Lewis Atkinson – Integration and Implementation Insights

By Lewis Atkinson

How can communities most effectively achieve collective impact, moving from fragmented action and results to collective action and deep, durable systems change? In particular, what can those seeking to understand the characteristics required for collective impact learn from the characteristics of open living systems?

In this blog post I link five characteristics for collective impact, based on Cabaj and Weaver (2016) with 12 characteristics of open living systems drawn from Haines (2018, building on the work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy).

The five characteristics for collective impact are each necessary, but on their own insufficient to achieve impact because they are all parts of the same method of systems change:

By Lewis Atkinson

Want to reduce the likelihood that your research will produce policy and practice change? Here are 12 anti-rules to prevent research translation.

Anti-rule #1: ONLY FOCUS ON YOUR PART OF THE PROBLEM. Avoid seeing the problem as a whole to limit the intervention possibilities. Acknowledge the translational “gap” but be ambivalent about who owns it. Contest it with others and perpetuate confusion with a range of definitions for what research translation means.

Anti-rule #2: CLOSE OFF THE FLOW OF INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE. Keep a tight lid on who is involved and what knowledge is seen to be relevant. Do not share your data or allow access to your sources of data. Minimise the rate of data exchange within and among various research and non-research partners.

Anti-rule #3: MAINTAIN IMPERMEABLE PROFESSIONAL & INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH BOUNDARIES.

Linking collective impact to the characteristics of open living systems

Twelve ways to kill research translation