Co-design, critical friends, and a little constructive chaos: What the IRC taught me about bringing evidence and policy together

The following blog post has been written by Sarah Honeybone, Lead Specialist (Research) at Innovate UK. 

In June, I had the pleasure of joining IRC Co-Directors Professors Tim Vorley and Stephen Roper at the ISPIM Innovation Conference in Granada to tell the audience about the Innovation & Research Caucus (IRC) model and how it brings together academics and policymakers in a genuinely collaborative way. The conference, themed “Connecting for Innovation”, brought together more than 600 innovation professionals, researchers, practitioners and policymakers from over 50 countries. What a great opportunity to share the IRC story – and somewhere between the equally relentless conference sessions and Andalucian sunshine – I reflected on my time as Innovate UK’s investment manager for the IRC, having been involved since day one in co-designing how it would all work.

The IRC was designed to help answer: how can policymakers better access and use academic evidence, and how can academics more closely connect to the nuances of policy development?  Simple to ask, perhaps, but rather less simple to resolve.

Funded by Innovate UK, ESRC and UKRI, the IRC brings together a team of leading researchers and a wider network of experts to work alongside policymakers on questions related to R&I policy. The model centres on co-design and ongoing dialogue, where research projects, networking activities and training events are scoped and developed together and evolve throughout their lifetime.

From my perspective, that collaborative approach is the model’s greatest strength. Policymakers often need evidence quickly, and the IRC has forged close relationships with academics who can help us at short notice. We also sometimes need trusted critical friends who can challenge our assumptions, help turn a vaguely formed question into a researchable one, and (politely!) tell us when the evidence does not support our thinking. The IRC provides space for those discussions, and it often feels like we’re part of a team working towards a common goal.

During our ISPIM session we shared some examples of high-impact projects. One project explored the diversity of Innovate UK applicants and funding recipients, helping us better understand who applies for and receives innovation funding. This informed future approaches to diversity data collection and targeted interventions to address imbalances. We also highlighted the Innovation State of the Nation Survey (ISNS), which provides timely evidence on business innovation across the UK. It is used by a wide range of stakeholders, from policymakers to international organisations. We’re excited that the fourth iteration of the ISNS will be landing this autumn – what you could do with that data?

Of course, we also pointed out that collaboration is not always easy. Academics and policymakers often work to different timescales, use different language, and measure success in different ways. One of the key messages from our presentation was that the success of the IRC model depends on the people involved – you need trust, communication, flexibility and a willingness to work through ambiguity together. The process can be messy, there is no Gantt chart for building trust, but the outcomes are stronger and more valuable because of it.

Over the past few years, the IRC has delivered dozens of projects, created new partnerships, supported policymakers across UKRI and beyond, and helped establish a thriving community of researchers interested in research and innovation policy. The model has shown that when academics and policymakers spend less time working in parallel and more time working together, better questions are asked, evidence travels further and, ultimately, better decisions are made.

If my discussions at ISPIM are anything to go by, the challenge of better connecting evidence with decision-making is not unique to the UK. With minds focused on Connecting for Innovation, there was plenty of interest in collaborative models like the IRC.

I am incredibly proud of what the IRC community has achieved. More than anything, I hope its legacy is not just the research it produced, but the relationships it built between those who generate evidence and those who use it.

As we look towards a new chapter, the challenge the IRC was created to address remains. Whether you’re an academic, policymaker or funder, I encourage you to think about how you can create more opportunities for genuine co-design, collaboration and trust-building in your own work. If there’s one lesson I’ve taken from the IRC, it’s that better evidence and better policy emerge when we stop working in parallel and start working together. I think that’s a lesson worth celebrating – and one worth sharing.