Insight Paper and Policy Brief Image: Pixabay/wal_172619_II SOCIAL INNOVATION NOW How Social
Sciences and Humanities Play their Role in an Age of Crisis
SOCIAL INNOVATION NOW. How Social
Sciences, and Humanities Play their Role in an Age of Crisis
This
White Paper aims to: 1. help dispel misconceptions and biases about the Social
Sciences and Humanities (SSH), 2. foster new attitudes and ideas about their
value, and 3. articulate with greater precision the kinds of frameworks,
activities, and initiatives that SSH researchers and their institutions should
pursue to bolster their capacity to contribute to social and public innovation.
Authors
Sandra Lapointe, Caleb Wellum & Jean-Christophe
Bélisle-Pipon*
Research team
Shannon
Boss, Brent Odland, Marie-Hélène B.-Hardy & Akacia Propst
Acknowledgements
Our thanks to Tim Wilson and
Karine Morin for their careful review, input and suggestions and to Katie
Plaisance, Akram Mahani and Christian Dagenais for their collaboration at
various phases of the project.
Table of Contents
SSH’s Role in a Public
and Social Innovation Strategy.
Reframing the Public
Value of SSH Knowledge
The STEM Bias and
Persistent Misconceptions About SSH
Limits of Legacy
Innovation Models
What Current Impact
Indicators Capture — and What They Miss
Why Supply-Driven Impact
Models Fall Short
Curiosity-Driven Research
Cannot Do it All
Demand-Informed,
User-Centric Alternatives
Shifting Impact Models:
From Diffusion to Collaborative Engagement
The Solution is Not in
Better Packaging
Extending the
Researcher’s Sphere of Influence through Collaborative Engagement
The Collaborative
Engagement Imperative
Co-Creation as
Impact-Driving Methodology
Deliberation as a
Catalyst for Evidence-Informed Policy
Collaborative Engagement,
Legitimacy and Accountability.
The Absence of Reliable
Institutional Data
Relying On Individual
Initiative Is Not A Viable Institutional Strategy
Disciplinary, Regional
and Institutional Disparities.
Institutional Rhetoric:
Putting Our Money Where Our Mouths Are
Cultural Norms and the Publish-or-Perish
Trap
Institutional Levers for
Cultural Change
The Skill Demands of
Collaborative Engagement
Skills to Navigate
Interdisciplinary and Intersectoral Collaborations
Skills and Literacy to
Navigate Complexity and Understand Systems Dynamics
Repositioning SSH within
Canada’s Innovation Ecosystem..
Enhance What is Already
Being Done
Reform Institutions to
Remove Barriers
Recommendations for
Institutions and Funders
1. Reposition SSH as Core
Innovation Infrastructure
2. Strengthen
Institutional Capacity for Collaborative Engagement
3. Shift Academic Culture
and Incentive Structures Toward Connectivity
4. Build Skills for
Collaborative, Systems‑Based Problem Solving
5. Establish Data and
Learning Systems to Track Impact
6. Position SSH Faculties
as a System‑Level
Connector
At
a high level, the social sciences and humanities can be powerful drivers of
innovation. Despite the stereotype that many of these disciplines produce
abstract knowledge that is not useful in the “real world,” SSH research produces
insights into the human and social dimensions of a wide range of pressing
challenges and questions that can benefit our societies and communities. A
historian explaining changes and continuities in fossil fuel use over the
course of a century; a political scientist analyzing voter attitudes about
proposed climate legislation; a literature scholar exploring depictions of
environmental despoilation in novels; and a gender studies scholar
deconstructing gendered identities in relation to ideas about nature, are all
deepening our collective understanding of how human societies and natural
systems interact and how people think about and use natural resources in
different places and times. This knowledge matters on its own terms and for its
own sake, and for many researchers, contributing to the expansion of what we
know and understand is its own purpose. But these forms of knowledge and insight
can also be useful for the kinds of changes in attitudes, values, norms, practices,
and interventions that generate social public and innovation, and few would
deny that in many contexts, SSH researchers should strive to contribute to
society in these and other ways.
There
is broad agreement amongst those who study social change that social sciences
and humanities research and experts must embrace a more prominent and public
role in efforts to address the pressing societal challenges of the twenty first
century. Canadian society needs viable and durable evidence-based approaches to
tackle the complexities of climate change, geopolitical and economic
disruptions, pandemics, housing crises, chronic diseases, systemic forms of
discrimination, mass migration, and artificial intelligence, to name just a few
of the current decade’s formidable challenges. We need evidence-informed policy
procedures and instruments to enact effective solutions. But the complex,
systemic nature of these challenges, all of which have profound human and
social dimensions, cannot come from the STEM (science, technology, engineering,
and math) disciplines alone. Viable innovations require contributions from the
full range of research expertise in Canada and across the world. Yet, SSH
research is presently not realizing its full potential to make a difference on
these and other issues.
There
are several barriers to bringing SSH research into deeper and more productive
forms of engagement with the publics and social sector actors currently
wrestling with tough transitions and wickedly complex issues. One of the most
significant barriers lies in public perceptions of the relative practical value
of SSH research and assumptions about the dominion of the “hard science”/STEM
disciplines, which tend to be viewed as best suited to contribute to innovation
and prosperity. In a context governed by economistic definitions and quantitative
measures of value and benefit, SSH disciplines are often deemed to be less
effective than STEM when it comes to dealing with real world problems. This
STEM bias finds expression in the well-worn “barista myth,” which claims that
university graduates—including those with MAs and PhDs—in SSH fields are
destined for low-paid service work because their knowledge and skills lack
sufficient “real world” value. In addition to being wrong, this myth is
counterproductive from the standpoint of social innovation in Canada.
The
power and persistence of this STEM bias in policy and media, as well as in
public discourse about education and jobs, goes hand in hand with models for
innovation strategy that continue to dominate policy. When they were first developed,
in the first half of the twentieth century, these models prioritized scientific
research dedicated to advancing technological knowledge and bolstering
industrial progress at a time where “industry” was focused on agriculture, the
extraction and transformation of natural resources, manufacturing and
pre-digital conventional warfare. These models tended to view the
research-to-society pipeline in a relatively linear and technocratic manner. In
a twenty-first-century world that increasingly recognizes the complex interconnectedness
of its social, political, environmental, economic, and health crises, and in
light of new understandings of human behavior, institutions, and societies that
have emerged over the last century, those older models of innovation are no
longer sufficient, if they ever were.
Our
models of innovation will continue to be inadequate to address twenty-first
century challenges until they integrate the forms of knowledge, insight, and
skills that SSH can uniquely provide. But transforming innovation in this way
will require clearer demonstrations of SSH’s real-world value, which will
require a renewed willingness from SSH researchers to leverage their strengths
and to embrace central roles in innovation discourse and policy, rather than
continuing to play a subsidiary role to STEM, or not role at all. SSH’s
strengths include skills associated with critical thinking and qualitative
analysis, deliberation and facilitation, historical and cultural awareness, articulating
nuanced accounts and theories of chance, as well as insights and discoveries
about how people and societies are organized, function, and evolve.
Part
of what is needed to demonstrate the value and potential of SSH research are
apt frameworks that do justice both to the demands of academic scholarship and
the imperatives of a publicly funded research ecosystem when it comes to
creating value. For instance, the Federation for the Humanities and Social
Sciences (FHSS) proposes that we think of SSH impact as happening along two
broad domains of influence: academia and society. Academic impact of SSH’s
research is portrayed as the result of SSH capacity to advance knowledge
(scholarship) and to spread and develop that knowledge by teaching and
mentoring students (capacity building).[1]
Figure 1: FHSS’s (2017) model of SSH’s academic impact.
By contrast, SSH’s impact on society—its
contribution to public and social innovation—is associated with its capacity to
drive positive change through collaborations and other types of practices at
the interface with policy, society and culture, and the economy.
Figure 2: FHSS’s (2017) model of SSH’s societal impact.
