SHAPE Ventures as an Engine of Policy Innovation

Hi Everyone!

Firstly if you attended reSHAPE - thank you very much for attending. It was monstrous to organise but the feedback we received from attendees and the engagement we got from our partners has been fantastic, it didn’t hurt to have the Minister George Freeman give a speech on the importance of SHAPE too.

As part of the newspaper we published, Frida Koslowski and myself wrote the following article which looks at how SHAPE spinouts can de facto do policy, overturning the old dichotomy thats its one or the other for SHAPE researchers.

Universities are complex institutions. Their highest calling is furthering human knowledge of the physical and social world, contributing to our shared corpus of understanding. Their pragmatic purpose is to solve problems in the real world, be they in society, the economy, health or education. In the UK, this is all loosely captured under the term impact. In short, how is humanity better off as a result of research on topic X?

Broadly, there are four ways researchers have focused on impact: Communication, where the research is disseminated widely, ideally to the public who can benefit from new understanding about topic X. Policy, where the research informs and ideally effects a policy outcome. Commercialisation, where a licence or venture (including social ventures and charities) is formed. Business engagement, such as effecting change with a business or organisation. In recent times, STEM has focused particularly on communication and commercialisation, while social sciences, humanities and arts have leaned more into communication and policy. Business engagement has been used by both. 

Why have SHAPE researchers historically focused more on policy, whereas STEM has made use of commercialisation? Suppose you are a medical scientist who discovers a new drug molecule for pain relief. To ensure people benefit from the new drug someone needs to produce it. Your options are to either produce it yourself (set up a venture) or sell it to someone with a factory (create a licence) and in both cases you have picked the commercialisation option. Now, suppose you are a social policy researcher looking at how to better protect vulnerable workers, such as those in the gig economy. You would probably rush to the Department for Business (in the UK) and push for changes to employment law or perhaps speak to Trade Unions and political parties to also support policy advocacy.

Although the examples are stylised, the focus on policy over commercialisation in SHAPE has persisted. Policy has been one of the main, if not the main, markers for impact from SHAPE research. This is logical, if you can make a small change in government policy: given the power of the state and its reach over a country, even a small change has a huge impact, such as changing how vulnerable workers are protected under the law. Furthermore, commercialisation as a route was virtually unknown in SHAPE seven years ago and lots of areas that SHAPE research covers, for example, education, environment or health, are controlled by the state, making policy the logical and most powerful lever. In some cases, setting up a venture to solve a problem vs. changing policy could even be seen as dichotomous. When talking to Silicon Valley execs, President Obama described the startup mentality as impossible from a policy point of view. You don’t move fast and break things when there are potentially millions of vulnerable people on the receiving end.

This dichotomy however, is beginning to change and SHAPE ventures are spearheading this, flipping a tension into something mutually reinforcing. Take the example of social policy, there is a project called Fairwork, which looks at digital platforms like Uber and their effects on worker rights and working conditions. Fairwork doesn't only highlight good and bad practices but has created league tables and rating systems to improve transparency and awareness of how gig economy platforms treat workers. In doing so, they nudge those platforms into better practices.

The Avoidable Deaths Network (ADN) takes a similar approach but this time in public health. The ADN focuses on reducing human deaths from natural hazards, naturally triggered technological hazards and human-made disasters. For example, avoidable deaths related to drowning, snakebites and sexual and reproductive health. By examining exactly where problems occur, it zeros in on interventions and then pilots them. The network has worked directly with aid organisations and local government agencies to mitigate deaths.

What has changed? Partly culture – SHAPE researchers have rarely formed ventures, so we didn’t know they could be used to effect change. Other factors, such as the government being more open to private sector involvement and more funders being willing to fund such ventures, have also changed the overall landscape.

However, what marks both ventures out is the entrepreneurial approach off the back of the research and subsequently as part of it. Both sought to create the change they wanted to see on the ground, built organisations to mobilise the change and brought in stakeholders. As brilliant as these projects are, the even more exciting outcome is the implications for policy itself. By trying out interventions entrepreneurially, by testing, expanding, doing more research, bringing in more stakeholders and gaining traction, SHAPE ventures become a test bed for policy. If the government is slow or uninterested, at a minimum, the intervention has a new pathway to creating impact. If successful, with more evidence, real-world application and traction, the government can adopt and scale successful interventions.

Not all SHAPE ventures will be trying to change policy at all, and for much of SHAPE research, policy may be the best and only route. But consider major challenges surrounding climate change, healthcare, education or social policy – hugely contentious, difficult policy areas that are desperate for innovation, with governments often unwilling to be seen to fail. These areas will be huge beneficiaries of SHAPE ventures, which can effect change, de-risk ideas and generate the know-how that enables governments to make informed decisions and use their power to scale up successful solutions. We are entering a new era of bottom-up policy innovation and SHAPE research will be at the heart of it.

As ever, agree/disagree/ additional comments? Just write back