Expert Workshop on the Conceptual Framework of Societal R&I Impacts

Are you interested in how Data4Impact identifies and measures the impact of science, technology and innovation policies within the health sector? 

Although there are many approaches and initiatives towards assessing the societal impacts of R&I, there is no comprehensive model to date that captures this aspect from an innovation research perspective. Data4Impact intends to close this gap by utilising big data approaches to improve the monitoring of research and innovation performance and assessing the impacts for the Societal Challenge ‘Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing’.

As a first major working step, we developed a conceptual framework and a set of indicators. We defined ‘impact’ as the demonstrable contribution/effect of policies in three dimensions: academic, economic, and societal. Furthermore, we distinguished input, throughput, output, and impact, as four distinct phases of the R&I processes. Researchers, funders, research institutions and policy makers were invited to discuss our conceptual framework and to assess the indicators identified over the first half of the project in terms of their suitability, reliability and implementability in this workshop.

We are happy to share the workshop package which includes the presentations on the project overview  and the conceptual framework, as well as the workshop report containing the summary of the discussion results. Following the workshop, the Data4Impact team has further elaborated the conceptual framework, extended the list of indicators, and proceeded with the empirical work.