Hello SDLs!
Many of you have internal research groups or internal grants to foster thought leadership in your firms. We have run an annual research-innovation grant program for about the last 5-6 years. Anyone in our firm is allowed to apply, submit their idea, the time/budget they need, define a deliverable and then a small group reviews and approves the “grant.” It can be on any topic that seems interesting and ideally at the end even if the deliverable remains internal, the content should be in some way helpful to our project work. In the last few years, the number of submissions has drastically reduced and for those who do get “approved,” they have had a difficult time actually getting work time put on their staffing schedule and end-up doing everything after hours or not doing it at all. We even implemented cash reward for completion in 2021, but that has still left two incomplete from 2021. We are pausing for this year in hopes to tune-up the program for 2023. A few questions for the group:
If you have a similar program, is it a one-time per year RFP? Or a rolling submission? (We typically have done an RFP in March and ask for completion in September, which is why it may not be great for actually scheduling time to work on it.)
I would be interested to know if you impose a time limit? – Say, the applicant had to complete it in one swoop over 1-2 weeks as a “sabbatical”? (Considering this, versus trying to wedge a couple hours a week over months.)
Do you have a structure for support, i.e. an advisor or mentor who sets up regular check-ins, makes sure the deliverables are coming together? Is that advisor a senior level person? Or a person who may know about the topic? Or a marketing team member?
Do you a standardized application form? (We first allowed people to submit whatever they wanted, but then it became a graphics competition and people spent sooooo much time on the graphics, the content suffered, so we went to a black-n-white application form which at least got some basic questions answered. For example, question 1 is "what's the elevator pitch" "why would this be important to the person, office, industry, etc.")
We tossed the idea out there that someone could be assigned to me each month to do a grant of a topic that I assign them, as to boost skills and how to think about writing/deliverable/presentation, etc. I tested this with a Winterim Student in January and it worked great as she was not bogged with project work and was able to set-up 3 presentation lectures that I have on the books for later this year … so I don’t know how staff would react to that if they still need to fit it in with project work.
Any other feedback welcome! We are struggling to get participation, we are struggling with booking the time, we are struggling with people finishing.
If you would rather email me than post here, you can find my email in the SDL directory. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
