Innovation Leadership Programme (ILP) report by EJW Solutions - January 2024

Summary of Findings

Thoughtful academic leaders who are mindful of their personal approach to leading and managing their groups and networks, with attitudes that are highly collaborative across departments, divisions and both nationally and internationally outside the University. This describes the researchers who attended the review of the MPLS Innovation Leadership Programme (ILP). The programme has influenced their academic pursuits, developed their leadership styles and provided a toolkit for them, and their teams, to support their success in traditional academic research. It has also created awareness of pathways for innovation and entrepreneurship for those who wished to explore these aspects, helping in the development of industrial partnerships, multi-national collaborations and spin-outs. In short, the programme has delivered on its objectives.

Participants report successes in four main themed areas:

• Leadership skills.
• Oxford knowledge.
• Innovation engagement.
• Networking.

The combination of these has resulted in their being able to attract high levels of funding, compete effectively for fellowships, develop the next generation of researchers and collaborate worldwide across both academia and industry. Whilst not wishing to attribute these successes directly to the programme, there was consensus that it acted to support these developments in a variety of ways.

Lasting impacts of the programme are reflected in the researchers’ approach to leading and managing their groups and collaborations, developed through an understanding of leadership styles fleshed out with real and relatable case studies from academics who have grown their research groups and innovation impact within the Oxford ecosystem. Researchers understand the fundamentals of innovative practice and importantly know who and what to ask to for in order to move pursue the next steps, and have a network of contacts to consult.

Action learning, coaching tools and a bank of information to refer back to were highlighted as especially useful aspects of the programme. Its flipped classroom format allowed people to engage with the theory and knowledge at their own pace and created space for discussions, ideas and support during the ‘live’ sessions (both online and face to face).

Going forward there are elements of the programme that could be tweaked to fit better with busy academic lives but the recommendations here are minor as the programme has evolved positively since its inception. The main recommendation is to be mindful of the precise career stages of the participants and ensure a good fit when it comes to both the material and the peer coaching elements.

It was thought that many aspects of the ILP were highly applicable across the researcher career stages (from DPhil student to Associate Professor). It was also felt that those in the early stages of research group leadership would very much benefit from the programme. The programme can thus be both a support to this important group on the cusp of independent research careers and inform training and development for researchers bracketing this group (such as students and postdocs below and those with departmental leadership positions above). As an induction programme, it would prepare future academic leaders to explore and create innovatively from their specialisms in diverse collaborations.

Background and methods

The ILP was originally developed for in-person delivery in 2019-2020, with IAA funding, championed by Prof Alison Noble, Associate Head of Industry and Innovation, to develop better leadership skills for new PIs in order to effect culture change. It has subsequently been championed by Prof Dermot O’Hare, current Associate Head of Industry and Innovation, as being of particular interest and use to academics considering becoming more actively involved in leading innovation activities or who have recently started to do this.

The five objectives and main component elements are:

1. To build a broad understanding of leadership and how it relates to innovation

• Overview of key concepts and relevant instruments.

2.To identify and develop individual strengths

• Identifying personal leadership styles and preferences.
• Advancing leadership potential and influence.

3. To develop an innovation leadership mindset

• Using your leadership skills to maximise innovation.
• Developing skills which encourage diverse thinking and maturing of innovation ideas.

4. To engage with participant’s leadership contexts

• Leading multi-stakeholder projects.
• Coaching and mentoring teams.

5. To collaborate with colleagues and peers

• Develop innovation ideation.
• Exchange skills, approaches, strengths and drivers.

The core programme delivery has gone through several iterations and is now offered as a blended programme over 5 sessions, of which two are conducted on-line and three are held face-to-face. Each session builds on self-directed learning and guided preparation through learning resources available on Canvas. It is an interactive and practical programme, offering a broadly-based understanding of leadership and the various opportunities and challenges surrounding innovation leadership, and runs twice a year.

Table 1: ILP Core programme delivered by Henley Business School

Table 2: Optional Masterclass programme:

Having seen four cohorts of participants and undergone revision and improvement it was felt that a review and identification of future development opportunities and widening uptake would be timely. The main evaluation event took place on the 23^rd March 2023 and took the form of a world café event over lunch at Trinity College, Oxford. 18 people from all four previous cohorts attended. These were assigned four table groups initially based on career stage for the first three questions and then mixed to create four new groups for the final two questions. Each table had a facilitator to keep time and take notes as well as participants being encouraged to annotate on flip chart and post-its. A full running order can be found here.

The groups were asked the following questions:

• What successes (big and small) have you had since the programme?
• What tangible impacts has the programme had on you as a leader?
• Thinking back to the programme. What specific aspects or topics worked well for you and why? What didn’t work so well?
• What programme additions would help people like you become innovation leaders? At what career stage would these be helpful?
• What would work well to support your cohort in your collective future development?

