Workshop report - weADAPT

Climate Knowledge Brokers Workshop 2013
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Getting the hang of new techniques requires an investment of time and resources.
Think strategically about where to concentrate effort.
“CKBs often assume a certain level of understanding around knowledge brokering. We
assume in some projects that people you are working with know the processes we use
in climate knowledge brokering. But I know from experience that this is not the case.”
What have we learned as a CKB community
Four main points were highlighted:
Users – We are starting to value and better understand our end users, but there is much
more to be done. We need to learn how to conduct stakeholder mapping more efficiently -
lots has been going on but have we really taken an overview on its implications and
communicated our learnings
Marketing - We have improved our knowledge of marketing but we need to be more
strategic in thinking who are we trying to reach, and how to engage them.
Reputation - The CKB Group’s reputation and credibility is improving externally, but not
necessarily within our own organisations. We need to explain the value of our work.
Knowledge sharing – As a knowledge brokerage community we need to be much better at
sharing best practice amongst ourselves.
There is an implicit assumption that having access to information, data, and knowledge,
is enough. We forget that you can sit down with someone and have an offline
conversation, and sometimes that’s precisely what you need to do. We need to stop
ignoring the political economy of these processes. If you look at a theory of change
around influencing the influencers…access to information isn’t enough…”
So what
A) Research our users better:
Define key stakeholders more precisely.
Analyse their social and political contexts.
Revisit and test out our theories of change.
B) Share best practice amongst the CKB community:
Articulate what we are learning and share it, e.g. via the LinkedIn group or over email.
Share experiences on new approaches, e.g. data visualization and mapping. What are
the best tools
C) Build the reputation of CKBs through marketing internally and externally:
Convey the critical value of CKB work to management.
Avoid jargon - who understands CKB terminology outside our own community -
Make it simpler for stakeholders.
Be clearer about our aims and ambitions.
Communicate our mapping work better to demonstrate the breadth and richness of
what CKBs are offering - possibly via some visualisations.
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