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:
- 2023: First contributors from Benin, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, bringing the number of contributing countries to 53.
- December 2022: Re-indexing i2Insights contributions from 2015-2019 completed
- November 2022: More than 30,000 views for the month, averaging 1,000 per day
- October 2022: More than 20,000 visitors for the month
- June 2022: first contributor from Peru
- March 2022: 400th blog post published
- 2021: first contributors from Belgium, Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Italy, Rwanda and Turkey
- December 2021: 57 blog posts with more than 1,500 views over their lifetime
- November 2021: Number of authors tops 500
- February 2021: more than 15,000 visitors for the month
- 2020: first contributors from Ireland, Oman, Poland and Russia
- December 2020: 30 blog posts with more than 1,500 views over their lifetime
- November 2020: Number of authors tops 400
- October 20 2020: more than 1,000 daily views
- September 2020: more than 10,000 visitors for the month
- May 2020: new look for i2Insights, especially the home page
- 2019: first contributors from China, Israel, Japan and Luxembourg
- December 2019: 48 blog posts with more than 1,000 views
- December 2019: a new indexing of blog posts commences and i2Insights news introduced
- July 2019: 250th blog post published
- May 2019: 1,000 followers
- 2018: first contributors from Czech Republic, Denmark, Portugal and South Africa,
- 2017: first contributors from Argentina, Canada, France, Kenya, Myanmar, Nigeria, Laos and Spain
- 2016: first contributors from Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Finland, Germany, India, Iran, Mexico, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and Uruguay
- December 2016: 100th blog post published
- 2015: first contributors from Australia, the Netherlands, and USA
- November 2015: active operation started
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.
Along with new and featured i2Insights contributions on the home page, there is a blog scroll and list of all posts.
There are currently four types of i2Insights contributions:
- Community member post: Contributions written by researchers (or sometimes practitioners) actively involved in advancing one or more aspects of research integration and implementation. A list of authors is available. This is the most common type of i2Insights contribution.
- Synthesis blog posts: Contribution that draws together insights and lessons from several previously published i2Insights contributions.
- State-of-the-blog review: Blog post about i2Insights itself, generally, but not always, an annual review.
- Primer: 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.
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: July 20, 2023
———
Page updated: 31 December 2020