About

What is i2Insights aiming to achieve and who is it for?

Integration and Implementation Insights (also known as i2Insights) is a community weblog (blog) and repository for sharing methods, frameworks, processes, concepts, theories and competencies to better understand and act on complex societal and environmental problems (problems like refugee crises, global climate change, and inequality).

The primary target audience for i2Insights is researchers addressing complex real-world problems, including those using approaches based in:

  • Multi-, inter- and/or trans- disciplinarity
  • Systems thinking
  • Action research
  • Implementation science
  • Science of team science
  • Sustainability science and sustainability transitions
  • Integrated assessment
  • Post-normal science
  • Design thinking
  • Complex project management
  • Complex systems science
  • Change management
  • Impact assessment and evaluation
  • K* (KStar) including Knowledge brokering, Knowledge exchange, Knowledge management, Knowledge mobilisation, Knowledge transfer, Knowledge translation
  • Operational research
  • Policy science
  • Risk analysis
  • Decision making, including decision making under deep uncertainty.

i2Insights contributions cover 11 major topics that underpin these approaches:

  • change
  • communication
  • context
  • decision making
  • diversity
  • integration
  • research implementation
  • stakeholder engagement
  • systems
  • teamwork
  • unknowns.

i2Insights contributions also discuss how to advance understanding and high quality application of expertise in these topics and approaches through:

  • education
  • evaluation
  • institutionalisation.

i2Insights aims to be a global vehicle for exchange, discussion and network building, as well as a repository of tools. It seeks to:

  • share useful tools among researchers from a range of academic backgrounds, who tackle a variety of complex problems
  • promote discussion to improve tools
  • build a global community of experts
  • strengthen recognition of this expertise in mainstream academic research and education
  • build a knowledge bank that provides easy access to a range of tools.

You can find out more about what i2Insights covers in the index, which lists and defines the terms used to categorise and tag i2Insights contributions.

Milestones, statistics and news

Milestones:

Annual highlights can be found in the state of the blog reviews. We also publish a range of statistics about the blog every three months.

The ‘i2Insights News‘ page provides updates on milestones and other highlights, along with information about changes to i2Insights.

i2Insights Ambassadors

In November 2020 i2Insights celebrated its fifth birthday. Having demonstrated proof-of-concept, it was time to ramp up!

i2Insights Ambassadors help i2Insights expand its reach so that the exchange, discussion, network building and knowledge bank become truly global and comprehensive efforts. Please contact us if you already champion i2Insights and/or have ideas you would like to implement as an i2Insights Ambassador.

Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at The Australian National University

The i2Insights blog and repository is run by Gabriele Bammer and Peter Deane as a major Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) activity. 

Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) is a new discipline that aims to improve research impact on complex real world problems by enhancing:

  • Synthesis of disciplinary and stakeholder knowledge
  • Understanding and management of diverse unknowns
  • Provision of integrated research support for policy and practice change.

To find out more about i2S see https://i2s.anu.edu.au/what-i2s/

i2S is a program of research at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) in the ANU College of Health and Medicine (CHM) at The Australian National University (ANU). The resources we produce and curate are valuable not only for population health problems, but also for any other complex societal and environmental problem. Indeed a driving rationale for i2S is to promote the sharing of relevant resources across problems and fields. For example, interdisciplinary integration, critical systems thinking, system dynamics modelling, principled negotiation and a raft of other tools are useful in studies of obesity, climate change, humanitarian crises, and more in population health, environment, security, education… and the list goes on.

Contributions and i2Insights partners

We welcome contributions about, and seek to provide an active forum for discussing, resources that help research tackle complex societal and environmental problems, including for:

  • synthesising knowledge from different disciplines and stakeholders
  • dealing with the messiness of how components of a complex problem interact, the influence of context and how power can stymie or facilitate action
  • developing “best possible” or “least worst” solutions, recognising that complex problems do not have perfect solutions
  • understanding and managing unknowns in order to more adequately respond to unintended adverse consequences and unpleasant surprises
  • supporting policy and practice change through research
  • educating the next generation to better deal with complex problems
  • making effective ways of dealing with complex problems a more central part of the academic mainstream in both research and education.

At various times i2Insights has been supported by a range of productive partnerships.

Practicalities

Suggestions for improving i2Insights are very welcome.

All contributors (authors) to the i2Insights blog and repository are listed as “Community member”. As well as reflecting the i2Insights aim of building a community of researchers, students and practitioners actively involved in advancing one or more aspects of research integration and implementation, a single identity streamlines the administrative management of i2Insights.

Along with new and featured i2Insights contributions on the home page, there is a blog scroll and list of all posts.

There are currently five types of i2Insights contributions:

  1. General blog posts, which comprise the majority of i2Insights contributions. These present conceptual or methodological tools for tackling complex problems or may address educational, evaluation or institutional aspects of addressing such problems.
  2. Synthesis blog posts, which are contributions that draw together insights and lessons from several previously published i2Insights contributions.
  3. State-of-the-blog reviews, which are blog posts about the i2Insights blog and repository itself, generally, but not always, an annual review.
  4. Primers, which are series of blog posts providing an introduction to one of the main topics covered by i2Insights. Currently there are primers on stakeholder engagement and understanding diversity.
  5. Editor’s additions, which are produced by an i2Insights editor when no author can be found to turn a particular publication relevant to tackling complex problems into an i2Insights contribution.

Maintenance of external web-links (URL) on this website: All external web-links are functional when an i2Insights contribution is published, but we do not have the resources to thoroughly check functionality over time. You may therefore discover that a web-link no longer works – if that is the case, please let us know.

We ask authors to minimise the use of links in their contributions. The nature of i2Insights means that posts maintain their currency and continue to provide useful resources over a long period (see above re maintenance of external weblinks). Up-to-date details about authors can generally be easily found through an online search.

Privacy policy and disclaimer

To find out how we control data on this website, see our privacy policy and disclaimer.

  • Page updated: March 12, 2024

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Page updated: 31 December 2020