Collaborating better: Elements of an institutional partnership strategy

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Collaborating better Elements of an
institutional partnership strategy Thomas Fitz
Randolph, Jürgen Hagmann, Bruce Scott Science
with Africa Conference Addis Ababa, 3-7 March
2008
PICOTEAM Ltd., Pretoria, RSA
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Partnership central to new way of doing business
in research
The past Research as linear process performed
by each research actor as largely a contained
in-house activity
Basic research at Research Centre 1
Adaptive research at local Research Centre
End-user
The present Research within an innovation
systems framework that depends on a network of
actors and interactions, requiring a range of
types of partnerships
End-user
Different actors contributing specific research
inputs through different types of interactions
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Integrating partnerships into the way we do
business

• ILRI recognizes effectively managing partnerships
  requires new approaches and capacities
• Developed a strategy
• For better management systems to support
  partnerships
• Instilling partnership values among staff
• Implementation requires new research management
  paradigms and institutional change

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Different types of partnerships

• Nested categories of partnership
• Distinguishes types of partnerships, not partners
• Individual partner can figure among partnerships
  across all three levels
• Involve different types of strategies to manage

Level within ILRI
Institute
Institutional
Strategic
Research unit
Project- based
Donor-funded project

• Institutional partnerships based on similar
  institutional mandates across full range of ILRI
  research agenda
• Strategic long-term, drawing on particular
  expertise of a partner through a series of
  collaborative activities in a specific domain
• Project-based time-bound, based on specific
  well-defined, research activity

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Examples of systems to support partnerships

• Research management
• Partnership strategy as component of
  implementation plan for each research programme
• Mechanism for sharing intelligence on partners
  when identifying partners for a new activity
• Administrative systems
• Developing institutional agreements that
  facilitate partnerships
• HR systems
• Explicit expectations and evaluation of
  partnership management skills in staff
  performance evaluation
• Content-specific training and staff development

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Examples of systems to support partnerships - 2

• Financial management systems
• Assessing partner capacity to manage funds and
  associated risk
• Checklists for ensuring expectations are clear,
  transparent and agreed
• Project management techniques
• Tools and tips to help scientists be more
  sensitive to partnership issues during the
  implementation of joint activities
• Knowledge management and learning
• Simple systems for capturing both static and
  tacit intelligence about partners and sharing it
  within the institute

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Implementing the Strategy

• Emphasis on pragmatic, easy-to-implement upgrades
  / add-ons to existing systems
• Big bang introduction may be too costly and
  risk rejection
• Need to establish buy-in, and continue to improve
  the systems
• while beginning to nurture institutional change
• Better systems provide the infrastructure, but
  will fail without the needed human capacity and
  commitment
• Identify champions or communities of practice
  within the institute to lead and begin instilling
  a learning culture for better partnership
  management
• Our partnership strategy is tailored to ILRI, but
  can be adapted to others best done as
  internally-led exercise to be sure it is
  appropriate to each context

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Thank you !