The data was transcribed and analysed after the event.

Five previous participants could not attend the event and were therefore interviewed by Dr Anne Miller and Hyea Matthews-Palmer and the resultant transcripts folded into the analysis. They were asked the following:

• Elements that had stood out from the programme/ informed their practice?
• Things that did not go so well?
• What could work for future course developments related to leadership?
• Successes following the programme?

In total 23 researchers were involved in this evaluation, evenly split between Associated Professors and Departmental Lecturers and senior research fellows.

Participant successes following the programme

Analysis of the reported successes of the participants following the programme can be grouped into four main themes of:

• Leadership skills.
• Oxford knowledge.
• Innovation engagement.
• Networking.

These in turn lead to participants able to harness these themes to build groups, attract funding and run successful teams with innovation built into the mix. In short, demonstrating career enhancing trajectories. The successes were however not limited to their research groups but exhibited a distributed set of positive wins for departments and wider across the University as well as across the UK and internationally. In reporting successes there was a distinctive thread of collaborative endeavour running through out.

Leadership Skills

Successes in the Leadership Skills theme were both focused on the individual’s skills as well as the groups and collaborations they had led. Many found the understanding and development of leadership styles had enabled them to work better with those around them with increased confidence and understanding seen as important successes. Some typical comments were:

More confident in team management.

Changing leadership style depending on the need of the project and people responding to it.

I have given myself permission to say publicly I "lead" the medical image group.

My team say I am more patient.

Applying in my group coaching, mentoring and supervision techniques consciously where it might have been unconscious before.

As group leader, I have had difficult conversations with students not taking an active part in the group.

Our participants have been played leading roles in attracting research funding including a £1m EPSRC grant, a £400k multinational translational research grant and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship on Chemo-Mechanics of Biodegradable Polymers (£1.1m). These fall into the traditional model of academic leadership.

Engagement with the programme helped me design match researcher interests to sprint grants. Successfully bringing five projects to Oxford.

Oxford Knowledge

Successes in the Oxford Knowledge theme reflect both the practical day to day and using these to build new ventures. The practical successes have been engaging with OUI on protecting intellectual property and understanding the support that can be given through MPLS. Several joint studentships across departments and disciplines have been created such as an OXICFM student with chemistry department and an interdisciplinary student with a clinical collaborator. Departments benefited through participants working with internal systems once they were understood or realised such as having a new departmental hub approved for generating stakeholder partnerships in Agri resilience or getting involved in a working group in department and leading a project followed by now chairing the group.

[I can] Steer grants to university [and am able to] engage more with those needed to take it forward. The ILP provided a grounding and understanding of what researchers need and want.

Innovation Engagement

Innovation awareness and engagement has brought about many successes from understanding the initial steps to building a venture, through to working in partnership with industry and creating ventures. “In general being aware of innovation and components of innovation” was deemed a success of the programme as well as the presentation of information “good to figure out that business is accessible and can break down barriers”.  Successes in this area can be Oxford based or involve external partners including studentships, funding or simply realising that industrial contacts can be reached out to.

Discuss concrete ideas about setting up a spin out with DPhil student.

Led in developing new impact and innovation mission statement for Biology.

Industry funded project analyse bioD monitoring data [employing my] first postdoc.

Various industrial collaborations including Innovate UK Analysis 4 Innovators and Applications for prosperity partnership.

Policy engagement and getting to know the relevant people (DCMS, NERC, EPSRC).

Successful spin out of AI company which was launched in 2019 and raised investment in 2021, with another investment round now. Acted as CEO for a short time.

Networking

The networking successes of the ILP were two-fold. Firstly, the programme actively encouraged networking and curating a network of possible collaborators. Secondly, the networks forged on the programme itself were helpful, supportive and being across MPLS, more diverse than perhaps the researchers concerned would have met within the confines of their own department. The following are quotes from participants but the evidence of a good set of networks was seen during the evaluation event itself where people greeted each other warmly and started conversations.

More selective about different opportunities to take up collaborations to follow.

Meeting people doing very different research. Building a network. Value in itself. Teams channel. New connections you may not have made otherwise bringing (random) researchers together is a positive.

Social space - side conversations. important to build network.

Collaboration: found new collaborators.

Networking and support continuing after the course.

Proactive and initiate meetings / collaborations.

Meeting and talking to peers in the same situation as new academics, to share challenges and possible solutions, again using coaching/ action learning approaches.

Although these successes cannot be solely attributable to the ILP given the high calibre of the people attending, these successes are related to the personal impact that the programme had on participants as seen in the next section.

