We – the team at Science Practice – read a lot, from a fairly broad set of sources and with interests covering science, tech, philanthropy, social innovation, and the intersections between these. Our thinking is inspired by what we read, you may see this percolate through into our work. So, each month, we are going to share a handful of articles or other links that we’ve found particularly valuable, and why – in case this helps you too.
Decolonising Emotional Well-Being and Mental Health in Development: African Feminist Innovations
by Jessica Horn (2020)
How an NGO called AIR is working with African women who have experienced trauma, and how they have developed alternative ways of working with trauma compared with Western psychology.
Related: video interviews with their staff.
Why we’re interested: Western psychology can be unhelpful outside of its cultural context, and we wanted to understand how a different model could work.
Policy Entrepreneurship at the White House: Getting Things Done in Large Organizations
by Tom Kalil (2017) - Found via 80,000 Hours
Tom Kalil worked as a senior advisor on science and technology policy at the White House under Clinton and Obama. In this paper he gives practical advice on how to get things done in large organisations.
Related: Podcast interview with him on having an impact in government.
Why we’re interested: we often work and collaborate with large organisations, and so it’s useful to have a practical understanding of how change happens.
Five Misunderstandings About Case Study Research
by Bent Flyvbjerg (2016)
This paper responds to common criticisms of case studies, such as that they can’t be generalised from, to show that case studies are a crucial part of any social science discipline.
Related: Making Social Science Matter by Flybjerg, which analyses why social sciences haven’t succeeded as well as natural sciences, and how they could matter more in the future.
Why we’re interested: questions about what kinds of evidence are valuable repeatedly arise in our work, and we also are commissioned to write case studies as part of our work, so we wanted to better understand their value and the thinking that goes into writing a good case study.
The Fragile World Hypothesis: Complexity, Fragility, and Systemic Existential Risk
by David Manheim (2020) - found via his excellent twitter account
Manheim describes how, as technological development increases, the fragility of technological systems will increase to a point at which a shock that can produce collapse is unavoidable.
Related: The Vulnerable World Hypothesis by Nick Bostrom, which Manheim’s paper builds on.
Why we’re interested: we’re interested in discovering problems that aren’t widely known, and this is an example of that.
The Crisis of Venture Capital: Fixing America’s Broken Start-Up System
by Jeffrey Funk (2021) - found via Nintil’s links
Funk argues that too many recent startups lack profitability, and examines the causes of this, tracing it to a lack of breakthrough technologies to exploit.
Related: Commentaries on this article from David Rosenthal, who was an early employee at Nvidia and Sun Microsystems: Venture Capital Isn’t Working and Addendum
Why we’re interested: we want to better understand how innovation happens.
Thanks for reading!
We’re always looking for interesting reading materials so get in touch if you have any to share – we might feature it next month!
This post was written by Science Practice and Toni Brasting at Wellcome.
Last year, Wellcome’s Public Engagement, Population Health, and Epidemics teams worked with Science Practice to establish a first-of-its-kind lab for investigating the impact of public engagement on clinical trial research outcomes.
Public engagement has great potential to support better research outcomes on clinical trials – for instance, by improving recruitment and retention, or by mitigating ethical and operational risks. However, its benefits are not being experienced as consistently, meaningfully, or widely as they could be because public engagement is not yet seen as essential for conducting clinical trials.
While there are ethical arguments for it, there may also be a case for requiring public engagement on clinical trials based on its instrumental contributions. From speaking with researchers about their experiences, Wellcome learned that public engagement can support a trial’s overall success by improving how it works with people. For example, some research centres work with community advisors or use public engagement to support informed consent. However, for the most part, funders like Wellcome as well as publishers, regulators, and researchers themselves lack formal evidence on whether and how public engagement impacts research outcomes.
Wellcome wanted the Clinical Trials Engagement Lab to respond to this evidence gap, and partnered with Science Practice to help imagine what the lab could look like, find researchers who could build on this vision and lead it, and develop an application and review process to help a funding committee select between several possible leadership candidates.
Given that launching a lab was a much more specific ‘ask’ than those posed by Wellcome’s existing grant funding opportunities, we realised that setting it up would require a different approach. We needed to invite grantees in to understand the very nature of the opportunity – and to work alongside us to figure out the right response. In the interest of sharing what worked, here are five practices for more open, collaborative grant-making that we’re taking away from this project.
