REPORT: Co-designing for research impact

Co-designing for research impact

September 2020

Duncan R 2020. Co-designing for research impact: lessons learned from practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Co-designing for research impact. 86 p.

SUMMARY

Aotearoa New Zealand’s mission-led National Science Challenges are expected to deliver research impact by connecting researchers, Māori partners, Stakeholders and end users to co-design and co-create research to respond to the country’s biggest and most complex issues. This report contributes to collaborative research theory and practice by examining key aspects of the co-design scoping process undertaken by New Zealand’s Biological Heritage National Science Challenge, Ngā Koiora Tuku Iho (the Challenge), to establish the foundations of its Strategy 2019–2024. Drawing on Challenge leadership and process participants’ reflections and experiences through 25 interviews, the research identifies what worked well and what did not work so well from multiple perspectives.

This report identifies the practicalities, opportunities, and challenges of doing co-designand nine foundations for giving co-design the best chances of success, namely:

1. leadership commitment
2. financial resources
3. a realistic timeframe
4. organisational capacity
5. diverse, knowledgeable and experienced participants across researcher, tangata whenua and stakeholder/end user groups
6. clear values, rules of engagement and output expectations
7. power sharing
8. skilled facilitation
9. a well-designed process.

Strengths of the process are identified as varying degrees of successful implementation of these foundations of co-design. Weaknesses are linked to governance of the Challenge which had substantive ramifications for its organisational capacity to undertake the co-design process and how it did so. While the Challenge was committed to taking a collaborative and strategic path to establish the foundations of its Strategy 2019-2014, it was doing so in the midst of unrealistic expectations about what it actually takes to meaningfully, respectfully and effectively do codesign and the flexibility required to shore up both internal and external credibility and legitimacy for the process, its inputs and outputs.

This research raises important questions about the consequences of research policy reforms that are changing the rules of the game but not the governance structures that directly shape how, when, where and why co-design (and co-creation) are done. The report concludes with recommendations for both governing and doing co-design as well as further research to examine questions raised by this study.