Oct 7, 2026 · 29 min · 10 segments
*How can researchers turn impact ambitions into benefits that matter beyond academia?* For this episode, we invited **Mark Reed**, Professor of Rural Entrepreneurship at Scotland’s Rural College and…
Uh, I think there's a, a real onus on us as the researchers to have the ideas and to make our research have an impact when w- very often we don't feel like we've got a big enough idea, and we don't feel like we have the resources, the skills to be able to make what ideas we have really make a difference.
And I think for me, this is about saying it's less about what ideas we have and more about our ability to go out there in the world to find what are the needs that people have and what ideas are already out there that we might be able to build on to meet those needs.
And so if this becomes more about seeking out and meeting need rather than all about us and our research impact, then that kinda turns the tables and also puts less pressure on us to be the ones with all the big ideas.
Indeed, I have a feeling often that we tend to associate impact too closely with reporting, for example, so much so that we forget about those needs.
So what do you do about that? So how do you go about maybe reshaping the way we look at that assessment exercise and actually think about impact from the outset?
So I think when you look at impact case studies, the things that are published out there, they're always very big, always very impressive, and it's really off-putting.
And my experience is that if you go out there full of pride and ambition saying, "I'm gonna do something that big," uh, pride comes before a fall, and it is very often those kinds of projects that end up having really negative unintended consequences.
Start with one person, one community, one business in your local city, for example, uh, and do something that actually makes a real difference, that people really care about, that has actual tangible benefits.
A- and once you've got it working, because rarely does it work perfectly every time to start with, now we can begin to scale.
The people who it's working for will often be your advocates, and you can scale it from there.
Uh, but when we start big, uh, very often there are things we just would never have thought of, but, uh, that if we start small, we can iron out those problems so that we don't then start having big, large scale negative unintended consequences.
Uh, I think there's a, a real onus on us as the researchers to have the ideas and to make our research have an impact when w- very often we don't feel like we've got a big enough idea, and we don't feel like we have the resources, the skills to be able to make what ideas we have really make a difference.
And I think for me, this is about saying it's less about what ideas we have and more about our ability to go out there in the world to find what are the needs that people have and what ideas are already out there that we might be able to build on to meet those needs.
And so if this becomes more about seeking out and meeting need rather than all about us and our research impact, then that kinda turns the tables and also puts less pressure on us to be the ones with all the big ideas.
Indeed, I have a feeling often that we tend to associate impact too closely with reporting, for example, so much so that we forget about those needs.
So what do you do about that? So how do you go about maybe reshaping the way we look at that assessment exercise and actually think about impact from the outset?
So I think when you look at impact case studies, the things that are published out there, they're always very big, always very impressive, and it's really off-putting.
And my experience is that if you go out there full of pride and ambition saying, "I'm gonna do something that big," uh, pride comes before a fall, and it is very often those kinds of projects that end up having really negative unintended consequences.
Start with one person, one community, one business in your local city, for example, uh, and do something that actually makes a real difference, that people really care about, that has actual tangible benefits.
A- and once you've got it working, because rarely does it work perfectly every time to start with, now we can begin to scale.
The people who it's working for will often be your advocates, and you can scale it from there.
Uh, but when we start big, uh, very often there are things we just would never have thought of, but, uh, that if we start small, we can iron out those problems so that we don't then start having big, large scale negative unintended consequences.
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