1. Recruit instead of issuing an open call
Rather than posting a request for proposals on an existing platform, we took a directed approach to connecting with potential grant applicants. Open calls put the ‘reach-out’ responsibility on applicants, leaving them to judge for themselves whether or not they fit the grantee profile, if they even learn of the opportunity in the first place. But when funders instead take a recruitment-led approach, they assume responsibility for identifying potential grantees and promoting the funding opportunity. Opting to recruit saved us time. It helped us widen the pool of qualified applicants beyond those we’d expect to hear from if we posted an open call, and headed off the possibility that too few would come forward – a risk given the specificity of our expectations. It also gave us a chance to iteratively tailor our search criteria to identify a more diverse range of individuals and teams, and to allow the profile of an ideal candidate to emerge over time through conversations between Wellcome and the grant candidates. Long before it was time to make a funding decision, working like this helped set the tone for the more open funder-grantee relationship needed to enable applicants to propose their own vision for the lab.
2. Engage applicants in strategy, not just the application process
Some grant opportunities leave it up to researchers to specify a project focus and methodology. In this case, to align with Wellcome’s wider strategy, we defined the ambition in advance – set up a lab to help fill an identified evidence gap – but were actively seeking researchers’ suggestions for how this should be achieved. With this request, we needed to put in extra time and effort to ensure we successfully communicated our vision to applicants so that they could confidently propose suitable approaches. Going beyond a typical application onboarding process, we guided them through a lengthier, more in-depth alignment phase. We gave applicants full transparency over what motivated this work and what Wellcome was looking for by sharing a theory of change, detailed description of the problem and opportunity, and potential forms the lab could take. On calls with each grant applicant, we were clear about what thinking had been done to shape the vision for the lab, and what needed further development, refinement, and leadership from them. Briefing applicants in this way helped position them as collaborators – a role they needed in order to take on Wellcome’s initial vision, develop it, and suggest how to deliver it. During the initial expression of interest phase and later, during the formal application process, we regularly checked in with applicants to offer clarification, reviews, and feedback on their initial ideas to ensure they aligned with the funder’s goals. We also shared and invited continuous contributions to an open Q&A document collecting questions from all potential grantees. This helped to avoid one group having access to information others didn’t, and ensured helpful strategic insights were shared across the applicant cohort. This approach fostered ongoing dialogue between funder and researchers, balancing Wellcome’s vision with the applicants’ own ideas.
3. Warm up with pitches before proposals
It’s not so unusual anymore, but we held an initial ‘pitching’ round before asking for longer, more involved full-length proposals. Sometimes, funders open calls for expressions of interest to fulfill a similar purpose. In this case, asking for short and pithy pitches gave us an opportunity to invite more groups to apply because we felt comfortable asking them for a relatively small investment of time and effort, and also confident in our reviewers’ corresponding capacity. Importantly, the pitching step also offered applicants a chance to get to know Wellcome as a funder – its funding requirements, and the ambition for this funding opportunity – so that they could decide if they were interested in the prospect of working more closely with Wellcome, and therefore whether they wanted to develop their thinking into a longer proposal. We chose the pitch format to emphasise that Wellcome didn’t have preconceptions for the proposals it was looking for, but was instead on the lookout for original ideas drawing on researchers’ expertise. The format for this pitch was intentionally left open so applicants could build on their conversations with us and readily express their key thoughts however made sense to them.
4. Offer applicants visibility of each other and the opportunity to connect
Holding a pitching round also gave us an opportunity to preview candidates and invite the most promising ones to the full proposal stage. With this increased visibility over the different approaches applicants were working on, we noticed complementarity between some of the teams and ideas, and saw potential for partnership between them. To pass this opportunity on to the applicants, we gave each team a chance to ‘opt in’ to share their contact information with the others. Some applicant teams took this as a chance to make themselves known to the others while using this information to further refine and differentiate their proposals.
5. Balance funder oversight and grantee autonomy with grants that work like contracts
While it was Wellcome who initially came up with the idea to start a Clinical Trials Engagement Lab, they were very keen for applicants to bring their own vision and approach to leading it. At the same time, they wanted to retain visibility over the lab’s progress because even emergent findings could inform Wellcome’s ongoing conversations around public engagement policies and practices in funding and publishing circles. To support Wellcome’s leadership and influence in both public engagement and clinical trials research, the evidence and insights would need to be of sufficient quality and relevance to unlock further action. Given this interest, Wellcome wanted more visibility over preliminary insights and interim results and more opportunities to interact with the lab’s experts than a traditional grant-making relationship might provide. They were considering funding this work through a contracting process, but this arrangement would have been unusual for the applicants, most of whom were situated within research institutions where grants are the norm. Instead, they chose a third alternative: the milestone grant. Milestone grants are awarded as grants but work somewhat like contracts in that funding is attached to different milestones that the funder and grantee agree upon ahead of time. This option gives funders built-in opportunities for collaborative involvement and visibility over preliminary findings, while giving grantees more autonomy within the set milestone periods.
