Stephen MacGregor, U. Calgary
David Phipps, York University
Research Impact Canada (RIC) was established to strengthen the capacity of Canadian postsecondary institutions to mobilize knowledge and maximize the benefits of research for society. Our latest evaluation, led by Stephen MacGregor, builds on previous evaluations and draws on 38 interviews across member institutions to better understand how institutional knowledge mobilization (KMb) creates value and develops into lasting capacity.
The findings are encouraging, but they also highlight important challenges and opportunities.
Across the network, institutional KMb capacity is growing. However, progress often remains fragile. Many institutions continue to rely on a small number of individuals who hold key relationships, expertise, and institutional memory. Staff turnover, short-term funding, and competing priorities can quickly disrupt momentum.
The evaluation reinforces a fundamental lesson about research impact: value is created through relationships, not simply through dissemination at the end of a project. Effective KMb involves listening, co-framing problems, co-designing solutions, collectively interpreting findings, and supporting their use. These activities build trust, shared understanding, and stronger research questions, laying the foundation for longer-term policy, practice, and community outcomes.
Importantly, sustained capacity is not concentrated in a single office or role. The most resilient institutions combine central coordination, strategic leadership, and specialist expertise with locally embedded champions who can facilitate engagement and support action across faculties, departments, and communities.
The evaluation also found that capacity grows through practice. Training, consultation services, pilot funding, shared programs, communities of practice, bilingual resources, and examples of successful work help individuals move from awareness to action. These mechanisms build confidence while allowing effective approaches to spread across institutions.
Of the five elements in the Institutional Healthcheck, connectivity emerged as the strongest dimension of institutional impact capacity. Institutions are increasingly connected to peers, partners, and communities. Yet implementation remains a common challenge. Commitments to impact, co-production, and engagement are developing, but translating these aspirations into operational practice requires sustained resources, appropriate incentives, stronger delivery capacity, and greater attention to equity and power-sharing.
The evaluation also highlights RIC’s distinctive role within the Canadian research ecosystem. As a national connective infrastructure, RIC reduces practitioner isolation, enables peer learning, supports bilingual participation, facilitates the adaptation of promising practices, and provides a collective voice on issues such as funding, recognition, and research assessment.
Looking ahead, the evaluation points to several priorities for future work: using the five C’s of impact health to support institutional planning, strengthening complementary KMb roles and supports, scaling successful programs with implementation assistance, developing pathways tailored to institutional maturity, and advancing collective advocacy and equity-focused approaches where they can deliver the greatest value for members. Together, these findings affirm that creating research impact is not a single activity. It is a long-term institutional capability built through relationships, practice, and collaboration. RIC will continue working with existing and new members to strengthen that capability across Canada.
Disclosure: The data from the evaluation was created by Stephen MacGregor who summarized the results for the RIC Evaluation Committee. Working from Stephen’s summary, David Phipps used Co-Pilot to make an initial draft of the text of this post.