The
FHSS framework identifies a series of indicators of societal impact that
revolve around dissemination (citations by policy-makers
and actors, media coverage, media appearances, social media engagement),
knowledge mobilization activities (public engagement, consulting, advising) and
the commercialization of intellectual property. Such activities, to be sure, are
part of the broader effort to connect SSH research to society. But to determine
whether they are apt indicators, more is needed: we need to understand why they
lead to innovation.
The
FHSS framework is largely aligned with the ideas that underpin other recent
efforts such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), the Coalition for the Advancement of Research Assessment (CoARA), and the United
Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), which point to the need for
revised research evaluation practices and a focus on societal impact. DORA and CoARA have signaled a shift away from privileging
traditional publication metrics as indicators of impact for academic research to motivate richer theories of change when it comes
to the role of research in innovation ecosystems, demonstrating a commitment to
fostering diverse types of impact. Since the early 2000s, the Research
Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK has been used to assess research
excellence and allocate funding to research institutions. In its most recent
iteration in 2021, the REF shifted the focus to research culture, evidence of
broader contributions to the advancement of the discipline, and impact case studies
tailored to the specific context of a given project. The recent decision by Canada’s
Tri-Council to introduce a narrative-style CV similarly aims to recognize the
societal value of a diverse range of research outputs and to give researchers
more flexibility to demonstrate the unique ways in which their work can bolster
innovation beyond academia, create real world change and support the well-being
of people and communities beyond the academic sphere.
Although
these initiatives signal a welcome departure from the most extreme versions of
the “publish or perish” culture that has helped build the ivory tower’s high
walls since the 1950s, they are not nearly enough to position SSH at the heart
of public and social innovation. Part of the issue is with the quality of the
information we gain when the key indicators are activities and outputs: what is
measured is the intensity of the supply of activities and outputs presumed to generate
impact, not whether these activities actually have an
audience or meet an actual societal demand. These metrics indicate a system of
assessment that prioritizes knowledge supplied by and transferred
from the researcher to a potential user, rather than a system
that encourages more collaborative processes around research design, development,
creation, and translation, and which revolves around the actual demands or
needs of communities and partners.
Generally speaking, this “supply-driven” model of social and public innovation
also prioritizes value created for researchers and the universities rather than
for society, thus maintaining or even shifting the significance of SSH away
from their capacity to contribute to public and social innovation. Prioritizing
the initiative and curiosity of individual researchers must remain part of research
strategy, but researcher interests should not evolve in a vacuum. It is a mistake
to assume that the way to generate the best knowledge is to shield researchers’
interests and curiosity from concerns about the useability and relevance, or
that SSH research designed to answer the needs of social and public actors is
incompatible with intellectual curiosity or integrity. Indeed, claims of
“purity” and “integrity” should always be approached with a great deal of
prophylactic skepticism.
If
the core issue is that these approaches and frameworks remain predominantly
supply-driven and researcher-centric, that is, overly focused on the
dissemination of specialized research within one’s discipline, then SSH
research is not serving Canadian and global society to the degree that it could.
The focus of current impact frameworks suggests that even when researchers are
engaged at the interface with society, their primary target audience is
academia, not society. In this sense, the newer responsible research assessment
frameworks promoted by DORA and CoARA and researcher
funders are designed to assess research that reflects the interest or curiosity
of the research community rather than the needs and interests of prospective
knowledge users.
There
is no problem in principle with investigator-led, curiosity-driven research.
Indeed, it can personally be difficult to conceive of research that would not
somehow be driven by curiosity. It is also clear that researchers should be able
to decide what research they should be pursuing and which methods are the most
appropriate to use. Researchers should have autonomy and support to guarantee
that the research is responsible, equitable, and accountable, while academic
institutions must ensure that their researchers have the freedom to pursue a
line of inquiry without political interference or suppression.
From
a systemic standpoint, however, there are significant gaps in models of
research, innovation, and impact that focus exclusively on the interests and
priorities of individual researchers. For instance, although none of the
objectives of the Science, Technology and Innovation Priorities for the Canada
Excellence Research Chairs
Program and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund can be
achieved without substantial input from SSH, funding programs based on a supply-driven
model of research have resulted in low levels of interdisciplinary
collaboration (i.e. SSH-STEM collaborations). Moreover, of the 70 area of
focus, at least 29 are inconsistent with the linear, technology-driven
“start-up” logic that is currently driving research investments. The same can
be said about the “Canada Strong” platform goals on which the current Liberal government
was elected.[2] Given the urgent need of communities and
institutions reflected in these priorities and societal goals, the creeping
epistemological assumption that SSH and STEM are exclusive domains that can
operate in parallel forever is increasingly untenable. SSH need to be involved
in virtually all areas of innovation and change, from the economy and culture
to science, technology, and medicine.
Demand-informed,
user-centric frameworks for research and innovation, especially in the public
and social space, can help produce more engaged research by emphasizing the
role of knowledge users at each phase of the research process: problem
definition, design, research, development, and implementation. Embedding SSH
expertise and disciplinary knowledge alongside contextual knowledges and
practical/technical expertise in defining solutions to pressing social
challenges is a vital challenge, and one that calls for cross-sectoral and
interdisciplinary approaches rooted in collaborative engagement. Public and
social innovation actors may also draw on SSH research to assist in the
development and implementations of deliberation and co-creation methodologies
that underpin the orchestration of missions to address “wicked” problems or
increase well-being and prosperity on a larger scale.
|
|
Supply-driven
research and innovation |
Demand-informed
research and innovation |
|
Who decides what is worthy of research? |
Researchers |
Researcher and partners together |
|
Who is involved in the research
process: design, development, implementation? |
Researchers |
Researchers and
partners together |
|
Who decides what research is funded
through public funds |
Peers
(researchers) |
Peers (both
researchers and knowledge users) |
|
Who decides what success looks like? |
Researchers |
Researchers,
partners and knowledge users together |
|
Who gets the rewards of success? |
Researchers |
Researchers and
partners |
Figure
3: Supply-driven versus demand-informed research frameworks
If
the goal really is to bring SSH research to bear on pressing societal
challenges, which many universities claim is the case, then the first order of
business is to address Canada’s dysfunctional research ecosystem in which
disconnected SSH research is failing to realize its transformative potential.
Bringing Canada’s higher education, research, policy, and innovation systems
into alignment with what we know about generating and mobilizing knowledge for
social impact will mean moving from the current researcher-centric model of
impact to one that bring together the investigators and the users of SSH
knowledge across all sectors, and that builds partnerships and truly values the
co-creation of knowledge, especially for the purpose of public and social
innovation. This will require increased levels of collaboration and impact
literacy within a system designed to :
· incentivise research activities that are demonstrated
to produce short- and long-term assets on all sides of the science-society
interface,
· organically and yet drastically shift practices toward
greater interdisciplinarity and increased interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral
collaboration,
· substantially expand co-creation spaces that benefit
public and social innovation
This
is the picture that is consistent with the knowledge practices Canada needs as
part of a collective effort to build prosperity.
One
perennial challenge when it comes to justifying government investments in
research is in demonstrating that the ideas, knowledge, and insights it produces
also create social benefit. The ideal of research for the sake of knowing, like
art for art’s sake, is magnificent and often deeply inspiring. While it needs
to be part of ethos of publicly-funded research institutions that they foster
environments where researchers can conduct inquiry without political pressures,
as a matter of policy in a context of limited resources, expecting
research-for- the-sake-of-research to be the paradigm it is not realistic, or
even responsible. Advanced research, as a whole, should
be oblivious to public needs and priorities, and the system should include a
vision in which research is part of identifying these needs and of defining these
priorities.
One
important aspect of the challenge pertains to the effectiveness of the
processes and methods for the dissemination of results and insights. Much of
the dissemination infrastructure for publicly funded research over the last
century has focused on diffusion within the research community, with most
effort directed toward increasing the number of outputs and streamlining
exchanges between researchers. Current models of academic publishing, whether
commercial or open access, are almost entirely designed to streamline the
academic impact of research, and to making processes associated with scientific
accountability (e.g., peer review) more efficient along the way. Traditional
research output metrics that revolve around bibliometrics are essentially designed
to measure a researcher’s success in navigating these channels, and to indicate
levels of uptake (i.e., citation outputs, downloads, etc.) traceable to specialists journals. Such efforts are valuable: ensuring swift
and efficient access to up-to-date data, results, theories and analyses is crucial
to speeding up advances in discovery.