In situations like this, when a funder has identified a problem and developed a vision of addressing it, reaching out to experts who can figure out how to go about this can be daunting. There may be uncertainties about who to approach, how to reach them, what to communicate, and how to share control over the vision and its delivery. Adopting funding practices like the ones we’ve highlighted above can help by shifting the power dynamic between funder and grantees toward something more open, collaborative, and aligned.
To the funders out there: Have you applied any of these practices in your own work? Reach out to share your experience – we’d love to hear about it.
Join our Good Problems Team to help us design a more inclusive, transparent, and strategic funding sector.
- Permanent (3-month probation)
- Full time (40 hours per week)
- £35k - £42k
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements
- Location: London, Old Street (we are open to other arrangements; as a result of COVID-19, the team is currently working remotely for the foreseeable future)
To apply, please submit your details via this form. The deadline for applications is 9am on Tuesday, 8 September 2020. We will review applications on a rolling basis.
About us
Our Good Problems Team at Science Practice works with science and innovation funders to design effective programmes to tackle important problems. We have designed over 40 innovation programmes, including challenge prizes – such as the £10M Longitude Prize – and innovation funding calls around problems in healthcare, food and water sustainability, transportation, and humanitarian aid. Our clients include Wellcome Trust, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, and Nesta.
Our ambition is to improve the philanthropic sector by supporting funders to make more inclusive, collaborative, and evidence-based funding decisions to tackle the problems that matter most.
We are a dedicated team of four with skills ranging across information and interaction design, research, innovation, strategy, social entrepreneurship, and programming.
Right now, we’re scoping opportunities for public engagement in health research, designing sandpits around nutrition and diets, and designing an upcoming innovation challenge for the humanitarian sector.
The role
We are looking for someone to join our team and help us design impactful, problem-led funding programmes.
As a programme designer, you will be working on client-facing projects in a small team of two or three, or will lead projects with support from the wider team.
You will have an opportunity to work across diverse domains; at the moment, we are focusing on a range of healthcare topics (eg, vaccines, mental health, nutrition) and humanitarian challenges (eg, sanitation, sexual and reproductive health).
We are looking for someone available to start in early September 2020.
The role will include the following activities:
- Conducting desk research and interviews with diverse stakeholders to better understand specific problems.
- Synthesising research insights into compelling and engaging materials for senior decision-makers.
- Helping funders prioritise problems they are best placed to address (alone or in collaboration with others).
- Developing strategic recommendations for funders on how to respond to identified/prioritised problems or gaps.
- Designing innovative funding programmes to address identified/prioritised problems. Testing proposed programmes through interviews and workshops.
- Designing and facilitating workshops to gather feedback on priority problems or programme designs.
We’re looking for someone who:
- Has strong research skills and enjoys exploring new topics through a range of research methods including desk research and interviewing diverse actors such as scientists, policy-makers, people with lived experience, industry representatives, and civil society.
- Has experience designing funding programmes or programmes to incentivise innovations (eg, funding calls, prizes, competitions, accelerators).
- Is interested in the philanthropic sector and motivated by improving how funding decisions are made and resources allocated.
- Is naturally curious and interested in making connections between ideas, practices, and people from across different fields.
- Writes well and communicates complex subject matter in simple, engaging language.
- Is comfortable with scientific subject matter (in particular, health research).
- Can rapidly gain an understanding of new topics in unfamiliar domains and make judgements based on complex evidence.
- Is excited about engaging with domain experts, other organisations and the general public through talks, workshops, events, and social media.
We are keen to hear from a range of applicants, not just those with explicit programme design experience. We are particularly interested in researchers or service designers interested in applying their skills to the development of impactful and evidence-led funding programmes.
We are a small but committed team. To help us evolve our practice and achieve our ambitions, we are looking for a new team member who will challenge us, build alongside us, and play an active role in shaping our ideas, practices, and approaches.
Right to work
In order to apply for this job, you should have the right to work in the UK.
How we work
Our approach to working is open, agile, and iterative. This means that you will work closely with the team and clients to understand the challenges they face, develop programmes, and iterate on these based on ongoing conversations and feedback.
We have weekly team catch-ups on Mondays to plan the week and on Fridays to reflect, as well as daily stand-ups to check in with the team and plan the day. We also run a weekly Journal Club to delve deeper into topics that shape our practice.
