Comparing research and oranges II: do communities want oranges or flowers?

By Simon Batchelor

In her blog, Comparing research and oranges: what can we learn from value chain analysis?, my colleague Elise Wach asks whether “producing research first and then deciding how to communicate it afterwards the same as growing an orange and then deciding how and where it will be sold?” She went on to speculate whether value chain analysis can add something to our own analyses of how to strengthen the knowledge value chain.

Her piece reminded me of a video we used at a team retreats, entitled Whose Reality Counts. Produced by Praxis, based in India, it also caused us to wonder about the comparison with research production, and the processes of setting a research agenda.


In case you don’t have the time to watch the 7 minute video (but please do – it's so well done!) here's a quick synopsis:

A senior office-based person sits and has a bright idea: giving flowers to a poor community. The idea is passed down the decision-making chain to farmers in the poor community, who, initially pleased, begin to plant flowers.

However, still sat in his office, the official continues to pass flowers down the line, and we see the farmer becoming frustrated with too many flowers and not enough diversity of food, which is what the community really wants. The community cannot make their voices heard, until the official goes to the community himself expecting to see grateful villagers and a thousand flowers. That’s not what he finds on his arrival, and it's only after listening the villagers and their needs that he gains an understanding what they really need - their reality as described by them.

For me, the parallels are obvious. Research conducted in isolation from the realities in the field may produce insights, and these initial insights may even be appreciated by the community. However, communities have priorities and there needs to be a feedback loop to find out what those priorities are and whether our research needs to be redirected.

As Elise says in her blog “When is audience research necessary, and when does the ‘if we build it, they will come’ assumption apply? Where is the line between research communication and advocacy? How can we create demand and to what extent should we do so?”

So, whose responsibility is it to set the research agenda?

In a recent review of plans from leading research centres, we had to ask ‘where are the boundaries for a researcher’. If the research centres are intending to change the world in some way (their stated intention) then there needs to be engagement with the outside world during the research.

We ended up noting two type of engagement:

• ‘A need to engage with a representative sample of the end users to ensure that new hybrids or practices fit the ‘real world’ farming systems’. 
• And ‘there are the actors at the boundary of the research who might take the research forward. At some point, research that has led to successful product development will need to go to scale’.

Isolated research may change the world slightly, but may also rapidly become too many flowers when the community needs food. However you frame it – as Value chains with Customer feedback and monitoring market demand, or as participatory development with consultation and ‘mainstreaming the voices of the poor’, research that changes the world is going to require tight feedback loops and a view that is much wider than an agenda set by sitting in an office.

Philosopher-craftsmen: interesting times for research communications professionals

Plato, the Greek philosopher

By Emilie Wilson

Two exciting new publications have landed on my desk today :
(1)  Knowledge, policy and power in international development: a practical guide and the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin,
(2)  Action research for development and social change.

Knowledge, policy and power in international development: a practical guide, not a definitive model

The first, a book by researchers at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), aims to be a "practical guide to understanding how knowledge, policy and power interact to promote or prevent change". However, the authors are quick to put in a disclaimer:

"...we acknowledge that, although some models provide useful analyses of some aspects of the interface between knowledge and policy, it is impossible to construct a single one size-fits-all template for understanding such a complex set of relationships".

That is not to say the authors aren’t aiming high: "this book seeks to provide: 

• a state-of-the-art overview of current thinking about knowledge, policy and power in international development 
• present empirical case studies that provide concrete examples of how these issues play out in reality 
• offer practical guidance on the implications of this knowledge base” 

I’m looking forward to getting stuck in, and am particularly intrigued by their “Questions this section will help you to answer” approach to structuring some of the content. I’m also looking out for references to work by IDS Knowledge Services around knowledge intermediation (well, of course I am!).

Action research for development and social change

The second, edited by Danny Burns, who heads up the Participation, Power and Social Change team at IDS, is the latest edition of the IDS Bulletin.

IDS Bulletins come in a variety of shapes and sizes – some very theoretical, others with more practical examples. This one appears to provide a nice balance of both, and has a stellar cast of leading lights at IDS on action research and participatory approaches.

Again, there is a disclaimer "we have not sought to draw firm conclusions or a single 'theory of practice'" but then a helpful identification of recurrent themes around which to hang your reflections as you read along: power and complex power relations, learning, and action.

Both these works, I think demonstrate what an exciting time it is to be working in the realm of research uptake, weaving analysis into practice, and giving us communications professionals space to reflect on the impact of our work.

I’m not a development practitioner, I’m a communications professional...