Ideas
generated through SSH scholarship, even when moving mostly through academic
diffusion pathways, do breach the ivory tower and have affect society in a
variety of ways and with different degrees of success. They can shape attitudes
and practices related to all possible aspects of our lives e.g. gender identity
and sexuality, mental health and wellness, economic policy, religious belief,
race relations, and more. But tracing the path of diffusion of SSH ideas beyond
academia is challenging. Many in SSH assume that non-academic uptake of their
work will be, even in the best circumstances, hard to trace, nonlinear and
dispersed, unfolding over different timescales and via a variety of auxiliary
modes: through the teaching of citizens, leaders, and workers; through the
circulation of books and articles; through media appearances; through
consulting practices or advisory roles. By their very nature, diffusion paths
for academic research are subject to systemic dynamics that are complex,
emergent and thus difficult to track or to quantify. This evasiveness is
amplified by the fact that many ideas are generated, modified, and distributed
through collective effort over many years across different places and even
languages, resisting efforts to pinpoint the moment in time they came to be or
matter, or the collaborations that made them happen. The question is: does
relying on this-diffusion-centred model of impact suffice?
Over
the last few decades research funders have increased pressure on researchers in
many fields to demonstrate their efforts to push or mobilize knowledge beyond academic
circles to meet the societal needs. As these needs and pressures on SSH
researchers have intensified, there have been efforts to modernize knowledge
diffusion by focusing on quicker, more efficient, and more effective ways to
get to the right audience. However, finding the “right packaging” for an idea, (i.e.
the format or medium that will ease diffusion and uptake with selected
audiences) does not address the root problem. Getting tailored information to
the right people might open up channels, but
translating research for the purpose remains a challenging process, especially
if the research questions were designed for fellow researchers and if peer-reviewed
publication in specialized academic journals remains the gold standard of
research output. Under such conditions, knowledge translation requires
researchers to serve two competing purposes. More importantly, perhaps, even
when researchers manage to effectively translate their outputs to a relevant
audience, knowledge diffusion remains a game of chance, consistently affected
by both the broader structural problems and fragmentations of the current
information and communication landscape and the pressures that affect the
capacity of potential users.
The success of efforts around research translation, mobilization,
and impact largely depends on the capacity to go beyond the academic model of
diffusion. Publication (across all media and formats), just like commercialization,
is a mode of diffusion that relies on interventions and systems dynamics that
reside entirely outside of the sphere of control of researchers. As such, on
the standard model, the role of researchers in the diffusion of their ideas is
almost entirely passive beyond what happens “in the lab” (or the library),
where the idea is generated.
Figure
4: Linear Diffusion Model of Innovation
Newer
models of impact and innovation emphasize the crucial role of collaborative
engagement and partnership throughout the research and innovation process,
which allows researchers to get input from prospective users about insights,
evidence, and solutions they actually need and to
shape the way in which their ideas are received and used in these contexts. The
figure below illustrates the point: the traditional diffusion model only
accounts for the dissemination of research and impact pathways beyond the reach
of the researcher. More recent models of
impact, in contrast, focus on the active role of researchers in collaborative
engagement at the interface with potential users (e.g., co-design,
participatory research practices, deliberation and other forms of
partnership-building and interface-creating activities).
Figure
5: Adapted from Belcher and Halliwell (2021).[3]
Health
fields have in many ways shaped some of the collaborative practices—end-user
integrated design, equity-based co-creation—that have seeped into the social
sciences over the last three decades.[4] One clear implication of these newer approaches for
SSH is that the capacity of researchers and their institutions to generate
impact and innovation depends in part on their willingness to embrace and
leverage collaborative engagement methodologies to make knowledge more useable
by increasing its relevance to those who hold an interest in it. Although the
question of who holds an interest in a specific research question or program is
a rich one, especially when it comes to non-academic audiences, the capacity of
researchers to guide, orient, and direct non-academic outcomes of their
research (any outcome that is not within the direct research space) is
intimately linked to their capacity to build relationships with prospective
knowledge users—whoever they are—through collaborations that span all stages of
the research. In theory at least, the more connectivity in any or every stage
of the research process, the wider the extension of the space within which
researchers can directly shape how knowledge is used.
Seen
in this light, effective dissemination is a challenge rooted primarily in the
attitudes of academic researchers and their institutions toward collaborative
engagement and other similar participative forms of knowledge dissemination. To
improve how the valuable knowledges and insights that SSH researchers create
meet the demand of communities and public institutions, especially in a digital
age characterized by fragmented media landscapes, distraction, and information
overload, researchers need to increase their immediate connectivity to the
relevant ecosystem actors through engagement and collaboration.
SSH’s
capacity to contribute to societal change and well-being goes beyond the
production and diffusion of ideas and insights to relevant publics. As we have
been arguing, it is also tied to engagement with prospective users through
co-creation processes that require high levels of collaboration, and thus
social and emotional intelligence. This is not just a matter of attitude or
personality, but of methodology. The good news is that SSH research is
well-positioned to engage user perspectives, especially given SSH’s comfort
with the embeddedness of knowledge and its development of methodologies
and approaches to articulate the deep contextual factors that shape human
behaviors and systems. Many aspects of primary and secondary research (surveys,
interviews, focus groups, analysis, interpretation, and critique) within SSH
are designed to make knowledge and, to an equal extent, values explicit. SSH
methods can also be combined and modified to yield powerful analytic tools even
in the most traditional disciplines, as in the recent development of
experimental philosophy, energy humanities, digital and computational
humanities, grounded history and normative theory, and discourse analysis, to
name a few examples.
New
research methodologies within various SSH disciplines have been designed to draw
directly on embedded knowledge to enhance the relevance and useability of research
knowledge by engaging users and other interest-holders in the research process—a
family of approaches called “co-creation.” SSH researchers continue to develop
effective collaborative co-design, co-development and co-implementation
methodologies to support all aspects of research with communities, non-profits,
and other actors in the social sector around various aspects of knowledge.
In
a broad sense, co-creation is involved wherever knowledge flows intentionally
across the SSH-community interface and can take a variety of forms. For
instance, when considering how the project of a new light rail train may affect
social determinants of health like the affordability of housing, economists,
historians, anthropologists, sociologists and geographers may be involved in
identifying indicators of vulnerability and displacement pressures, including
neighbourhood-specific definitions of affordability, to determine which
neighbourhoods might be at risk. This might also involve mapping rental
arrangements, shared housing strategies, or historical-cultural ties, for
instance, by capturing narratives of long-term residency or analyzing how
transit investments interact with identity, belonging and social capital.
Community-engaged initiatives and research projects that are rooted in processes
carefully designed to support deep, trust-based, reciprocal collaborations have
the power to bring together academics,
experts from communities, and other actors to generate insights together,
holding space for diverse experiences, to grapple with uncertainty, and to co-produce
new understandings of complex social challenges. Co-creation happens when researchers are engaged in community-focused
partnerships and projects, including nonprofit and social sector organizations,
government, health, indigenous communities, and K-12 schools. But, co-creation is also involved in research- and social
innovation-focused experiential learning opportunities in which emerging
researchers collaborate with partners around the processes of knowledge
production and use.
SSH-driven collaborative
engagement can also drive impact in agile policy contexts. Because policy research is most effective when it
engages the situated contexts that policies will address, SSH researchers may
leverage a range of processes designed to make explicit the embedded values
that necessarily shape policy decisions and the public reception of policy.
This can take the form, for instance, of deliberative sense-making on available
evidence available or a discussion of various scenarios in backcasting a
vision. Crucial to deliberative engagement methodology is not just their potential
in yielding new insights, but their ability to foster the vital and
foundational awareness amongst policy actors—who ultimately wield the power to
effect change—that their decisions are rooted in values and that they are more
likely to succeed if they take in account the values of local communities. This
is partly because the very nature of the social issues policy-makers
are tasked to address depends in part on perceptions that are always situated
and contextual, and can thus widely vary.
