Demarcating transdisciplinary research in sustainability science within 59 on-the-ground research projects
Stephanie Jahn 1, Jens Newig 1, Daniel J. Lang 1, Judith Kahle 1, Matthias Bergmann 1 & 2
1 Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany; 2 Institute for Social-Ecological Research, Germany
The discourse revolving around “new modes of knowledge production” – particularly in sustainability-oriented research – seems to imply a duality of transdisciplinary versus non-transdisciplinary research. Yet, we assume that actual research practices will vary in their expression of transdisciplinarity, due to different research questions, funding structures, or stakeholder fields. Hence, in reality, a spectrum of more or less transdisciplinary research modes may be expected due to design decisions to navigate sustainability research within the boundaries of societal and scientific requests.
In this video, we present an empirically grounded distinction of five research modes, based on a cluster analysis of 59 completed sustainability-oriented research projects. Projects in one cluster approximate a transdisciplinary ideal type, while another cluster combines almost purely practice-oriented projects. Among the three remaining clusters with varying degrees of practitioner interaction, one cluster assembles projects with strictly academic research, while realizing substantial societal impact. Furthermore, our analyses indicate that the choice of research mode strongly depends on the funding context, with mission-oriented funding en-couraging more collaborative modes. Overall, clusters with more practitioner interaction dis-play stronger societal outputs and impacts at the cost of academic outputs and impacts. Our work may be seen as adding important nuances to existing theoretical conceptualizations and empirical studies that mostly focus on ideal types and best practices in transdisciplinary research. As a practical contribution to research planning and management, our typology and the relationship between research modes and their impacts could help setting the priorities along the trajectories of the societal and scholarly aims of future research. Moreover, our find-ings may support funding agencies in setting up effective research programs, combining dif-ferent modes of research to reach multi-dimensional impacts in society and academia to push sustainable development.
Starting from the ITD online conference 2021, we would like to initiate a virtual discussion about how to navigate transdisciplinary sustainability research in this tension between societal and scientific demands – especially since the discourse to date has focused almost exclusively on societal impacts of transdisciplinary research, neglecting the academic contributions of TDR to some extent.