Abstract: Being an effective innovation catalyst can be difficult in fields where successfully influencing the adoption of solutions, policies and practices can be contextually complex, challenging, and fraught with a multitude of barriers. The health sector is one such field where knowledge of how to enable receptiveness of new ideas, embed solutions into complicated systems and processes, and un-tap the underlying culture, is essential if achieving impact is your key goal. Understanding the interdependent effects of the context, content and processes facing researchers, alongside those of various stakeholders, intensifies the complexity in trying to plan for, and deliver, positive impacts. Yet, too many times we still see researchers approaching the delivery of outcomes as simply tossing their scientific and technological solutions over the output fence line, assuming stakeholders will instinctively know how to pick up their “babies”, utilise them efficiently and effectively, to produce large scale, positive benefits to end-users. There appears to be a continual lack of awareness and application of the well-defined determinants for establishing valuable connections vital for impact generation. Drawing upon a number of health sector case studies, this presentation will provide practical insights and examples of how Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is working to build the capacity of its staff, across all areas of the organisation, to plan, monitor and assess the effectiveness, authenticity and collaborative nature of relationships which underpin the ability to achieve uptake and adoption of high impact research.
Biography: Dr Anne-Maree Dowd, Executive Manager Planning, Performance & Evaluation, CSIRO. Dr Dowd is an Executive Manager in CSIRO, responsible for all required planning and performance reporting for the organisation as well as implementing and tracking progress of Strategy, Investment Decision Making and Impact. She holds a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from the University of Queensland and has 16 years of experience in scientific research in public awareness and acceptance of energy technologies (at the international level), behaviour change, and transformational adaptation decision making across Australian Primary Industries.