When
the challenge one is tasked to address depends in part on people’s experience
of it and on a broader context, awareness of diverse points of view and of
one’s own is a crucial ingredient to formulating change and action. This is
clear in the case of vaccine hesitancy and in a range of other areas: support
for climate action depends on whether climate is perceived as a risk; support for
mental health care or poverty alleviation depends on conceptions of illness, responsibility,
and deservingness. In these and other cases, SSH researchers can help policy
actors understand the deep, localized, and embedded knowledge and values of
different communities and contexts, thereby avoiding the imposition of
universalizing solutions that ignore local conditions and cultures. For instance,
anthropologists might support the process of designing a vaccine policy by
conducting research on a community’s understanding of illness and immunity and who they trust
for information about their health to inform a the
creation of an effective messaging strategy. They might also identify other
factors relevant to vaccine uptake, such as mobility patters, childcare
constraints, work schedules, transportation costs, and documentation
requirements that should be taken into account in the
vaccine rollout.
The
work of deliberation is vital. In an era of roiling populisms, which feed off
dissensus and are now accelerating the rise of authoritarian responses to
complex problems, transformations, uncertainties, and divisions, mobilizing
expertise in diversity and consensus building is essential to protect democracy.
Rather than imposing the most “efficient” solution in theory (efficient for
whom?), or the one that is ideologically preferable to the party in power,
evidence-informed deliberative processes can help to craft democratically
robust solutions through processes of deliberation, engagement, and consensus
formation. Here again SSH are still considerably underused. In addition to helping articulate the tacit norms,
expectations and values that shape a context of interventions, SSH can leverage
deliberative approaches to facilitate the integration of multiple systems of
knowledge into the definition, coordination, implementation and evaluation of
policy, ideally leading to policies that better represent relevant communities.
SSH researchers can open deliberative exchange spaces that mediate between
governments, experts, and publics to help clarify and manage disagreements, to
balance diverse perspectives, to work through uncertainty, and to build
consensus around contentious issues.
When
they are appropriately resourced—with funding, time, training and other forms
of institutional support—SSH researchers working with community and or
policymakers are more able to adopt collaborative, research-informed engagement
processes that foster knowledge exchange (from academia to policy makers or
social and nonprofit organizations), from research co-design, to knowledge
co-development, and innovation-driving knowledge co-implementation. Clearly
defined co-creation processes help clarify differences, manage uncertainties,
and navigate complex issues in the most equitable, collaborative, and therefore
democratically responsive manner possible. The result is greater accountability
and legitimacy across the board. If research-informed solution and decision
processes have engaged diverse stakeholders in robust dialogue, the solutions
and decisions are liable to be more flexible, responsive, representative and legitimate, therefore
sparking greater assent and readiness. If through collaborative engagement,
research processes are perceived to be responsive, representative and valid to
communities and the full range of affected groups and individuals, the outcome will
be much closer to realizing the transparency and cohesion needed for durable
solutions to complex problems.
Despite
some current initiatives and their even richer potential for contributing to
societal progress and innovation, SSH are falling far short of public and
social sector needs. Some argue that the problem is at least partly one of
perception, that SSH’s impact is inevitably diffuse, nonlinear, difficult to
quantify and therefore bound to be misunderstood. But, as we saw above, in the
relevant contexts this diffuseness can be mitigated through collaborative
engagement. The real issue is SSH’s overall capacity to connect.
Connectivity
between SSH and society is crucial to public and social innovation and impact.
Connectivity happens when knowledge and expertise can flow and knowledge is
absorbed on all sides of a collaboration, as in the examples of co-creation,
collaboration, and deliberation discussed above. As such, connectivity depends
largely on the capacity for collaborative engagement, and thus on the
deployment and implementation of deliberative and/or co-creative processes.
When there is high connectivity, partners work together with few barriers to
sharing knowledge, assets, and resources. There is low connectivity, however,
when collaborations and networks are beset by frictions, disconnects, or
difficulties in exchanging and co-creating knowledge. Low connectivity can be
the result of ideological differences (e.g. methodological, epistemological,
terminological, etc.), divergences linked to sector norms and expectations
between partners, inadequate time or financial support, and more.
To fulfill their third mission, higher education
institutions need to actively engage with society, beyond
teaching and research, to apply knowledge, foster innovation, inform public
policy, and contribute to social, cultural, and economic development. In the SSH, unfortunately, the landscape of efforts to
supply those who need research knowledge is unequal and riddled with gaps. Low
connectivity prevents SSH from fulfilling their societal role as effectively as
possible. The
important questions then is: why is SSH research not as engaged with communities and public institutions as universities
claim to want to be? and How can the interface between SSH and society
be improved to mobilize currently untapped assets (talent, knowledge) and
retrofit Canada’s public and social innovation ecosystems with the SSH knowledge
it needs in the twenty first century ?
There
are currently few bespoke instruments to assess levels of institutional support
for collaborative engagement in SSH. This is partly a reflection of the fact
that, even in the best cases, the data that higher education establishments
collect on scholarly activities, when such data exists, can only offer a
partial picture of the landscape. There are several reasons for this,
especially when it comes to the way data about scholarly activities is
collected. As discussed above, most assessment and, therefore, data collection
frameworks use rubrics and criteria that continue to focus heavily on
traditional scholarly output. More importantly, the data is neither publicly
available nor designed to be useable outside of individual Departments and
Faculties, which makes integrating it into a workable database problematic. In
the end, accessing information on scholarly activities at large requires us to
rely on the most reliable proxy we have for academic reality, e.g. the websites
of academic departments.[5]
A
systematic review of the content of individual SSH departmental websites at all
Canadian universities reveals efforts around collaborative engagement in
Canadian SSH research are uneven. Quantitatively speaking, most mentions of
engagement-based SSH scholarship at the interface with the public and social
sectors falls in the category of individual research initiative, publications
or in the context of individual courses. By contrast, institutionalized
programs that promote interface-creating and partnership-building activities
and that are designed to build talent and incentivise engagement with society (e.g.,
community-focused research centres or experiential learning programs) are few.
Even if they were evenly distributed, there would not be enough such programs
to ensure that each Faculty has more than a handful, which means that most SSH
departments do not benefit from infrastructure and/or programs that integrate
collaborative engagement with non-academic partners.
These
low levels of institutional support for collaborative engagement infrastructure
and programming also help to explain why, when asked about their primary
motivation for engaging in community-focused research activities, SSH
researchers cite a sense of belonging to community or the benefit of their
students, rather than professional advancement or meeting their institution’s engagement
mandate.[6] Although a sense of personal and moral responsibility
to others is certainly laudable, especially when such work is not met with
inadequate institutional support, relying on it is amount to an institutional
strategy. Indeed, the absence of a strategy and reliance on individual
initiative in this regard may create or reinforce already existing inequities by
disadvantaging more junior or equity-deserving faculty members who may be under
various other pressures to secure tenure or promotion.
When
it comes to SSH initiatives that do benefit from institutional support to build
partnerships and create interfaces with public and social sector actors, they
tend to be heavily concentrated in a small group of disciplines. Community-focused
work is dominated by departments associated with Sociology, Criminology and Law
(which includes social work) and Geography and Environmental Studies. At the
interface with policy, the same two disciplines are only superseded by Public
Health and Public Policy, Business and Economics, and Political Science and
International Relations. There are also geographic and institutional
disparities. In Canada, research-informed collaboration tends to be
concentrated in the largest and wealthiest universities, and in the largest and
wealthiest provinces (British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec). And while smaller
and mid-sized universities tend to have a better track record engaging
community, making the disparity between institution size and wealth less
significant for community-facing collaboration than for policy-facing work, the
distribution of resources and funding, e.g. through SSHRC grants, tends to
favour bigger universities with proportionally lower engagement profiles.
Finally,
problems with connectivity are also apparent in the fact that the challenge
areas with which SSH research is currently engaging are unevenly distributed.
For instance, Social Development and Education represent almost two thirds of
activities at the interface with policy in Canadian universities. Other
priority domains like Economic Development, Environment and Health account for
another third. Given the complexity and scope of the challenges in these and
other areas, it would seem vitally important for universities to be proactive
rather than reactive in strategically pursuing partnerships and other forms of
interface-creating research and knowledge activities. The same is true for
engagement in the social space, where partnerships are overwhelmingly skewed
towards organization delivering social services, as opposed to K-12 schools and
health service, for instance.
Connectivity
issues at the interface between SSH and society crop up in the perceptions that
SSH researchers have of the supports that are available to them through their
institutions, as well. While faculty members tend to agree that SSH expertise
is in demand and that engagement is an effective way to enhance the impact of
their research, they also tend to believe their university is not intentional
about supporting evidence-informed engagement activities. Interestingly,
academic leaders are more positive and optimistic about both support and
outcomes, which raises questions about which data is available to whom, and how
it is being analysed and shared to demonstrate impact. In fact, there is a
patent information/communication gap when it comes to the support that is or is
not available to faculty members around community engagement in Canadian
universities. Researchers, for instance, tend to be unaware of support
available in their university around knowledge-mobilization. Misperceptions or
ignorance about those supports may be the result poor communication, but they could
also indicate the fact that collaborative engagement is not perceived as enough
of a priority for people to record the information.[7]
This
lopsided reality—of individual researchers in a limited range of disciplines
and regions doing the majority of research on a
limited set of issues and without much support—is inconsistent with the
increasingly common claim that universities make about their commitment to
social impact and community engagement. It also does not reflect the richness
and versatility of the types of expertise and skills SSH could contribute
across the innovation ecosystem. It points to a lack of institutional
infrastructure to incentivize and enlarge the pool of researchers and the range
of disciplines doing this important work, and to the extent of missed
opportunities for researchers and potential users of knowledge alike.
One
of the most significant barriers to increasing SSH’s engagement with societal
problems and challenges is academic culture, which is defined by a range of more or less implicit conventions and normative commitments
that inform which kinds of research and outputs are deemed valuable. It includes
ideas about which behaviors should be rewarded; who is and who is not an
expert; how to spend time, money, and attention; which kinds of risk are acceptable and which are not; and how much tolerance or even
space there is for breaking with reigning norms and values. Currently, the
scholarly activities and achievements that are generally rewarded, heeded,
expected, supported, and celebrated are not those that focus on the knowledge
needs of people outside of individual disciplines.
These
tacit conventions and values are also embedded in the institutional policies
that are designed to steer researchers’ efforts. Interestingly, there seems to
be considerable agreement amongst researchers as to which aspects of academic
cultures are problematic, with the “publish or perish” ethos cited as the
primary barrier. This seems right. If peer-reviewed publication and other
traditional outputs are treated as the main purpose of academic research, as
well as the primary path to tenure, promotion, and high standing in a
discipline, then the longer term, relational work necessary to engage deeply
with policy processes and community innovation will be unattractive, especially
as it may impede the pace of peer-reviewed publications academia typically
rewards.
Moreover,
in SSH disciplines, the epistemic and disciplinary norms that underpin the
imperative to publish in peer-reviewed speciality journals and presses often
revolve around an individualistic model of researcher-driven exploration. Collaborative
engagement, whether through co-creation or deliberative processes, poses a deep
challenge to this paradigm and its notions of good research, of who counts as
an expert, and of which kinds and volumes of output are a mark of research
success. What is needed to shift or at least broaden the scope of academic
culture to make it more welcoming of different kinds of expertise, output, and
research practices is thus considerable.
Challenging
and changing academic culture would require deep changes to universities at the
institutional level. One way to streamline such change is to act directly on
institutional mechanisms that reflect values and norms
and which codify the kinds and approaches to research that are incentivised. An institution’s capacity for supporting and
incentivizing collaborative engagement at the interface with society is partly
reflected in the policies, guidelines, and programs that determine the rules for awarding tenure,
promotion, and salary increase, as well as the programs designed to support
people along their academic career pathways.
An institution that displays
high capacity and readiness for public and social innovation:
·
adopts or adapts policies, guidelines,
and programs to incentivize and reward interface-creating and
partnership-building engagement. Capacity for innovation and impact is
evidenced in holistic support for activities and practices that support
collaborative engagement.
·
approaches accountability with
intelligence. Quantitative
and qualitative data on impact-driving activities and practices is key for
evaluating an institution’s capacity to generate value for stakeholders through
research and scholarship.
·
fosters impact and innovation literacy. To participate meaningfully in impact-driving activities,
individual researchers and trainees need to be able to articulate and
communicate how their research contributes directly or indirectly to change
and/or innovation in the real world. Developing impact literacy is part of
creating the conditions for impact-driving scholarship.
Without a clear self-understanding of current capacity, institutions
cannot develop and implement strategies to increase the impact of the research
their community produces.
Doing
and sharing research in collaboration with government, nonprofits, and other
organisations outside of academia is a rewarding but challenging process that
requires its own set of skills. Although some SSH researchers may have acquired
relevant skills through their research or in other contexts, discipline-based
academic training typically does not require emerging researchers to prepare to
engage in such collaborative work. With few exceptions, SSH graduate programs
encourage emerging researchers to master disciplinary norms that revolve around
solo-authored research engaged with questions, problems, and methods that
emerge from the literature in their discipline. This training is valuable and
crucial to conducting primary and secondary research. But without additional
skills-building around the demands of collaborative processes in partnered,
impact-focused research at the interface with non-academic partners, the
opportunity cost for emerging researchers can be considerable. The lack of
those skills increases the level of effort individuals need to deploy, thus
making the prospect collaborative engagement unattractive. It may passively discourage
engagement of partnerships that respond to questions or problems of interest to
communities, nonprofits, or policymakers, whose concerns often differ
dramatically from those of academics, or compromise success for those who
nonetheless undertake such initiatives.
The
range of skills needed for collaborative research engagement is wide. In
addition to leveraging both broad and specialised disciplinary knowledge, it
includes the technical knowledge of co-creation and deliberation methodologies,
which is diverse, multifaceted and constantly evolving. For instance, depending
on the context and relevant type of evidence or knowledge, collaborative
engagement might revolve around a number of different processes which researchers must be equipped to plan and
implement, including participatory
research, co-design, idea or innovation labs, systems mapping, sense-making,
citizen juries, consensus conferences, multi-criteria decision analysis, futures workshops, delphi
processes, and more. At a higher level, collaborative
research engagement requires the ability to plan and design research; recruit
participants in ways that are inclusive, equitable, and representative;
facilitate and translate knowledge; collect, analyze, and synthesise data in
co-creative and deliberative settings; and engage participants in sense-making
and reflection. Importantly, training for collaborative engagement should
involve attention to the foundational soft skills associated with the high
levels of social and emotional intelligence that collaborative contexts demand.
The nature of the work involved in leveraging deliberative and co-creative
processes to address societal challenges should be seen to require two
subs-sets of skills: 1. the capacity to collaborate specifically in
interdisciplinary and intersectoral contexts and, perhaps more importantly, 2. the
ability to leverage an understanding of complexity and systems dynamics in the
definition of and solution to societal problems, including in policy settings.
There
is broad evidence that work at the interface with community and policy actors
requires interdisciplinary approaches and indeed, the participation of a wide
range of expertise. These collaborations may also take the form of ideas- or
innovation-labs that draw on methodologies that rely on interdisciplinarity as
a conduit of good design. The expectation, in these contexts, is that the
collaborative processes of deliberation and co-creation are intentionally
structured to make the most of rich interdisciplinary expertise while
mitigating the frictions that can arise when epistemic norms and methodological
standards differ.
