Knowledge Broker Stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy

This is not so much a story as a reflection on some of the things I have learned about knowledge mobilization.  Let me start with an example - the issue of staying in school.

We have volumes of research that show the benefits of graduating high school and getting at least some post secondary education, yet we continue to have higher than desired drop out rates.

How do we address this issue?

We don’t address it by engaging in yet another research project, we address it by identifying a specific audience and developing knowledge mobilization strategies to impact that audience and then determine what is the right information (which may or may not require additional research), right format, and right timing.

If you want to influence the teenager directly then you develop tools to reach them - visual graphics, e-games, peer role model programs, etc. and deliver them at a time when they are likely to be influenced.  If your intended audience is parents you use different strategies.  If your audience is provincial policy makers you use yet other strategies.  In all cases, involving representatives of the audience (building relationships) as early as possible in the process will help ensure successful results.

Influencing decision making requires both the research and KMb to be audience driven - not knowledge product driven. They must both be demand (user need) driven, not supply (research or researcher desire) driven.  I often hear a researcher say “well, I wrote this very important paper about issue X and yet things have not changed”, to which I reply “who asked you to write a paper about issue X?” and you can guess the answer I receive more often than not. Before engaging in a research project it is important to have a clear understanding of who your intended audience(s) is and what their needs are.

For a researcher, demand driven clearly means answering a question someone has asked.  But what does it mean to be demand driven or audience driven KMb?  It means adopting KM  strategies and processes that will successfully influence the intended decision makers... and that is why getting the four “rights” in the above definition right, becomes critical.

Now if anyone says defining an audience as the driver for research is subverting the research process or that the research process is by nature curiosity driven, not driven by an audience, I would counter, all research, even basic science, is audience driven.  It is simply that for basic science the audience is often so fundamentally understood, it is simply part of the research culture and thus often not even articulated.  With a purpose of influencing intellectual discourse (adding new knowledge to the field), basic research has a clearly defined primary audience: the academy, either other researchers or students.  The best way to influence these decision makers is either peer reviewed journal publications or academic conferences. In other words, an effective KMb process for an academic audience is traditional dissemination!

My Key Lessons:

¥The research process should be viewed as a whole, not segmented into “production” and “dissemination”.

¥Research and KMb should be audience driven. That is research design, implementation and knowledge sharing or uptake, to be successful, must have a clearly defined audience at its centre.

¥If we accept that research is intended to influence decision making then it follows that the KMb process is as critical as the research process and should be undertaken with the same rigour.

¥Just as quality research production requires an expert researcher, quality KMb requires expertise as well. Researchers should not be expected to carry the burden.

¥Partnerships are important. Establishing a partnership of relevant stakeholders up front, as you are defining the issue to be addressed, will dictate to a large extent, the type of research questions to ask, the most relevant research methods, KMb methods and KMb experts.

¥A project work plan and budget should include all aspects of the project , not simply the production component. (one of the most frequent frustrations I hear when I speak to researchers is that funders expect more comprehensive KMb processes than simply publishing and yet are often unwilling to provide either the financial resources or the time to deliver effective KMb. That said I also believe there is a fair degree of lip service paid to the aspect of KMb by many researchers applying for funding - they see it as another trend in funders and often cut and paste a generic KMb paragraph in their proposals without the true desire or expertise to carry it through. Ultimately both of these issues will have to be addressed before KMb is truly institutionalized across Canada.)

¥Just as there are multiple audiences, there needs to be multiple forms of KMb (there is no “one size fits all”). Influencing policy makers requires a different strategy than influencing practitioners or individuals.

As a society or as agencies interested in influencing public policy, if we are serious about our desire to improve the role of research in decision making we have to focus on more than simply excellence in research, we must also emphasize excellence in KMb.  In my experience,  once the question “who do we want to influence?” is answered, the issue of what type of research methodology, KMb strategy (ies) and stakeholders to be involved will become clear.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Rock, Daryl, "Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/696X1C

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to develop and deliver and effective KMb strategy. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/696X1C]

Knowledge Broker Stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer

In the first story of this series I outlined how in 2003 that in my role as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network I brokered a transfer of knowledge from occupational medicine specialists to primary care teams.  I facilitated a feedback loop that helped modify a work history taking tool for ease and relevance of use in a busy primary care practice.  What of the workers for whom this tool was designed to make a difference?  What role should they play?  Did they have something to add to the process?  As we pondered these questions, subsequent knowledge collaboration began to take shape.

The Toronto Workers’ Health and Safety Legal Clinic disseminates a Worker’s Guide on the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act.  The Guide is a straightforward booklet that conveys in plain language what workers need to know about health and safety law.  I began conversations with the Legal Clinic about how the Work History Taking Tool was meant to support workers in very parallel and complementary ways to the Worker’s Guide.  The shared theme between the two initiatives was providing knowledge that would help workers prevent injuries on the job.

Into these conversations we invited the LAMP Occupational Health Centre, which provides health advocacy to workers, especially with respect to prevention and worker’s compensation.  We also invited St. Michaels’ Hospital Occupational Health Clinic, which by this time had posted the revised Work History Taking Tool on their website. 