In my early days at IDS, when I had more enthusiasm than experience, I remember a conversation with a colleague in which I referred to us as “development practitioners” and she responded “I am not a development practitioner, I am a librarian”. She’s quite right, in many ways – a librarian with a whole heap of experience in international development.

I guess that description could apply to me too: a communications professional experienced in international development. Just as others are engineers, agronomists, doctors, project managers...experienced in international development.

That is, we should not forget, while we muse on power, complexity and social change, that we are also master craftsmen. Our understanding of communication, our craft, is based on an understanding of human behaviour. While it needs to be nuanced by peoples culture, worldview, literacy, all manner of contextual factors - we remain craftsmen who understand what to look for and how to build it in different contexts. It provides us with a lens through which to see the world.

Hopefully, with my bedside reading all set up now for the next month, the theory (and practical guidance) will percolate into my communications practice and I can aspire (grossly paraphrasing Plato) to being a ‘philosopher-communicator’...(albeit with less beard!)

Reflections on the K* summit: beyond K-Star-wars?

By Catherine Fisher

It was only a matter of time before someone made the KStarWars joke at the K* Conference that took place at the end of April in Canada. I’m only sorry it wasn’t me!

However, the K* Conference was notable not for its battles, but for the sense of commonality that emerged among the participants and for the momentum for future action it generated. 


The K* summit aimed to connect practitioners working across the knowledge-policy-practice interfaces to advance K* theory and practice. Its aim was to span the different sectors and contexts and different terms under which this kind of work is undertaken, for example Knowledge Mobilisation (KMb), Knowledge Sharing (KS), Knowledge Transfer and Translation (KTT).  Hence K*:  an umbrella term that attempts to bypass terminology discussions. 

This blog post provides links to some of the great reporting from the event, acknowledges some of the critiques that the event raised and points to the next steps for K*.    

• K* about process not outcome (blog link)

The opening presentation highlighted how K* is about supporting processes of exchange and engagement between knowledge-policy-practice interfaces not the achievement of particular outcomes. It was great to hear this point made by John Lavis, who has something of a guru status in K* in health. Other important points were about learning about context and what that means, not just saying its important!

• K* about shining a light on multiple sources of knowledge (video link)

Another great metaphor courtesy of Charles Dhewa. The importance of multiple knowledges, knowledge hierarchies and the role of K* actors in helping to facilitate interactions between those knowledges was a recurring theme. E.g. see video by Laurens Klerxx talking about multiple knowledges and innovation brokers. 

• Transnational comparison of K* practices (video link) 

As David Phipps explains in this video, participants from Canada, Ghana and Argentina were able to find considerable commonalities in their work with communities. This transnational comparison may be familiar to those of us who work in international development but it was a first for many of the Canadian participants who are doing really interesting work, for example, in government ministries or communities. I think this points to a strength of the K* movement in connecting people that might not otherwise talk.

• Exploring the range of K* work and how the different pieces of K* work fit together (video link)

The conference illustrated the range and scope of K* work. For example, Jacquie Brown, National Implementation Research Network who works helping communities to implement science, has learnt how this piece fits within the broader scope of K*.  For me, this seeing how different kinds of K* roles are played and how they intersect is important.  

In this video, I share some of my reflections at the time: brokering in the Canadian context including an  examples of brokering at the point of research commissioning:  power dynamics in brokering; and the way that informing role of knowledge brokering is getting a “bum rap” compared to more relational knowledge brokering work. I also get distracted by bangs, crashes and the emergence of breakfast!  

Critiques and the importance of engaging with them

The conference has generated some robust critiques. For example, Enrique Mendizabal sparked a discussion on his blog, On Think Tanks with a range of critiques including whether knowledge brokers are required, how knowledge is shared, and a critique of elitist professionalisation of this field. Scroll to the bottom of his blog post to read the responses, including mine. Meanwhile, Jap Pels argued that the nature of the debate at K* was pretty basic knowledge-sharing stuff.

I think both of these critiques raise interesting points but I think they constitute arguments For K*, not against it. K* recognises that the knowledge work is changing and proliferating, that there is considerable experience and understanding that is not shared across the different spaces in which the role is played. It aims to bring together bodies of expertise (for example that which Jaap Pels points to) to raise the game of all practitioners. It will hopefully provide spaces for debates and engagement with the kinds of critiques that Enrique raises.   

So what next for K*?

The conference generated a range of areas for further collaborative action, and plans for taking the K* initiative goes from here. 