It
is no secret, however, that there are major gaps in training around
interdisciplinary collaboration in higher education, and especially at the
graduate level, where disciplinary siloes tend to be erected. Even when
trainees work in group settings, as part of labs or research teams, the focus
is rarely interdisciplinary, and training, when it is available, typically
revolves around discipline-specific research methods rather than the capacity
to facilitate or even to participate effectively in interdisciplinary research
collaborations. Because interdisciplinary research is not the norm, there are
few opportunities or even a sense of urgency to think about the skills that
might be required to lead interdisciplinary research that makes the most of
disciplinary expertise.
By
contrast, the recent increase of resources dedicated to experiential learning could
enhance the capacity of universities to prepare trainees for intersectoral
collaborations. Although the rationale cited for the implementation of experiential
learning programming is typically the prospect of increased graduate
employability, the reason why students who participate in experiential learning
are more employable is that they are given an opportunity to hone foundational
skills that are generally useful for navigating different institutional and
cultural settings. In particular, the creation of programs (e.g., Mitacs) that
fund research partnerships that integrate trainees in a work environment
provide for a direct experience of intersectoral research. How interns in these
programs acquire the literacy to articulate their newly gained skills and
reflect on them however remains a critical question. To reap the benefit of
experiential learning that may happen in a number of
different organizational contexts and sectors, not only for employability but
for research at the interface with society, it is important to emphasize the
transversal nature of these skills.
Evidence shows that the best approach is to be intentional about skills
articulation and metacognition when it comes to building competencies in
experiential contexts.
Although
meaningful collaborative partnerships can extend the sphere of control of
researchers, they need to be informed by an understanding of the particular dynamics that underpin the diffusion of social
and public innovation. Academic research does not organically flow into an
ecosystem and the iterative processes through which basic research eventually
yields innovation need to be intentional and appropriate in the context of
application. The contexts in which social and public innovations are deployed are
however complex, emergent, and unpredictable.
Being
intentional about innovation processes in such conditions requires those
involved to understand the systemic dynamics at play. The complexity and
emergence inherent to the challenges that social and public innovations are
designed to address however needs to be properly conceptualised and addressed:
· in research design, to identify root causes and to
frame research questions properly;
· in knowledge production, by engaging the perspectives
and experiences of ecosystem actors to develop solutions that will generate
uptake; and
· throughout implementation, to leverage approaches to
scaling that are adapted to social complexity and emergence.
Admittedly,
the idea that the research enterprise needs to rely on high levels of literacy
around systems dynamics and complexity is not well-established. But planning,
evaluating, and managing impact requires a theory of change that is informed by
the best available conceptual instruments, which neither the traditional innovation
models, nor the entrepreneurial models that build on them, can provide.
The Social Sciences and Humanities
disciplines possess critical yet underutilized capacities to address the
complex societal challenges facing Canada. Issues such as climate change and
energy transition, public health, housing and homelessness, political
polarization and democratic backsliding, social and economic inequality, and
technological disruption require insights into human behaviour,
systems dynamics, governance, culture, and values—domains in which SSH
expertise is essential.
Despite this potential, SSH
contributions to public and social innovation remain constrained by systemic
barriers, outdated incentive structures, and insufficient institutional funding
and supports. To position the Faculty as a leader in
advancing social innovation, the following strategic priorities are
recommended.
A national
innovation strategy that seeks to optimize the federal investment in SSH
research should focus on 3 key domains of action.
The
pathway to fully realizing SSH’s potential is one of deep and sustained
engagement with policy- and decision-makers, as well as with nonprofits and
other organizations in the social sector. We have articulated some of the
reasons why this potential is not being fully met. The current landscape of
university-community/policy engagement is not structured to provide SSH
researchers with the time, resources, and rewards it takes to form
partnerships, work through connectivity challenges, build trust, and to do the
other kinds of work that are required for success. For this to change,
university culture must shift to revalue SSH’s potential contribution and to
encourage and support the kinds of activities that are necessary for SSH
researchers to engage meaningfully with society.
Universities
need to rapidly build out their capacity for social impact, which entails
providing holistic and robust support for research activities and practices
designed for social impact, rather than the much narrower forms of support that
currently predominate. The first step in this direction is to develop clear
policies, guidelines, and programs to incentivize and reward impact-focused
research activities. Providing emerging and early career researchers with
opportunities to develop their understanding of how their research can be
tailored for impact, and to develop the skills for collaboration and
cross-sectoral collaboration that are essential for this kind of work.
But
higher education institutions are not the only actors who should be challenged to
step up. To the extent that they are organized into national and international
associations, SSH disciplines also carry significant institutional and cultural
weight. Those who shepherd these associations, in particular,
may have a role in ensuring that SSH researchers and their institutions
develop a shared understanding of how research can and should shape progress,
and what success looks like when researchers endeavour not only to diagnose and
assess but to work toward addressing real world problems. This understanding
will likely vary by the needs and strengths of the disciplines, their institutions,
and the communities they serve, but formalizing this understanding is a crucial
step to demonstrating that a university is serious about collaborative
engagement in SSH research practice. It also provides a foundation for
researchers to pursue new kinds of research, with a clear understanding of the
kinds of activities that are worth pursuing and will be supported and rewarded.
Structures
of funding, tenure, teaching, and time allocation will also need to change to
support community and policy engaged scholarship. SSH researchers, as noted
above, say that they do not have enough time for community and policy-engaged
research. This perception is likely related to the fact that researchers are
incentivized by the values of academic culture, as embodied in tenure and
promotion guidelines, to spend their time on other kinds of research, teaching,
and service activities. Making space for “alternative” forms of research and
community engagement will empower researchers to allocate more time to third
missional research and knowledge mobilization activities.
Higher
education institutions and other funding bodies will also have to commit to
funding research for social and public innovation and impact alongside
investigator-led research. The Social Science and Humanities Research Council
of Canada has made significant strides in supporting interdisciplinary and
cross-sectoral knowledge creation and collaboration. Research shows that these
efforts directly shape how faculty pursue and present their research projects.
But there is a persistent lack of clarity around what effective
community-oriented research and knowledge mobilization looks like, which makes
it difficult to measure the quality of cross-sectoral connections and the level
of impact that a given project makes. To be effective, research funding needs to
be based on clear criteria and guidelines and it needs
to go beyond privileging new or more research activities as is the case in
current funding models. Funding needs to move through a renovated innovation
system comprised of shared criteria, definitions, models, and practices that
lessen institutional constraints on researchers and foster collaborations that
truly benefit community and policy partners. This will be a challenging process
and calls for serious self-reflection on the part of university leaders and
researchers about the goal and purpose of the academic enterprise in an era of
mounting societal challenges and crises.
Developing
new and more expansive, innovation- and SSH-appropriate models of assessment is
an important step for changing academic culture. A reform of research
assessment should be designed to provide clarity around what forms of research
are desirable and effective, and a foundation for assessing success. This is
challenging because the current picture of what SSH-driven community innovation
and policy impact looks like is often vague or mired in quantitative metrics
that cannot adequately capture the contributions that SSH can and does make.
Creating new assessment frameworks will also be an important step in moving
community and policy-focused research away from researcher-centric models,
individual initiative, and the sense of personal or moral responsibility that
current drives a lot of this research, and toward career growth and
recognition. Institutionalizing community and policy innovation in this way,
moreover, is a matter of equity because it reduces the risks of departing from
entrenched academic practice and pathways, ensuring that all SSH researchers
have equal access to opportunities for career advancement through
community/policy innovation and impact.
Current innovation ecosystems over‑privilege STEM‑centric, linear
models and legacy approaches focused on commercialization. SSH must be framed
not as supplemental but as foundational to systems-level innovation capable of
addressing complex problems.
•
Adopt a formal
vision statement positioning SSH as essential to the mission of the university
and to public and social innovation.
•
Embed SSH
innovation literacy (e.g., co‑creation,
systems thinking, deliberation methodologies) across graduate curriculum,
faculty onboarding, and public communications.
•
Incentivize
interdisciplinary SSH–STEM collaboration, not as an exception, but as a
structural expectation.
· Increase funding for all SSH research.
· Develop funding regimes that require SSH-STEM
collaboration.
