3Cs on how to increase Research Impact

Last week saw me returning to Europe to give the opening keynote in Let’s Talk About Service (LTAS), a dedicated conference now in its 11th edition. The theme was Research Impact, and all 77 participants discussed it in workshops and presentations by Dip Biswas, Stefanie Noble, Linda Alkire, Peeter Verlegh, Martin Wetzels, Jelena Spanjol, and yours truly:

Below takeaways follow my 3 Cs of Research Impact: Create, Coauthor, and Communicate

A)        Create: to boldly go

A1) your 5 great research ideas: Martin Wetzels started us off with the Star Trek voyage of research: to boldly go where nobody has gone before. Such inspiration only happens about 5 times in your career, so it is key to explore those to the fullest. Typically after tenure, the variance in idea quality increases.

A2) How to explore? Peeter Verlegh recommends starting with a meta-analysis, create interesting hypotheses, and network horizontally: talk with your peers instead of only your seniors.

As to journal publication, it is key to go all in on any revision request, but you also need to stick to your guns and ‘put the judges down’ in a friendly way. Kendrick Lamar did so on the cover of ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’, where his friends stand around him but the person judging him harshly is laying at the bottom.

A3) know your audience: Linda Alkira talked about her transformative service research for refugees. Society and policy makers are key audiences for this research: publish with purpose!

Dip Biswas asked the marketing question: impact for whom? You need to define your target audience(s) and get in touch with them. Such interaction will help you choose the right topics and data. For instance, managers typically don’t have time to focus on long-term issues, such as branding to which your solution may be fantastic. Likewise, journalists prefer your summary of an academic paper.

As to publishing, ask friendly reviews to ‘give all the reasons you would reject this paper’. Finally, you can establish novelty by having asked people (eg on Prolific) what they think about the research question. For instance, 75% did not believe drinking coffee would affect their shopping, as Dip’s research shows.

 In your career, it is Evolve or Perish, as in Charles Darwin and Taylor Swift.

B) Coauthors:

B1) How to choose coauthors: Martin talked about how to compose the Start Trek team

I recommend choosing people you like and who have complementary skills and resources

Be the Bee AND the Flower: show yourself open for collaboration: choose & be chosen 

Develop & manage 1 close co-authorship

B2) How to work with coauthors:

Jelena Spanjol added her Cs:

B2a) Clarity: early on to determine target journal, coauthor roles, and credit

B2b) Commitment to principles and project(s): how many papers with whom?

B2c) Conversations: at least monthly to keep on track

C) Communicate:

As in my talk, research has to be rigorous, resonant, and relevant, and your product (the article) should demonstrate this. The average article only gets 0.6 press mentions and  3.5 social media citations, as Stefanie mentioned

But how to increase and demonstrate? It’s in your writing

C1) Stefanie Noble defined impactful:

How to show reviewers the relevance of your research:

1)        Give company examples

2)        Cite popular press

For instance, Stefanie introduced research on customer-employee power differential by referring to Oprah Winfrey being locked out of a Hermes store in Paris.

C2) Create tension in the introduction

Continuing with the power differential example, Stefanie found that respondents wanted to ‘mark their space’, which naturally indicated animal behavior theory. She then looked into boundary conditions, such as store loyalty: frequent visitors feel they own the space, so are likely to mark it (eg by messing up the display), while others simply abandon the store.

C3) Show gaps in literature with Table 1

Ensure to include independent and dependent variables, moderators, settings

So you can focus your text only on positioning against previous research with a YES in an important cell. Moderators, such as avatar similarity, are key:

All in all, it was a wonderful and insightful conference. See you next time!