At the Knowledge Interface: Developing Co-Created Research Competency

Creating useful practice-oriented research requires scholars to bridge or productively inhabit a challenging interface—the “in-between” landscape of the academic-practitioner gap. It has been suggested, however, that this gap persists because closing it is beyond the competencies of individual researchers. The paper addresses this challenge in terms of moving across this interface, developing the abilities and proficiency for co-creating research that meets the needs of academics and practitioners. The competency drivers behind
strengthening research-practice impact are examined within the context of the authors’ experiences with and studies of a group of researchers for whom both academic and practical impact is set by contract under a state initiated Industrial PhD Program. Drawing on a framework by Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004), research impact competency is conceptualized as mastery of the building blocks of research co-creation: dialogue, access, risk, and transparency. These four building blocks are integrated into a Co-Created Research Competency Matrix, illustrating how the presence (or absence) of these competencies influences the potential for successful academic-practitioner co-produced research projects.
Based on this analysis, the implications for research-oriented consulting and our interventions with a view to developing co-created academic- and practice-oriented impact are discussed