How to get knowledge transfer from the humanities and social sciences within a research institution really going? “Creating examples” and “training transfer officers” are repeatedly stated as answer to this question. Our new in-house training “The Case” addresses both: Along a trained systematic and method-based approach, transfer officers and scientists develop a facility-specific transfer case. That is “learning by doing”!

The format, which Görgen und Köller GmbH (G&K) developed together with Mark Mann (mark mann oü), has now been implemented at Charles University Prague. Based on research results on the topic of role identity in social work, on DAY 1 the team of the university including the researcher itself generated systematically three transfer ideas and summarized them in an Innovation Card. In the HOMEWORK PHASE, the three resulting groups subjected their ideas to a reality check in direct contact with the stakeholders: Are the ideas really relevant for the target group; were the assumptions from DAY 1 correct? On DAY 2 and 3, a two-day workshop, we further developed the ideas along the four dimensions of the Research Impact Card “Value”, “Offer”, “Operation” and “Budgeting”, defined an action plan and simulated a pitch.

The result is encouraging:

• Three complementary transfer ideas suitable for implementation with the impact goal “to help poor people get help fast and easy”. Among others, they can serve the team as a best practice example.
• A scientist (there can be more) with a changed understanding of knowledge transfer: “I was very sceptical in the beginning, but this was really useful for me”.
• Ten employees of the transfer unit with the intention to integrate methods, approaches and ideas into their daily work: “I will use this for my own case”.