Every quarter, we have team and individual reviews to reflect on what went well, what we can improve on and how we’re achieving our strategic ambitions as a team.
We aim to keep our work setup lean and simple. We use Slack, G Suite, and Airtable.
What we are offering
- A competitive salary and matched pension contributions.
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements.
- The opportunity to grow your skills and professional interests as part of a curious, supportive, and dedicated team.
- All our activities are currently online because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before all this, we would say in this final point something about our lovely London studio filled with cheese plants, snacks, and colleagues from our sister company Ctrl Group who develop digital health products. While we are unable to offer this space at the moment, we look forward to introducing our cheese plants to new faces as soon as it will be safe to do so. 🌱
How to apply
We value diversity at our company. This is core to our work as developing a robust understanding of problems requires a diversity of thought, experience, and perspectives. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and ages.
To apply, please submit your details via this form. The deadline for applications is 9am on Tuesday, 8 September 2020. We will review applications on a rolling basis.
We look forward to hearing from you! 🙌
No agencies, please.
Join our Good Problems Team to explore ways of making health research more open and inclusive through public engagement. 🧬
- 3–6 month contract, with the possibility to join the team permanently
- £28k – £40k pro rata
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements
- Great workspace, 5-minute walk from Old Street Underground
About us
Our Good Problems Team at Science Practice works with science and innovation funders to identify pressing global challenges and design programmes to act on them. We have designed over 40 innovation programmes including the £10M Longitude Prize and our clients include Wellcome, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund and Nesta.
We are a dedicated team of five with skills ranging from design and research to social entrepreneurship, development studies, programming, and radio. Our ambition is to maximise the impact of existing resources by helping funders make informed and transparent strategic decisions.
We work across a diverse range of domains including mental health, vaccines, urban transport, nutrition, sanitation and gender-based violence. Right now, we’re scoping opportunities for public engagement in biomedical and health science, designing sandpits around nutrition and diets, and designing a series of innovation challenges for the humanitarian sector.
The role
We are looking for someone with varied research experience to support us with the design of innovation funding programmes in the public engagement and health research space. On a recent similar project, we helped Wellcome’s Public Engagement team define public engagement funding priorities and develop programmes to tackle these.
This area interests us because we strongly believe that the direction health research takes should reflect the diverse needs, interests, and questions of the public who stand to benefit from it. All communities should be equally able to engage with, make use of, and further advocate for health research. That is why we are actively working with funders interested in ensuring that the resources invested in health research achieve their maximum potential.
For this role, we are open to interviewing both early-career and experienced researchers with a range of research experience including, but not limited to, exploratory research, action research, policy-oriented research, or human-centred research.
We are looking for someone available to start in early March 2020.
The role will involve:
- Conducting desk research and interviews with various stakeholders to better understand how public engagement can add value to health research.
- Synthesising research insights into compelling and engaging materials for senior decision-makers.
- Developing strategic recommendations for funders on how to respond to identified problems or gaps.
- Designing innovative funding programmes to improve public engagement with science and particularly health research. Testing proposed programmes through interviews and workshops.
- Facilitating workshops to gather feedback on priority problems or programme designs.
We’re looking for someone who:
- Has excellent research skills and enjoys exploring new topics through a range of research methods including desk research and interviewing a wide variety of actors such as scientists, policy-makers, industry representatives, and civil society.
- Has a good understanding of public engagement as well as the challenges associated with its inclusion in health research (this understanding can be gained through either academic and/or work experience).
- Writes well and communicates complex subject matter in simple, engaging language.
- Is comfortable with scientific subject matter (in particular, health research) and is familiar with the process of conducting scientific research.
- Can rapidly gain an understanding of new topics in unfamiliar domains and make judgements based on complex evidence.
- Is passionate about making health research more open and accessible to diverse communities.
- Is excited about engaging with domain experts, aligned organisations, and the general public through talks, workshops, events and social media.
Optional
- Is familiar with or has experience of working in the innovation funding sector.
Right to work
In order to apply for this job, you should have the right to work in the UK.
What we are offering
- A competitive salary and matched pension contributions.
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements.
- The opportunity to grow your skills and professional interests as part of a curious, supportive, and dedicated team.
- Weekly team catch-ups on Mondays to plan the week and on Fridays to reflect.
- Quarterly sessions to set team and personal goals.
- A smooth work setup built on Slack, Google Drive and Airtable.
- We share our studio with our sister company, Ctrl Group, who develop digital health products and Eclipse Experience, a human-centred design agency. We often run show’n’tells to share our work.
