Learning from 2020: being global by engaging locally
2020 has been a difficult year. We have all had to deal with personal and professional challenges. We have all been affected – some more than others – by the pandemic and the effects of the...
Featured video
Featured Articles
The scalingXchange: introduction
The scalingXchange was designed using the four guiding principles of scaling recommended by IDRC: justification, optional scale, coordination and dynamic evaluation, as the connecting thread....
Guiding principle 2: Optimal scale
Optimal scale challenges the ‘bigger is better’ scaling model. Scaling produces a collection of impacts and to determine optimal scale, we have to consider the trade-offs between...
Guiding principle 4: Dynamic evaluation
Scaling creates dynamic change that calls for dynamic evaluation – continuous learning before, during and after scaling. Dynamic evaluation helps us to apply the other three principles by...
Guiding principle 3: Coordination
Scaling takes place in complex systems and involves coordinating with a diverse and evolving set of stakeholders. Considering the people, places and things that affect or are affected by the...
Guiding principle 1: Justification
Scaling is a choice that must be justified based on a balance of technical evidence and values. And that choice to scale must be shared. An introduction to Guiding principle 1:...
Final session: remaining challenges in scaling science and practice
The final session offered the chance to explore remaining questions by IDRC. Guiding questions What were some good practices that emerged to support integration of...
Featured Interviews
New Peruvian think tanks. Part one: LidLab
I have chosen four new – or relatively new – think tanks to write about. Each has a different business model and offers a different proposal, but they all promise to contribute to...
Gustav Brauckmeyer, Executive Director, Equilibrium CenDE
Equilibrium CenDE caught my attention for two main reasons: its Latin America focus and its foreign founders. In Peru, it is not common to find researchers or research...
An interview with Peter Da Costa
And that's the 60-million-dollar question: how do you get to that point where everything we all do as actors and the system responds to what needs to be done… as opposed to what we, who are...
Sonia Jalfin: the Tech Communicator
Sonia Jalfin is Founder and Director of Sociopúblico, a communications studio focused on public issues. She has a BA in Sociology and MSC in Media and Communications and was Head of the...
Majandra Rodriguez Acha: the Norms Shifter
Majandra Rodriguez Acha is Co-Executive Director of FRIDA: The Young Feminist Fund. FRIDA is run by young feminist activists and supports young feminist movements across the global South....
Chioma Agwuegbo & Ibrahim Faruk: the Movement Starters
Chioma Agwuegbo and Ibrahim Faruk are part of the Not Too Young to Run movement leadership group in Nigeria, and involved in the spin-off Ready to Run group. Chioma...
Health Check
Think Tank Communications Health Check
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.
Featured Resources
Did COVID-19 change think tanks’ annual staff assessments?
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...
Transición de liderazgo en la Dirección Ejecutiva de un centro de pensamiento: Análisis, lecciones y recomendaciones de un estudio de caso
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...
The significant evolution in staff assessments: a good fit for think tanks?
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...
Simon Maxwell, former executive director of the Overseas Development Institute
Simon Maxwell, former executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, talks about future think tank leaders and how think tanks continue to evolve.
Simonida Kacarska, Director, European Policy Institute
Simonida shares her thoughts on the think tank culture in the western Balkans, the growth of these organisations in the region and what it means, and the challenges they face.
Donald Abelson, professor and chair of political science at The University of Western Ontario
Do think tanks matter? Donald talks to us about his work with think tanks over 30 years, what he finds so interesting about these organisations and how they have evolved, and their role...