On 31 May 2023, STRATEGY partner Pertti Woitsch, CEO of Woitsch consulting, led a workshop at the RISE conference on exploitation of project results. The workshop began with an important question: what does exploitation actually mean, and is it different to communication and dissemination? Indeed, while dissemination and communication are about the promotion of results and making them public, exploitation is the concrete use of results.
Following an initial presentation, workshop members engaged in two rounds of fruitful roundtable discussions. In the first round, workshop participants split into two separate groups. The two groups were given different missions: to come up with bad versus good exploitation strategies based on past experiences. In the second discussion, workshop members split into three groups. Group 1 thought about the importance of stakeholders, Group 2 brainstormed the importance of passive communication (i.e., listening), and Group 3 discussed active communication within the context of result exploitation. Both discussion rounds allowed partners to think broadly and creatively about how best to exploit results.
In the last session of the workshop, partners talked about how to exploit results from the STRATEGY project specifically. Souzanna Sofou, of Satways, presented a useful framework for thinking about results exploitation. Using this framework, partners were encouraged to explore how to communicate the importance of their results in a succinct, clear and engaging way.
Result exploitation is key to a successful project, because it helps ensure that results are utilised by those who need them, and therefore that the project has a long-term influence. This workshop was thus an incredibly useful activity, where partners learnt about best practices in result exploitation, and were given the tools needed to think about exploitation of their own work.