With this additional focus on the worker’s perspective, we devised some additions to the Worker’s Guide.  We added a copy of the Work History Taking Tool to the Guide, accompanied with questions such as: “Did you know that your work and health are connected?” and “When was the last time you talked to your doctor/nurse about your work exposures at the workplace?”  These and a few other prompts then led the reader of the Guide to either ask their primary care provider to talk about work health risks or be more prepared and understanding when the topic arose.   

I am sure many of us could think of additional examples of involving consumers in the knowledge exchange process meant to make a difference in their lives.  Another example in my experience is work I did in the late 1990s as Coordinator of the Ontario Diabetes Complications Prevention Network.  In that initiative we assembled 8 regional networks that met every 6 weeks over a two year period.  Each network included specialists (endocrinologists), family physicians, diabetes educators and persons with diabetes.  The results of these network meetings helped inform the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care on its future policy directions.  The most significant follow-through from these joint provider/consumer meetings was the subsequent expansion of community-based diabetes education, mostly attached to community health centres in Ontario, which have a very strong consumer advocacy orientation.

Knowledge transfer in health and social services is becoming more integral to the design of service systems.  These two brief examples in occupational health and diabetes illustrate that consumers can be involved in stimulating the process of enquiry or advising on the design of service systems.   As knowledge brokers, I think we will need to think about many more ways to put the consumer at the centre of the process.  After all, it really is all about them.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format

De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer.” Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 16, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6AggSE

APA format

De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Putting Consumers at the Centre of Knowledge Transfer. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6AggSE]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system

Knowledge brokers are an important component of the knowledge value chain.  If one needs justification for knowledge brokers, consider what the U.S. non-profit sector looked like at the beginning of the decade: 1.6 million Organizations; 10.9 million Workers; $29 billion in funding; and 57,000 funding sources. 

Many of these 1.6 million organizations had the same target populations: policy makers, researchers, families and children.  The obvious question is, how can individuals, practitioners or policy-makers realistically assess, filter and apply information coming from 1 million plus organizations?  How can we go on creating knowledge when studies show that less than one third of research ever makes it to an application/implementation stage?

That is where we come in.

My story is probably like some of yours.  I spend the better part of my week fashioning existing knowledge into consumable formats.  I enjoy innovation and look at brokering as an opportunity for process, market and technical innovation (as opposed to traditional product and service innovation).

To me, the brokering process is founded on various fields of study (marketing, sociology, knowledge management, change management, evaluation) as well as personal values (utilitarianism, equality, service, and advocacy).  I draw on a tool belt of skills that are forever being sharpened or traded out for emerging market requirements.  Right now, I would say the skills and values I draw on most are: passion, listening, humor, objectivity, patience, an outcomes orientation, flexibility and adaptability.

It’s the latter two skills that motivated me to write this post.  Not too many years ago, under the mentorship of some wonderful future-thinkers, I spent quite a bit of time working on the front lines of developing intelligent systems.  In these systems the literature often speaks of various types of “intelligent agents” (e.g., watcher/monitor, learner, shopping/buying, search, helper/personal, change, reflex, goal-based, utility-based, interface, mobile and data/information agents).  Moreover, intelligent systems are fashioned to support decision-making; especially founded on just-in-time (J.I.T.) information.

A pitfall of decision systems is - they are often configured to answer questions/scenarios they think will occur.  The reality is: everything changes.

Consider the evolution of knowledge systems. 

Decision Support Systems (DSS): “Get me the third quarter numbers”;

Executive Information Systems (EIS), “Get me projections of fourth quarter numbers based on this scenario.”;

Intelligent System, “Can we sell Twinkies to China?”. 

DSS and EIS are not adaptive and flexible, and it’s only been through the process of trying to automate Intelligent Systems that we have discovered the limitations of automation.

Years back, to build intelligent systems and better value chains, people began writing about the value of “knowledge workers”.  Now we are beginning to better delineate what “knowledge workers” do (e.g., “brokering”).

Back to me.  I won some accolades here and there this decade for co-creating knowledge communities and collaborative portals.  Most recently, I’ve been developing a knowledge community in an entire new field of study for me that is showing promise.  But, for fidelity-sake, if you asked me how this is done, I could not spell it out completely.  Again, it’s an adaptive process, drawing on an ever-shifting set of skills.  However, there are tactics worth sharing.

Things that fascinate me include writings about goal-oriented design, personas, and a concept that Gerry McGovern coined called “carewords”. 

Simply put, using “carewords” is the process (via content analysis or survey) of determining the language information consumers (readers) like to use and then using that language to communicate back to them.  It sounds like common sense, but once we operationalized this, our readership and information use went up 200-300%!  Also, thanks to the concept of “push/pull/link/exchange” shared by friends in Canada, I spend much more time planning out networking and exchange activity in the knowledge communities I facilitate.  I am a continual trend-spotter, but monitor with ROI in mind. I spend the better part of my days trying to get people to walk in information consumer shoes; talking to persons about extending engagement with information consumers beyond seagull events, while monitoring the decline of traditional dissemination…charting detours around fading knowledge practices.

