Every few months, I get asked for advice on setting up an “academic think tank”. I use that term generically but the core idea that a university has is to establish a boundary spanning entity that helps to translate academic research into policy impacts.
Whilst in the UK this is often driven by the impact agenda, the requests for a chat are pretty global (albeit with a bias to the anglosphere).
The reason I am approached is probably based on my experience of working at the original think tank – the RAND Corporation – for 12 years and then helping to set up the Policy Institute at King’s. RAND Europe is an independent policy research institute which in practice operates like a not-for-profit consultancy, with a client base predominately in the public and NGO sector. Other think tanks follow a donation model or a mix of the two, often with a political philosophy or an issue to advocate. As I learnt (sometimes the hard way) when I joined King’s in 2014, it is not possible to “cut and paste” the RAND or other models of non-academic think tanks to an academic setting. This was quite simply because the incentive system in universities is so different and unique – which is a strength and a weakness.
It is because of this uniqueness that I often offer three bits of advice, which I share here. I do so in full modesty that I don’t have the answer to the question, how to set up an academic think tank? Indeed I write this in part to stimulate a discussion as there are many people in the higher education sector and elsewhere who have similar experiences. Ultimately it would be interesting to test these observations empirically, so please treat them more as hypotheses for testing.
It starts with leadership
My first lesson is to appoint a leader from outside the higher education sector. This is not to say that there are academics who cannot run such an entity (UK in a Changing Europe is a good exception to my rule), but to understand that traditional academic incentives will work against the establishment of a think tank. So you need someone who is not motivated by publishing papers, raising research grant income or teaching students. Identifying the right leader is not easy. You need someone who is also sympathetic to the university mission and way of working and has the emotional intelligence to navigate internal university cultures, governance and management. Critically you need someone who is looking outwards at all times, bringing ideas, people and debates back to the university as opposed to someone one who is “selling” university outputs to the policy world; broadlistening not broadcasting.
Location, location, location
My second lesson is not to locate the entity within a faculty (or equivalent). We know from analysis of impact cases studies (in the UK and Hong Kong), that impact is underpinned by research from multiple disciplines. Faculties, by definition, are monodiscipline or at least are grouping of cognate disciplines. This makes organisational sense. The majority of a faculty’s activity is around teaching and courses are largely based on disciplines, as this is what the majority of students demand. The risk, however, for the entity is that it must work across all faculties as any policy issue will require evidence and expertise from different (often non cognate) disciplines.
I should acknowledge in making this point that when at King’s the Policy Institute was (and still is) embedded in a faculty. But we did often discuss whether that was its best location, and the view was it worked but could be moved if need be. That is there was some conscious ambiguity about its organisational fit.
Resourcing
Finally, picking up on some recent work on (so-called) third space professionals, my third lesson is to have a clear idea of how you will staff the academic think tank. The most effective people operating in such entities are unlikely to follow an academic career (but may well have a PhD) but are also unlikely to work in the for-profit consultancy and advice sector. They could work in other think tanks but are motivated in part by working for an entity that is not aligned with a political party or advocacy issue. All of this means that the academic-professional staff dualism of employment contracts are not fit for purpose. You will likely need to recruit people who firmly fit in the third in-between space, requiring bespoke salary structures, career frameworks and other opportunities for development.
If I look at what I would consider successful academic think tanks then they seem to have these characteristics – ie leaders from outside universities, an ambiguous organisational home and the ability to recruit and retain nontraditional talent. As I said at the outset, this is more a personal reflection, and I am very open and intrigued to see these three lessons being challenged based on data and experience. The important point is that as more and more universities set up such entities understanding what makes them successful is an important exercise in its own right and something that can only strengthen the sector’s reputation in the long run of having a social purpose embedded in society’s needs.
Another way of looking at the question of organisational fit is whether universities need to set up ‘competing’ units such as these or whether this is an example of institutions moving towards more of a sharing model. They could be institutionally agnostic and sit within regions, or work across mission groups, for example? Just a thought.