On Think Tanks was founded in mid 2010. It has evolved from a blog into a global platform dedicated to study and support policy research and policy research centres, or think tanks. The members of the On Think Tanks Team and its Advisory Board are spread out across 6 continents!
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There are many types of think tanks in the world and one common category is the partisan think tank. Partisan think tanks have a relationship (sometimes formalised and explicit) with one or...
Impatience and frustration with the status quo motivates policy players to act. But patience determines how they act. Amartya Sen addressed one side of this debate in a...
Change is not linear. Policy change is not the end of the story. The relationship between evidence and policy is not linear. Politics matters. Research matters very...
Knowledge translation (KT) practice has evolved over the decades. Research on KT practice hasn’t to the same extent. The literature still predominately focuses on the...
Following an interesting conversation with Enrique Mendizabal, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to be honest about ‘stories of change’ or ‘impact stories’ being published by...
The first problem with understanding think tanks in Mexico is a linguistic barrier (Salazar, 2003). Literal or poor translations of the term make it difficult for most...
In this new OTT Talks, Joe Miller, Director of Soapbox Washington Studio, talks to Louise Ball, OTT Communications Director, about his new book Screens, research and hypertext. Listen to the podcast here.
Enrique Mendizabal, OTT Founder and Director, talks to Irene Pingkan Umboh from RTI International and Widjajanti Isdijoso from SMERU Research Institute. They look back over the last 10 years...
For World Health Day, OTT Talks about scientific advisory systems and the global pandemic, with OTT's Marcela Morales and Enrique Mendizabal. Read the full report: ‘Scientific advisory...
For International Women's Day 2022, we have an OTT Talks about women in think tank leadership roles with Andrea Ordoñez, Director at Southern Voice, Fiona Moejes, Interim CEO at Mawazo...
Chukwuka Onyekwena talked to Enrique Mendizabal about the policy space in Nigeria and the context in which think tanks operate, how the Covid-19 crisis has impacted the demand for research...
Chenai Mukumba currently works as Policy Research and Advocacy Manager of Tax Justice Network Africa. At the time of this interview, she was head of CUTS International...
This ‘health check’ aims to support think tanks and research institutes to refine and improve their communications. The tool covers six key areas: strategy, capacity, systems, audiences, channels & messaging and monitoring. It recognises that communication is a complicated process involving strategy, tactics and all sorts of inputs. In other words, it is not all about outputs.
The Economic Justice Program (EJP) of the Open Society Foundations ran from 2018 until the end of December 2021. During this time, and building on the work of its two parent programs (Fiscal...
Raymond Struyk, author of Improving Think Tank Management, writes about the key empirical facts on the shift from solo-authored papers to team production, introducing couple of options for...
How can think tanks play a role in contributing to solutions to address the challenges in the impact investing sector in emerging markets? Consolidate, communicate and facilitate...
Raymond Struyk, author of Improving Think Tank Management, writes about how two recent developments may be having significant effects on the way think tanks are structuring their staff...
Esta publicación fue elaborada por Leandro Echt sobre la base de un documento de reflexión elaborado por Martha Farmelo, consultora independiente en fortalecimiento de ONGs, en base a su...
Raymond Struyk, author of Improving Think Tank Management, writes about the evolution in staff assessments for think tanks. There is an ongoing, comparatively quiet evolution in the...