When I received an invitation to participate in the OTT School for Thinktankers in Barcelona, I was full of surprise and excitement. Once the week of workshops began, I realised just how precious the experience of learning from everyone around me was.
Surrounded by insightful and knowledgeable think tankers from around the globe and my enthusiastic student think tank peers, every day presented an invaluable chance to reflect and absorb from the expertise in the room.
As a member of STEAR, which usually focuses on research, the School allowed me to reflect on aspects of think tank work beyond the analysis and publication output. The conversations about communications, partnership building, fundraising, event organisation and engagement strategies were highly thought-provoking. I reflected on my organisation’s potential to achieve more and more impact and also my own responsibility in disseminating these insights constructively.
As a student think tank where each one of our members contributes part-time and unpaid, we operate differently than most policy think tanks or research centres. We are not subject to the same financial pressure, but at the same time, keeping high engagement among members is a challenge. At the School, I understood how important a sense of enthusiasm—and importantly of a common vision—is to achieve our goals.
I also realised the extent to which this experience and knowledge was not exclusively related to think tank work. It was also extremely valuable to each one of us personally, especially us students, as we transitioned from academic to professional life. I wholeheartedly recommend the experience of the School as an unparalleled opportunity to learn and to connect with peers and experts in the field. My own experience was one of great luck, as I was able to forge instant connections with inspiring and like-minded peers.
The experiences and best practices shared during the week spurred reflections on how our organisations operate, but also how they approach strategy and direction.
There were three major learnings for me to take back to STEAR:
- First, even as a student or youth organisation, it is important to identify and focus on our purpose and place ourselves in the think tank ecosystem. This has led to many important questions on the goals think tanks can work towards, whether advocacy, policy research and advisory, raising awareness, or producing research and knowledge. On this topic, it was insightful to discuss the roles and purposes of think tanks with Enrique Mendizabal (OTT) and Áurea Moltó (Real Instituto Elcano): the importance of research agendas was discussed as the matrix for think tanks’ credibility and influence. In this regard, think tanks need to be strategic in their priorities, as well as flexible to identify and follow current policy relevance.
- Second, we discussed the importance of putting communications and branding at the centre of a think tank’s work instead of at the margins. David Watson (Head of Communications at Chatham House) led an eye-opening conversation, sharing how his team views and operates for the think tank as a brand, whose image must be promoted and protected. Another workshop with John Schwartz and Alice Vulliamy (Soapbox) stressed how think tank websites “are” the organisations, rather than mere points of contact, as they are often the only interface between the think tank and its public. Identifying an organisation’s unique selling point must be followed by assessing how to best communicate it, along with optimising each website’s ‘user experience’ for its audience.
- Third, organisational culture and the ability to build both internal and external constructive relations are just as relevant as research activities when it comes to long-term strategy and growth. We reflected on leadership styles, strategic planning, and organisational structures in our insightful conversations with Sonja Sonja Stojanović Gajić, Mònica Nadal and Lídia Climent (Bofill), and Pol Morillas (CIDOB). The sessions on event engagement and facilitation with Sonja were especially interesting. We discussed tools to improve our events’ impact by strategically selecting the theme, dates, location, speakers and guests—as well as our events’ engagement by adopting discussion-oriented fora, such as takeaway sessions and roundtable formats.
To conclude, the School reminded us that there is still a lot of space for innovation, change, reform, and, most of all, enthusiasm, even for our “decentralised” student organisations, to set ambitious goals and collectively strive to achieve impactful change.