· Shift funding priorities toward demand‑driven, co‑created research.
· Support multi‑stakeholder,
mission‑oriented initiatives targeting national challenges.
Research impact is directly tied to connectivity—the
quality of relationships, processes, and structures that link SSH research to
community, policy, and social sector partners. Current engagement practices
rely too heavily on individual initiative. Investing in connectivity
infrastructure dramatically increases capacity to build trust-based, enduring
relationships and socially embedded research programs.
•
Create or
expand dedicated engagement infrastructure, such as:
o A Faculty‑level SSH
Impact & Engagement Office.
o Community partnership coordinators.
o Support for project scoping, ethics navigation, and
agreement templates.
•
Offer seed
funding for co‑creation initiatives, enabling early‑stage relationship‑building with
community, policy, and social sector actors.
•
Establish
recognition and reward pathways within tenure, promotion, and merit processes
that recognize partnership‑building, co‑creation, and innovation‑driving
research.
•
Formally recognize
co-creation and deliberation as legitimate research methodologies in program
descriptions and adjudication criteria.
•
Expand programs
that require researcher–community–policy co‑design.
•
Incentivize
long‑term partnerships, not only project‑based collaborations.
•
Fund the design
and implementation of collaborative research processes (e.g., co-design
workshops, citizen deliberations, policy labs), not only research outputs.
•
Encourage
methodological pluralism that integrates both social sciences and humanities
expertise with technical and contextual knowledge.
•
Encourages SSH research
based in social innovation, design and living labs through new initiatives.
· Support the development of place-based, regional SSH
social innovation networks linking academia, municipalities, nonprofits, and
Indigenous organizations.
Many barriers to social and public
innovation lie not with individual researchers but with institutional cultures
that continue to reward primarily discipline-bound, publication-focused
activity. The prevailing “publish or perish” culture undermines engagement with
communities and public institutions by prioritizing academic outputs over
societal outcomes. This disproportionately affects early‑career and equity‑deserving
scholars. Traditional indicators of impact—publications, citations, media
mentions—capture the intensity of research supply but provide limited insight
into whether knowledge is used or useful, i.e. whether it meets a demand. When
knowledge is not used, there is no impact.
•
Revise tenure
and promotion criteria to explicitly reward collaborative engagement, e.g.:
o Participatory research
o Community‑engaged
scholarship
o Knowledge co‑production
o Policy engagement and evidence‑support activities
•
Implement
narrative‑CV formats to help researchers articulate non‑traditional impact.
•
Recognize team‑based and interdisciplinary work as core scholarly contributions.
· Develop assessment criteria and frameworks that value
co‑creation, policy impact, social transformation, and
community engagement.
· Promote narrative or portfolio‑based assessments emphasizing real‑world outcomes.
· Reward evidence of institutional support for
partnership-based research, such as workload recognition, tenure and promotion
alignment, and dedicated support units.
· Revise funding opportunities to explicitly support
connective tissue: partnership brokers, co‑creation labs, deliberative methods, cross‑sectoral networks, and engaged research infrastructure.
· Ensure that funding criteria do not inadvertently
penalize researchers—particularly early career or equity-deserving scholars—who
invest time in collaborative engagement.
· Encourage institutions to develop strategies and
infrastructure for community and policy engagement, rather than relying on
individual initiative.
· Link funding for graduate award holders to optional
training opportunities on co‑creation,
facilitation, systems mapping, and deliberative methods.
· Support social‑sector experiential learning (e.g., Mitacs‑style models adapted for SSH).
· Upskill program officers and assessors to deal with
new evaluation frameworks and criteria.
Effective social innovation depends
on skills that are not typically emphasized in traditional academic training,
including facilitation, interdisciplinary collaboration, systems thinking, and
impact literacy. Without targeted investment and mandatory programming, the
capacity to conduct high-quality partnership research will remain uneven and
fragile.
•
Integrate co‑creation and deliberation methodologies into mandatory graduate training
(e.g., design labs, citizen juries, multi‑criteria analysis, systems mapping).
•
Provide skills
development opportunities focused on collaboration and innovation:
o Impact literacy
o Facilitation and stakeholder engagement
o Interdisciplinary collaboration
o Systems thinking and complexity literacy
•
Expand
experiential learning partnerships with social sector organizations, policy
bodies, municipalities, and community groups.
•
Fund training
and capacity-building initiatives focused on co-creation, deliberation, and
collaborative research design.
•
Support
learning-oriented program components that allow researchers and partners to
reflect on what works, for whom, and under what conditions.
•
Encourage the
development of shared resources, communities of practice, and methodological
guidance for partnership-based research.
A major barrier is the absence of
reliable institutional data on engagement activities, partnerships, and impact
outcomes. Tracking this data enables actors to identify gaps, allocate
resources strategically, and demonstrate public value to funders, government,
and community partners.
•
Use shared frameworks
to create an engagement activity registry documenting partnerships, co‑creation projects, policy advising, and community‑based research across all departments.
•
Include a SSH
Social Impact module in annual reports, highlighting outcomes, partnerships,
and innovation case studies.
· Coordinate national efforts to track SSH engagement
and impact.
· Develop a common vocabulary, criteria, and evidence
frameworks for assessing SSH contributions to public and social innovation.
Canada’s innovation ecosystem
requires stronger coordination across sectors. Institutions can play an
important regional and national leadership role by leveraging SSH expertise in
systems design, facilitation, and social transformation.
•
Use funding
programs to foster cross-sectoral and cross-institutional networks focused on
priority societal missions.
•
Encourage
continuity and scaling through phased or linked funding rather than stand-alone
projects.
•
Position the
funding agency as a convenor and steward of a broader social innovation
ecosystem, not solely as a grant administrator.
Capacity:
The ability of an organization
to perform work, or the level of an organization's capability to deliver
services, programs, and products as part of fulfilling its mandate or mission.
Connectivity: A feature of a system that allows for
knowledge, expertise, and resources to flow; connectivity is multilayered and
multifaceted. It bridges organisations across all sectors in an innovation
ecosystem and affects all zones of impact.
Connectivity Barriers: Structures, tendencies, or gaps that impede connectivity. They
include institutional, disciplinary, and regional disparities or incapacities,
limited data systems, and cultural incentives that hinder knowledge flow and
partnership quality. These and other barriers reduce real‑world impact
potential.
Co‑Creation / Co‑Design / Co‑Development
/ Co‑Implementation: Collaborative methodologies
that engage knowledge users and stakeholders at key points or throughout the
research cycle—from problem framing to delivery—to increase relevance,
usability, and legitimacy of outcomes.
Deliberation / Evidence‑Support
/ Knowledge Exchange: Structured processes (e.g.,
citizen juries, consensus conferences, sense‑making workshops) that reveal
values, perspectives, and uncertainties to inform robust, democratically
responsive policy and program decisions
EDI: An abbreviation for: ‘equity,
diversity and inclusion’.
Experiential
Learning: The acquisition of
knowledge and skills through practice and upon reflection of a period of engagement,
observation, and/or immersion. ‘Experiential learning’ and ‘work-integrated
learning’ are often used interchangeably. An experiential-learning partnership
is a community-based collaboration between an organization and a higher
education institution that revolves around the hosting, facilitating, and
supporting of one or more students involved, for instance, in program, service,
or project delivery.
Innovation: A new way of doing, framing, knowing,
or thinking that creates value or addresses and problem or challenge.
Innovation is an outcome of knowledge use insofar as it is
the result of a series of actions or steps designed to create, improve, apply,
or implement knowledge, research, evidence.
Innovation
ecosystem: The multilayered and multifaceted collection of interconnected
institutions, organizations and people through which the resources, talent, and
information that support, interact with, and affect innovation flow. (see also:
zones of impact)
Innovation
Process: A series of
actions or steps designed to create, improve, or implement ways of doing,
framing, knowing, or thinking that are intended to create value.
Knowledge Mobilization: An umbrella term
encompassing a wide range of activities relating to the production and use of
research results, including knowledge synthesis, dissemination, transfer,
exchange, and co-creation or co-production by researchers and knowledge users
(source: SSHRC).