- A desk full of Swiss Cheese plants and a cupboard full of snacks. 🍏
How to apply
We value diversity at our company. This is core to our work as developing a robust understanding of problems requires a diversity of thought, experience and perspectives. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and ages.
To apply, please submit your details via this form.
The deadline for applications is 10am on Monday, 2 March 2020.
We will be in touch to arrange a convenient time for an interview by Tuesday, 3 March 2020.
We will start interviewing eligible applicants the w/c 2 March 2020.
We look forward to hearing from you! 🙌
No agencies, please.
Join our Good Problems Team to identify pressing global problems and design impactful funding programmes to solve them. 🌏
- 3-6 month contract, with the possibility to extend
- £28k - £40k pro rata
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements
- Great workspace, 5 minutes walk from Old Street Underground
About us
Our Good Problems Team at Science Practice works with science and innovation funders to identify pressing global challenges and design programmes to act on them. We have designed over 40 innovation programmes including the £10M Longitude Prize and our clients include Wellcome, the Humanitarian Innovation Fund and Nesta.
We are a dedicated team of four with skills ranging from design and research to social entrepreneurship, programming and radio. Our ambition is to maximise the impact of existing resources by helping funders make informed and transparent strategic decisions.
We work across a diverse range of domains, from mental health and urban transport to nutrition and gender-based violence (GBV). Right now, we’re scoping opportunities for public engagement in biomedical and health science and designing a series of innovation challenges for the humanitarian water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector.
The role
We are looking for someone with diverse research experience to support us with the development and design of innovation funding programmes in the humanitarian space. Recent similar projects include the development of the Menstrual Hygiene Management Challenge and the WASH Evidence Challenge for the Humanitarian Innovation Fund.
We are open to interviewing both early-career and experienced researchers with a diverse range of research experience including, but not limited to, exploratory research, action research, policy-oriented research or human-centred research.
We are looking for someone available to start in January 2020.
The role will involve:
- Conducting desk research and interviews with diverse stakeholders to better understand problems in humanitarian WASH and GBV sectors. This will involve identifying key materials on the topics, understanding the underlying causes of the problems, seeing who is impacted and to what extent, and finding out who is working on solutions and what are their limitations.
- Synthesising research insights into compelling and engaging materials for senior decision-makers to support the prioritisation of problems.
- Developing strategic recommendations for funders on how to respond to the identified problems.
- Co-designing innovation programmes (eg, funding programmes, prizes, accelerators) to address the identified problems. Testing the proposed programmes through interviews and workshops.
- Facilitating workshops to gather feedback on priority problems or programme designs.
We’re looking for someone who:
- Has excellent research skills and enjoys exploring new topics through a range of research methods including desk research and interviewing diverse actors such as academics, policy-makers, representatives from NGOs, industry, and civil society.
- Writes well and communicates complex subject matter in simple, engaging language.
- Has a good understanding of the humanitarian sector, as well as its key challenges and actors (this understanding can be gained through either academic and/or work experience).
- Cares about pressing global problems and is motivated by the opportunity to play an active part in addressing them.
- Can rapidly gain an understanding of new topics in unfamiliar domains and make judgements based on complex evidence.
- Is excited about engaging with domain experts, other organisations and the general public through talks, workshops, events and social media.
Optional
- Is familiar with or has experience of working in the innovation funding sector.
Right to work
In order to apply for this job, you should have the right to work in the UK.
What we are offering
- A competitive salary and matched pension contributions.
- Family-friendly and flexible working arrangements.
- The opportunity to grow your skills and professional interests as part of a curious, supportive and dedicated team.
- Weekly team catch-ups on Mondays to plan the week and on Fridays to reflect.
- Quarterly sessions to set team and personal goals.
- A smooth work setup built on Slack, Google Drive and Airtable.
- We share our studio with our sister company, Ctrl Group, who develop digital health products and Eclipse Experience, a human-centred design agency. We often run show’n’tells to share our work.
- A desk full of Swiss Cheese plants and a cupboard full of snacks. 🍏
How to apply
We value diversity at our company. This is core to our work as developing a robust understanding of problems requires a diversity of thought, experience and perspectives. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and ages.
To apply, please submit your details via this form.
The deadline for applications is 9am on Monday, 13th January 2020.
We will be in touch to arrange a convenient time for an interview by Wednesday, 15th January 2020.
We will start interviewing eligible applicants the w/c 13 January 2020.
We look forward to hearing from you! 🙌
No agencies, please.