When participants were asked about the tangible impacts that the programme had had on themselves and those they work with, understanding and developing their own leadership style was prominent in the responses. Participants felt they had a framework to refer back to and a set of tools to employ when working with others, even if those people were outside their specialism or academia. These tools included coaching, mentoring and the action learning sets. Having practised these with their cohort peers they felt confident to deploy these with their wider colleagues. Some typical comments on this area were:

The formation of a research group that support each other and adapt to leadership / membership changes. More self-sufficient.

The usefulness of the follower concept. Oxford is full of people who value independence of thought who all want to be leaders but cannot have a team made up of solely leaders, so need to reframe this so that being is follower is not seen as being a failed leader, but as being part of a really effective team.

Expectation management in collaborations, happier collaborations.

What really resonated on the concepts of leadership was applying it to my own situation: leading a team of 6 I can see how relevant it is, as a new leader with a small group.

The programme appears to have provided a solid base of innovation background information with participants feeling they now know where to look for further information and importantly, who to ask. Several people mentioned knowing what type of innovation they were now interested in pursuing and what they were not.

In talks to begin consultancy with industry partner. Course has helped with negotiations.

Greater certainty about setting appropriate balance of industry/ academic rights when setting up agreements.

Feeling more "entitled" to navigate the funding / support mechanisms available across the university.

The latter comment highlights how important it is for researchers to have access to this information and to understand the support on offer. Programmes like this demystify innovation and enterprise and remove barriers, real or perceived from access and effectively give permission to explore the innovation arena.

Another key impact is around being able to take time to view the academic landscape, including innovation, with a big picture and vision in mind, something that was further encouraged by the guest speakers. Time poor researchers need to come up for air from time to time, and to be encouraged and supported by the University to explore different possibilities with others in a similar situation.

Being more strategic led to grant and project success.

Finally, there was an overwhelming sense of the participants working collaboratively across the university, disciplines and internationally. Networks were being deliberately curated and potential collaborators contacted and the group of cohorts appeared very outward looking, which is not always the case within research intensive universities.

The ILP is in general viewed positively by the participants. They testify to its value and ongoing usefulness in the postcard section below. When asked for particular aspects that worked well the following were highlighted multiple times across the face-to-face groups and the online interviews:

• The flipped classroom style of presentation allowed for engagement with relevant theories and concepts and allowed for more free ranging discussion in the sessions.
• Linked to the above, the ability to have ‘chance conversations’ and get to know a wide variety of different researchers was seen as a benefit of the programme where time was given to discussion in breakout rooms or similar.
• Leadership styles presentation and information to go back to was highlighted frequently as very helpful in a range of situations. Linked to this, conflict management tools were seen as useful and referred back to.
• Of all the tools, the action learning was found to be most helpful to structure group discussions and has been implemented by some with their groups
• Coaching skills came next in the list of tools and has been widely adopted by group leaders. The importance of distinguishing between coaching and mentoring styles was also highlighted as helpful.
• The guest speakers provided real life case studies in how to build groups and start ventures and  several people identified these as course highlights, as being very relatable, with an excellent mix of inspiration and practical steps.

Materials are used as reference and will be in the future and as such ongoing access to them is appreciated.

 Building into the wider Oxford ecosystem

Those in attendance at the face to face evaluation session were presented with a timeline covering the stages DPhil, postdoc, fellow and Associate Professor (AP) and asked what else they would add to the programme or whether elements of the ILP would fit best in different career stages. The diagram below summarises the ideas presented.

The concepts explored in the ILP were felt to be helpful at all researcher career stages but obviously has limited scope to do so. Given the diversity and complex nature of a university such as Oxford joined up thinking is required from all providers of career development. It is clear that the ILP can provide a welcome set of signposts to innovation and leadership-based events and courses happening in the wider Oxford context. The participants, at the postdoctoral plus stages, would then be able to take back what was needed to their research groups. MPLS already offers a wide suite of courses and events aimed at DPhil upwards.  You can visit the course web site to find out more. Through Enterprising Oxford MPLS curates the wider innovation ecosystem - visit the Enspire Oxford site for more information. 

The concept of personal leadership (and followership) was highlighted repeated for early career researchers not only in light of an academic career but to encompass those who wish to transition out of academia. Events at this career stage need to recognise that academia is the alternative career with the majority explore careers elsewhere.

Those interviewed individually for the evaluation were asked “What could work for future course developments related to leadership?”. These provided more detailed responses which highlight that provision really does need tailoring to the research context whilst acknowledging that academic are extremely time focused. One notes that academics might select something externally supplied (The Royal Society is the example) and so the lesson for the ILP is to perhaps highlight the external knowledge coming in combined with the tailoring to the Oxford research context. Mentoring and being mentored were highlighted by two people as being desirable going forward.

She noted that new appointees needed more support on ‘how to do research’ : she had had no formal training on this, she simply learned from those she worked with, and would appreciate something on how to survive/ cope with the transition from ‘doing it all yourself’ in terms of research, to learning to delegate not only tasks but pieces of research, to a whole team: how to manage a group. Felt she would learn best from others who have done it well, i.e. from academic figures she could identify with, rather than trainers who give the theory but have not had to go through the actual practice, and so cannot share the tips and tricks for someone in a lab or engineering context.

Buying out time from teaching and admin to allow them to attend more sessions such as public policy. Would attend a Royal Society course on the latter if had time bought out. No more courses or events: already too time-poor: much of their unsustainable workload is self-driven, so they will select what is relevant to their needs and probably externally supplied.

He has recently participated in the on-line Leadership in Action programme with KCL, and found a lot of good learning with that, and would be very keen to have his group participate in future in-person versions of that. He particularly valued the reflective learning modelled in that programme, as well as the pre-course self-assessment that they were required to complete, including 3 other people filling in the same questionnaire about their experience of being led by them. He did not find the buddy system in LiA particularly helpful as he was buddied with a young PDoc who was not really able to offer him much in return, so would have preferred being allowed to swap buddies from time to time.

Maybe missing an opportunity to draw more explicit links between running a research group and running a small company: what it takes to start up both and what is required to maintain and grow them.  Would be great to have a panel programme with people sharing their successes and failures honestly, for building their relationship with industry/ collaborators, and how to approach getting industry funding.

Would be willing to be a mentor for another young academic, especially to help with putting in fellowship applications: something he now feels good at doing.

Developing cohorts of innovative leaders

The final question asked of our face to face evaluators was what would help build up the sense of community and networking with the ILP cohorts.

Overwhelmingly there was a desire for networking with a purpose such as termly learning lunches covering a specific aspect or programmes with very tangible results such as action plans, project submissions, best practice sharing or meeting external collaborators. Coupled with this was the idea of appealing to specific groups across the 4 existing cohorts. Example groupings included:

• Career stage.
• Discipline.
• Innovation / research topic.
• Pulling in people from outside division / Oxford / academia.
• People struggling with a particular leadership issue.

This would also naturally create inter-cohort networking and could then offer a wide programme of events across the academic year.

When it came to practicalities lunchtime events were seen as the most family friendly and accessible but there was a suggestion of moving times / days around to be as inclusive as possible. Hybrid and online events were proposed as ways of bringing in people from across the city’s campuses.

There was some interest in restarting action learning sets which had ‘faded’ after the programme but again these might be best done by career stage. It maybe that participation in other MPLS programmes such as Leadership in Action (which also uses this approach) would embed this practice more widely across the newer Oxford researcher community.

All those present at the end of the face-to-face evaluation session were given a postcard on which they had to complete the following sentence. You should consider the Innovation Leadership Programme if … because …

You should consider the innovation leadership programme if....

1. You want to improve your leadership skills or want to start something different because it provides very valuable tools and opens your eyes to new ways of thinking.
2. You want to create impact because it all starts with you.
3. You want to become confident / up-skill in your team management and leadership capabilities because at every stage of your innovation career, you will be a member and/or leader of an intellectually diverse team solving complicated problems.
4. You think you want to create innovation because it will give you a lot to think about various aspects of innovation.
5. You want to grow your network beyond you own department because global challenges require working cross-disciplines and across sectors.
6. You wish to achieve impact through innovation because it will provide you with tools and introduce you to a network of colleagues and collaborators.
7. You are curious about leadership and innovation because you will get a chance to listen to interesting and refreshing talks and some spin-out super stars.
8. You want your work to go beyond academic publications because it opens your mind to new avenues and opportunities.
9. You are new to management and leadership, think you may have an idea (or are interested in developing one) because the programme gives you a framework and some ideas to help you understand your role in leadership and innovation, and has interesting talks from successful innovators in industry and academia.
10. You have a wider interest in how your research might be taken further because it will help you develop new networks and acquire skills and tools to help.
11. You are curious about broadening your innovation, leadership, and management skills across the division because it's thought provoking and a lot of fun (focus on the action learning take aways)
12. You are interested in developing your own spinout because you'll find out what support is available (and it's a lot!)
13. You want to increase your confidence in how to effectively lead diverse groups of people because it provides you with the conceptual framework and practical examples.
14. You want to work more effectively because you will learn the tools you need.
15. You are starting to take on leadership roles (as a postdoc) because it provides you with the conceptual foundations that allow you to reflect and consciously decide on your leadership style.
16. You are starting a research group in Oxford because you'll get many of the tools to help you in building up your team, and a support network to help you along the way.
17. You want to build a more structured approach to running your existing group or constructing a fresh one because there is an opportunity to practice innovation ideas and to reflect on your style when interacting with the wider community.
18. You want to explore your potential and lead your own journey because this programme brings people with similar mindset together and then you are not exploring alone.