By Lizzette Arias, Communications Manager, US Ignite

How to Turn Research Into Community Impact

Great ideas are born in research environments all the time. But all too often, the idea ends up buried in a journal publication rather than practiced. US Ignite’s founder and Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Glenn Ricart asked the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund US Ignite’s Pathways Project to tackle this problem for the research it funds in the area of smart and connected communities.

What is the Pathways Program and how did it work?

Through the Pathways Program, US Ignite’s team of community innovation experts took three steps to identify the problems and issues preventing the NSF-funded research from being more widely put into practice.

#1 Workshops for researchers and PIs. US Ignite hosted a workshop at the NSF PI meeting to encourage researchers to transfer their work into practice. They coached each Principal Investigator (PI) on the different ways to do so.

#2 Tailored Advising and follow-up. Dr. Ricart followed up with each team, offering tailored advice and assistance based on the needs discussed during the workshop.

#3 Scalable Tools for Impact. To help provide this coaching at scale, US Ignite created an online “Choose Your Own Adventure” game that, after 10 minutes of play, suggested specific ways research projects could have real community impact.

These activities, leveraging US Ignite’s more than a decade of experience in smart and connected communities, were one of the many important inputs into the NSF’s decision to create a new cross-cutting Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships to facilitate the transfer of NSF research into benefits for wide swaths of Americans.

Watch Dr. Glenn Ricart on Turning Research into Impact

In this 20+ minute interview, Dr. Glenn Ricart, US Ignite co-founder and CTO, explains these principles and the right and wrong ways to implement them for maximum impact, touching on the value US Ignite delivered to researchers and communities.

What to listen for?

• US Ignite sat with the lead researchers and helped them reflect on the larger, transferable impact their research could have on the community. However, reflection alone is not enough. The researchers needed follow-through and hands-on advising on how to identify potential partners, map out options, and generally decide what to try first.
• There may be few to no incentives for academics and PIs to plan for transferable impact of their research to the larger community, but NSF and other agencies can send strong signals to encourage researchers and PIs to extend the fruits of their work into their communities and suggest patterns that actually work. Some researchers are even intrinsically motivated to make their work have a greater impact.
• Community impact is not just one thing. Across the initiative, the examples of community impact ranged from public engagement to governance partnerships. The main questions to consider are: what kind of community engagement makes sense right now? what could a realistic impact look like for this specific project?
• Dr. Glenn Ricart highly recommends checking out Fostering Civic Trust, as a comprehensive yet approachable guide to thinking about community impacts.

From Pathways to SURGE

US Ignite is taking all the knowledge gained from this work to support its latest innovation catalyst program, SURGE – Supporting U.S. Regional Growth & Entrepreneurship. This National Science Foundation-backed program offers regional innovation coalitions access to additional guidance and support in leveraging place-based innovations to generate positive economic impact for communities.

Learn more about SURGE and get in touch with US Ignite experts to start making a real difference in communities.