Research
and Development (R&D): The planned creative work aimed at new knowledge or
developing new and significantly improved goods, programs, and services. This
includes both basic research and applied research and development. The latter
refers to the use of research and practical experience to produce new or
significantly improved goods, programs, services, or processes.
Skill: An aptitude, competency, or ability broadly
construed.
·
Foundational skill: A broad range of
abilities and knowledge understood to be essential to employability and citizenship, and generally associated with social and
emotional intelligence as well as cognitive literacy. These include critical
thinking, problem-solving, creativity, self-management, intercultural
competence, and effective communication.
·
Technical skill: a domain-specific skill that is usually
associated with applied training.
Social
impact: The measurable outcome of the products, programs,
services, ideas, etc., of an individual, organization, or other collective,
that are created and delivered to address a specific social need. It is
predicated on specific activities or outputs (e.g. programs, services) and
their outcomes.
Social
innovation: A phrase used in multiple contexts to refer to new ideas, services,
processes, or frameworks intended to meet social needs or create impact for the
public benefit. Here we make a distinction between innovation in the social
sector that follows traditional logics and innovation for social
transformation, which targets systemic societal issues and the wicked problems
that create these systemic issues. From a social
innovation standpoint, social transformation is an intentional process through
which transformational change is effected across social systems to address
emerging social crises and global challenges. Transofirmative social innovation
happens as a result of coordinating the actions of multiple stakeholders in a
system toward a collective goal.
Social
research and development (social R&D): Evidence-based methods and practices intended to acquire, absorb, and/or
utilize knowledge, often to create or improve
processes, products, and/or services in the social sector.
Social
sector: An umbrella term denoting the organizations that identify with and
operate for the public benefit, including co-operatives,
non-profits, registered charities, social enterprises/B corporations, or
unincorporated grassroots or community groups. It is sometimes referred to as
the “third sector”,
in contrast to what has traditionally been labeled the private and public
sectors. Recently, the emergence of “social
enterprise”, i.e., a for-profit business model embracing social
and/or environmental goals, has made traditional boundaries between sectors in
mixed economies more porous.
SSH: Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts
disciplines. Statistics Canada groups all non-STEM disciplines together:
Business, Humanities, Health, Arts, Social science, and Education (BHASE).
Supply‑Driven vs. Demand-informed
Models
Talent: in this context, ‘talent’ means the same as
‘HQP’: those with skills acquired as part of advanced (graduate, MA, Ph.D.)
training in any academic discipline.
Zones
of Impact: Knowledge use and research practices are
shaped by the specific knowledge needs of specific knowledge users in different
zones across the innovation ecosystem. The framework proposed here was
initially used to organise evidence generated through a review of the
literature guided by the following questions:
·
What processes
underpin knowledge use at the science-society interface?
·
What are the
barriers to knowledge use and/or innovation in the different zones of impact at
the science-society interface?
·
What are the
drivers of knowledge use and/or innovation in the different zones of impact at
the science-society interface?
·
What skillsets
and know-how are required of individuals working in the different zones of
impact at the science-society interface to support these processes?
The processes
involved in ensuring that the relevant knowledge is properly used by the right
people to produce the desired impact and innovation is examined in Skills
for Inclusive and Collaborative Innovation
(Lapointe and Propst, 2023).
|
ZONES OF
IMPACT |
|
|
Economy |
Universities,
colleges, governments, and industry cooperate to create technology-driven
economic growth. Research generates new ideas, and innovation is typically
the result of “commercialization”, “technology transfer”, and similar
activities that benefit from the support of industry liaisons and technology
transfer offices who act as intermediaries to push out research and pull in
investment partners. |
|
Policy |
Knowledge and
expertise needed for policy making may extend to any aspect of HEI-based
research and is increasingly expected to incorporate lived experience and
stakeholder input. The co-creation processes through which knowledge is
intentionally mobilized for policy making often takes the form of
“evidence-support” and “knowledge exchange” deliberation. |
|
Social Sector |
The social sector
includes all organisations whose purpose is defined in connection to societal
well-being. Knowledge mobilisation in the social sector generally aims at
supporting practitioners (e.g. medical practitioners, educators, social
services providers) by ensuring that they have access to the most recent
research in the relevant fields: social, ethical, cultural, legal,
educational, and medical. Partnerships between HEIs and social sector
organisations also revolved around other types of “community-engagement”
activities. At the level of communities, knowledge needs of social sector
organisations and municipal governments often overlap. |
|
Social Transition |
Social
transformation is an intentional process through which systemic change is effected to address emerging social crises, wicked issues,
and global challenges. Social transformation happens as a
result of coordinating the actions of multiple stakeholders (industry,
society, economy and policy) toward a collective goal. For this reason,
social transformation revolves around processes that involve the co-design
and co-creation of solutions such as those applied in community-based
innovation-, design-, or living “labs”. |
The evidence and arguments for this white
paper were produced through a series of research project funded by SSHRC and Mitacs , the results of which are available for review.
Lapointe, S., Boss, S., Odland, B., B.-Hardy,
M-H., Bourdeau, K.,
Mahani, A., and Bélisle-Pipon, J-C. (2025). Inventory of Current Approaches,
Initiatives, and Practices in Canadian Academic Institutions to Foster the
Engagement of the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts in the Science-Policy
Interface. URL
Lapointe, S., Boss, S., Odland, B., B.-Hardy,
M-H, Mahani, A., and
Bélisle-Pipon, J-C. (2025). Drivers and Barriers
to SSHA Impact at the Interface Between Science and Policy: A Literature
Review. URL
Lapointe, S.
& Underdown, V. (2024) Building capacity for innovation in the
social sector (with Vivienne Underdown et al. 50%). Imagine Canada. URL French: Renforcer la capacité
d'innovation du secteur social. URL
Lapointe, S., Boss, S., Plaisance, K., Dagenais, C. et al. (2024) Community
Innovation and Impact in University based Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts.
Report and Discussion Paper. The/La Collaborative. URL
(2024) Innovation by
Design. Report Commissioned by SSHRC and the Canadian Association of
Graduate Studies. URL
Lapointe, S. & Propst ,
A. (2023) “Skills for Inclusive and Collaborative Innovation. Beyond Endless
Frontier: Rethinking the Contract for Science and Innovation. Discussion Paper.
Institute on Governance & Institute for Science, Society and Policy. URL
Lapointe, S. & Boss, S (2023) “Inventory of
Community-Focused Knowledge Mobilization Practices in the Social Sciences,
Humanities and Arts. Phase 1 Report: Scan Of SSHA
Websites In Canadian Universities. (URL
Odland, B., Lapointe, S., Ross, S., Klausen,
C. (2022). Scoping Review on Knowledge Mobilization: Charting Report (unpublished).
We used three sources that were not cited in
previous work:
Belcher, B. and Halliwell, J.
(2021). Conceptualizing the elements of research impact: towards semantic
standards. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8(183). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00854-2.
Bowen, S.J. et al. (2013). From Knowledge Translation to Engaged
Scholarship: Promoting Research Relevance and Utilization. Archives of
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, 94(1), S3-S8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2012.04.037.
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2017). Approaches
to assessing impacts in the humanities and social sciences. https://www.federationhss.ca/sites/default/files/sites/default/uploads/policy/2017/impact_report_en_final.pdf.
[3] Belcher and Halliwell’s (2021) model
includes ‘partnerships’ as part of research activities. In our model,
partnerships create the interface between research and users. Co-creation and
deliberation are methodologies that bolster the effectiveness of the interface.
[4] Bowen, et al, 2013
[5] This is why a digital inventory approach was used in Lapointe, et al (2025), Inventory of Current Approaches, Initiatives, and Practices in Canadian Academic Institutions to Foster the Engagement of the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts in the Science-Policy Interface.
[6] Lapointe & Boss (2023). The picture is similar for SSH research at the interface with policy. See: (Lapointe & Bélisle-Pipon, et al, (2025).
[7] See Lapointe and Boss (2023).