Areas for further collaborative action included:

• Understanding impact: a group agreed to share the tools data collection tools they are already using, I’ll be participating in this group, building on work of Knowledge Brokers Forum
  
• K* in developing countries: a predominantly African group explored the particular dimensions of K* work in their contexts generating a number of action points

A group of participants gathered on Saturday to work out what next for K* as a whole. Consolidation of the K* Green Paper is considered an important next step – co-organiser  Louise Shaxson will be leading this work. There are ideas of developing a more formalised network, which will be led by UNU-INWEH in the first instance.   

UNU, who have led this process so far, remain committed and aim to get the support of the UNU governance. The World Bank has already provided financial support. Support from such international bodies is important as it will embed the international nature of this initiative, it is not without its risks!    


So to borrow again from StarWars, the force is, for now, with K*.  The scale and ambition of the initiative together with some indications of funding and high profile support suggest it has a future. However it faces both practical and fundamental challenges.

Practical challenges include maintaining ownership and momentum on behalf of the largely volunteer force taking it forward for now, identifying its niche and building connections around such a fragmented field of practice.

More fundamental challenges lie in ensuring that it really can generate value that will improve knowledge-policy-practice interfaces, rather than providing a talking shop for elitist actors.   




Catherine Fisher is a member of the K* Conference International Advisory Committee.

"The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed"

By Emilie Wilson

I overheard this quote the other day, as I was out buying my morning coffee. It’s part of the joy of working on a university campus to be overhearing conversations such as these. The quote is attributed to William Gibson, “the "noir prophet" of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction”, according to WikiQuote.

Setting aside the fact that I know nothing about cyberpunk science fiction, the quote sparked a train of thought, which had begun that morning when I was looking at this excellent graphic published the Guardian website entitled “How Africa Tweets”. 

The map looks at the top 20 countries based on a 3-month analysis of geo-located Twitter traffic in Africa – no one will be surprised to see the biggest tweeters being South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt, and Morocco. What surprised me were the presence in the ‘top twenty tweeters’ of countries like Sudan, Gabon or Angola, and absence of others such as Zimbabwe, Uganda, Botswana or Senegal (countries I associate, perhaps wrongly, as has having a decent technological infrastructure and a vibrant civil society).

With the West Africa Cable System, a 14, 000 kilometre long fibre optic submarine cable with a capacity of 5.12 terabits per second (Tbps), due to be operational in March this year, these figures are no doubt set to increase.

But what does this mean for development, and more specifically, for sharing, communicating and assimilating research which supports development?

ICT4Development – still the new kid on the block?

The development sector has a reputation for getting excited about technological innovation and hoping it will yield a quick fix to some of the most intractable problems relating to poverty and social injustice. At IDS, there is a whole Research Team devoted to analysing the interface between human development and technological progress. And ICTs have joined the fray alongside agriculture, biology, engineering and medicine – the 3rd International Conference on Mobile Communication Technology for Development is being held in Delhi next week, closely followed by the International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development.
 

Does E.M. Rogers analysis on adopting innovation apply in this context?

IDS Knowledge Services has a small team dedicated to exploiting the opportunities afforded by innovative technology, and especially people in the South’s use of this, to improve access and demand for research. For example, the Open Application Programming Interface (API) project is designed to allow technical developers to access the datasets that sit behind renowned development research and information services, Eldis and BRIDGE. This access means they can pick and choose what data they want and need, and repurpose it by developing their own applications.

And it’s not about geeks playing with geeks - in a concrete example of how this can be used: BRIDGE has been working with Uruguayan NGO, ciedur, developing online resources that both bring together Spanish resources from BRIDGE alongside other relevant materials, in a way that is relevant to the Latin American policy context.

How is this being done? The Latin American resources are collected and shared online using an open source content management system called Drupal. A Drupal plug-in (developed by One World South Asia) allows those managing the system to automatically pull in data they want from the Eldis/BRIDGE dataset and repurpose it for their own website and online services.

And this is good because....?

• It challenges the ‘top-down’, ‘North-South’ direction of technological innovation and editorial decision-making – IDS Knowledge Services partners develop their own applications and select the data that is relevant and useful for their contexts
• It is relatively cheap: no need for high-tech R&D laboratories or factories, just creative minds and internet access. And these are active in abundance, not just in the Africa, but in Asia (East, South and West!) and Latin America
• “Open” also avoids duplication and the needless funding of multiple portals and websites which all do the same thing: collect and disseminate research in the hope that access alone is what we need to get research into policy and practice.

Handy technological short-cuts enable us to focus on emerging areas of research communications and knowledge brokering such as stimulating demand for research, or supporting non-academics to be ‘evidence-literate’ (see work of Kirsty Newman at INASP). 

Some challenges for this ICT4Development model

Having been in this sector for quite a while (BRIDGE is 21 years old, Eldis is 16 years old), we are quite aware of some of the challenges to this paradigm:

• Quality, trust and credibility: traditionally, “closed access” models for sharing research, such as peer-reviewed journals, ‘paid-for’ materials, such as books, or resources only available via a reputable institution, are supposed to guarantee all three. What happens when the credible is aggregated with the less credible? Can we maintain trust in the resources divorced from the branding and reputation of their original source? How is quality maintained once access is ‘opened’?
  
• Ownership, power and access: fundamental issues around funding and publishing research are not really addressed by the ICT4D model (e.g. the incentive systems where researchers achieve greater points for promotion by publishing in prestigious closed access journals), there is still a digital-divide, even with increasing internet access (e.g. urban v rural access);  many free internet services are privately owned and developed (e.g. Google or Twitter), particularly by companies based in the global North: should we be worried about our dependence on them? See ITforChange’s excellent thinking and research around this area
  
• Cost and financial sustainability: the open source model is one in which developers innovate ‘for free’, but then are more likely to be employed on the basis of their innovative contribution – but is this sustainable in the development research context? Who will pay for it?

We are still grappling with these challenges – are you?

Monitoring and evaluation in partnerships: why learning comes first

Guest post: Andre Ling, Research Officer/Technical Assistance with the Agricultural Learning and Impacts Network (ALINe) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

The Impact and Learning Team and the ALINe project members share insights and good practice during bi-monthly Learning Labs, an afternoon of learning and reflection framed by our project work and esearch questions. Andre shares his reflections in this blog post.

Last week's Learning Lab with the Impact and Learning Team (ILT) touched on two topics that are probably relevant to just about all actors involved in development processes: partnerships and sustainability. Both are buzzwords, frequently used and misused, open to a range of interpretations and often obscuring the hard realities that confront development practice.

This post looks specifically at 'partnership' and what approaches to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) may be most appropriate in a partnership context.


The term 'partnership' frequently glosses over the complexity of inter-organisational relationships:

• The many reasons for which organisations find themselves in a partnership to begin with
• The power asymmetries inherent in the common model of grantor-grantees that defines many partnerships
• The different interests, values or ideological positions of partners
• The specific organisational development needs of different partners

Image from: http://www.ramsar.org

The prevalence of such factors can lead one to the conclusion that most partnerships are marriages of convenience as those joining in such ventures do so largely to serve their own interests. But, at the same time, it barely deserves mentioning that an individual actor can do little to address the complex problems of our times.

So how do we go on together honestly? How do we make partnerships work?

And what kind of M&E makes sense in partnership contexts?



To begin with, taking stock of power asymmetries within the partnership and mapping out the divergent interests, values, worldviews, spheres of concern and needs of partner organisations may be a good place to start. Often the leading agency in a partnership (usually a grant-maker of sorts) will have goals of achieving some kind of systemic change. The other partners (frequently grantees) may be more concerned with implementing specific activities to contribute to more localised changes and be less comfortable with confronting systemic change. Such a divergence creates a critical disjuncture, resulting in the leading agency wanting to make changes in the other partners; to make them see the same way. Failure to engage with this rift in a sensitive manner can lead to a variety of problems, for example low trust and limited ownership.

One response is, perhaps, to establish a joint M&E framework; a system of indicators and reporting requirements that can be deployed to ensure that all organisations are 'on the same page' and are held accountable to achieving desired outcomes in a standardised way. The danger here is that compliance and standardisation – both power mechanisms – ride roughshod over what might be considered the more crucial goal: learning how to work together effectively to achieve mutually desired change.

This is not to dismiss the contribution of joint M&E frameworks but rather to put them in their rightful place as servants of learning (individual, organisational or institutional) rather than formalities implemented for their own sake. To clarify, the point is that learning encompasses a far wider set of practices and activities than what usually goes by the name of M&E and, furthermore, that regular M&E is not a sufficient pre-condition for learning to take place. Just think of all the evaluation reports that have been shelved and forgotten.

An emphasis on learning prior to M&E opens the door to a potentially more diverse set of tools, techniques and practices that can be used to (a) build relationships of mutual trust; (b) reveal and question entrenched assumptions; (c) share and cultivate more systemic ways of thinking about the nature of the problems that the partnership is seeking to tackle.

This can prepare the ground for co-creating an M&E system that is both oriented toward learning and situated within a partnership culture that is supportive of learning. A significant consideration here is that this means taking the partnership itself as a unit of analysis to be monitored, evaluated and learned from and through over time.