Right now we can all say, “Remember typewriters”.  One of these days we are going to look back and say, “Remember Twitter”.  I think it’s this potential for continuous innovation, resulting in increased knowledge utilization that drives my passion for brokering.

Jonathan Green

To cite:

MLA format

Green, Jonathan, "Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 15, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6UYlPy

APA format

Green, J. Knowledge broker stories: “Me” as part of an innovative system. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6UYlPy]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective

In 2001, when I became director of Strategic Programs at the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) I was asked to provide colleagues with a clear definition of KMb.  Already widely used in academic circles, the term KMb was nevertheless still not very well understood.  And it was even less well understood by decision makers outside of the ivory tower. 

After reviewing various definitions and finding none of them to be as clear as I would need in addressing the various audiences with whom I interacted, I created my own definition.  My driving criteria was to create a definition that would be readily understood both within and outside of academe, remembered, and useful in helping to integrate research into mainstream decision making processes. The definition I created was:

Knowledge mobilization is getting the right information to the right people at the right time in the right format so as to influence decision making.

This easy to remember definition has become widely known and used by academics, policy makers and practitioners around the world. As you read it you realize that KMb is not an “end of the research process” activity but rather is integral to the entire process, from initial question design, through implementation to outcomes.  With this definition I was attempting to explain, in common language, a process that is often complex, time consuming and iterative.  Having presented this over the years to countless groups I continue to have people come up to me and say “I get it now!”

The core phrase is “to influence decision making”.  I chose the word “influence” consciously.  Some ask why not the word “inform”?  The one implies action while the other is more passive and as I will outline below, successful KMb is about action.  Clearly this reflects a personal bias but in fairness I think it a valid one.  That is “funded research is intended to influence decision making by someone, not simply to add new knowledge to the world at large.”

“To influence decision making” requires an understanding of who’s decision you are trying to influence - who is the intended audience of this evidence and why?  Understanding the intended audience is the core to successful KMb and that understanding will only come through an established relationship.  It is not that you cannot share information with an audience you do not understand, this happens all of the time.  But to truly influence that audience you must “get inside their heads” and the best way to do that is by involving them in your process, establish a relationship, get to know them.  (As an aside, marketing experts know this and can be quite effective at influencing behaviour, even without evidence!)

You will note there are four “rights” in this definition and as logic logic dictates “for every right there is a wrong!”  The more wrongs you have, the less likely you are to achieve your goal: “to influence decision making” about a certain issue.  Once you have a clearly identified audience, the “what”, “when”, “where” and “how” become easier to answer.  So often we develop what we consider to be the “right” information only to present it in the wrong format or at the wrong time or to the wrong audience.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format

Daryl, Rock, "Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 7, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/6TntBs

APA format

Rock, D. Knowledge broker stories: Defining Knowledge Mobilization from a Strategic Perspective. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/6TntBs]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships

My interest in better connections between research and practice is long-standing and deeply rooted in the various kinds of work I have done in education.  As a young, elected member of a school board in Manitoba in the 1970s I was struck by how little of our policy seemed to be based on sound evidence.  Later in the 1970s I was the director of a small non-profit organization in Manitoba that worked on bringing evidence to bear on policy and practice.  That is when I did my first real KM work – writing various short summaries of research findings for educators. 

Since that time my career has gone back and forth between academia and government.  I also served for a couple of years as Chief Research Officer for the Peel School District in Ontario.  I’ve been a professor and researcher at The University of Manitoba and now hold a Canada Research Chair at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education).  I’ve also held senior civil service positions in education in Manitoba and Ontario, including serving as deputy minister in each province. 

In all these roles I’ve worked to bring research into the policy process more strongly and effectively.  Much of this work was intuitive – for example, producing summaries of research for educators, which is something I have done in four or five different organizations.  In government I’ve helped to create, in both Manitoba and Ontario, stronger practices around knowledge mobilization not only in making policy, but as part of the work of both ministries. 

In my current role as a research chair, my primary research focus is on knowledge mobilization; I have a team of graduate students and external partners with whom we work.  Our program of research and KM can be found on our website – www.oise.utoronto.ca/rspe.

This is an exciting time to be working on KM issues.  There is a worldwide explosion of interest in the field, not only in education but in other sectors as well.  Many initiatives are underway, but just as importantly, more research is being done so that knowledge mobilization can itself become guided by stronger knowledge, so that less effort is wasted on well-intentioned but ineffective practices.  For example, a great deal of effort goes into creating organizational websites, yet many sites get very few visitors.  Moreover, according to the analysis our team is doing, many sites do not use principles of effective communication.  Similarly, much effort goes into creating research products of various kinds but often these products are poorly designed in relation to what we know about effective communication.  Even more, we know that the key to mobilizing knowledge is creating lasting interpersonal relationships that carry over into daily work, yet a great deal of KM work is still in the old world  - rather like my message here – of trying to convince people through writing.  So there is much room for improvement and greater impact, even within existing resources and efforts.

Ben Levin

To cite:

MLA format
Levin, Ben, "Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted December 4, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/5Uy46s

APA format
Levin, B. Knowledge broker stories: Lasting Interpersonal Relationships. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/5Uy46s]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque