I work at Ghent University (which is in Belgium – which is a country on its own in Europe and not part of Germany – as one American teenager asked me yesterday). I am a senior policy advisor who’s at the moment working on an institutional strategy about societal value creation of research.

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At least, that’s the terminology that we have chosen out of the whole cornucopia of related vocabulary.I have been kindly invited by Susan to add a European flavor to this conference and talk about my experiences.

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Having a societal impact to one’s research is not new.Just as there is great diversity in researchers and their personalities…

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There is also great diversity in research goals and their results.

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Still, this image of the ivory tower keeps prevailing.[click slide] Some universities eve go as far as to adopt the term for naming their buildings.I for one, have always had difficulty with this image because I cannot seem to match this with all the activities I see happening at my university.

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So let us take up this idea of mode 2 research and enter the hustle-and-bustle of the agora. A market place where knowledge and experience is exchanged.But once you are out there, among other people (be it peers, local and global citizens, policy makers, business and so on) what is it that society expects from our researchers?

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And how can we describe and measure whether the expectations are being met? Must all research be relevant? Must all researchers engage with society? Is this something that can be pushed down from the top or does this need to grow bottom-up? Does everybody recognize themselves in these global challenges?

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Across the world programmes and entities are being put in place to address this issue of accountability and impact.Broader Impacts in the US, Research Evaluation Frameworks in the UK and Australia, Standard Evaluation Protocol in the Netherlands, Research Councils in Belgium and Finland and of course, the European funding system – Seventh Framework Programme and now Horizon 2020.Their fundamentals might be the same but the implementation differs. Which makes me wonder what the pathways to impact are?And more importantly, what is expected from our researchers in this whole process?

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However, what does seem clear to me is that we as universities have a very important role of supporting our researchers in this endeavour.

We must offer them an array of tools, lower the thresholds towards impact, and most importantly reward those who have already been on the yellow brick road and have cleared the path for the others.

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We must get to grips with the many ways in which impact can be approached and stimulated – not just at our funding offices but also at our policy level.

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