Keynote – Research-informed practice and practice-informed research [Forum special series]

This article is part of a special series of summaries of keynotes and presentations from the KM Triversary Forum 2025.

Note: The concepts in this article were originally published in the book KNOWledge SUCCESSion (2017), then further developed in Becoming Adaptable (2021). They were discussed in the KM Triversary Forum in October 2025. Many of the ideas and insights in this article are freely shared in the open access video channel Instant Insights, and in some of Dr Shelley’s LinkedIn posts (see open source links in the bibliography at the end of this article). 

Executive summary:

So why don’t academics (theorists if you prefer) and practitioners effectively interact to generate mutual value? The opportunities for synergies are vast, yet they are mostly not realised. This article explores some of the barriers to this complex challenge and discusses some actions to address these. Two key foundational challenges are weak connections between theorists and practitioners, and an understanding of why these links are important to the wider knowledge profession.

Primary causes of these disconnects are that academics don’t read practitioner literature, practitioners don’t read academic literature, and there are limited relationships between these groups. Each “side” does not see the potential synergies as lost opportunities. This is amplified by them talking “different languages”, valuing different outcomes and preferring different approaches.  Parties on each side of the Academic-Practitioner gap may believe this is being unfairly critical. However, those who have worked in both fields know how real these issues are and understand the opportunities for greater value to be generated through stronger collaborative initiatives in cross-discipline fields and projects.

This article highlights opportunities to reverse these issues and generate interactions and meaningful dialogue, rather than attribute blame. There are significant opportunities to bring these parties together to stimulate ideas, drive innovations, and generate collaborative growth, when parties from both sides see and value each other’s perspectives. Connections can be made from practitioners’ observations through experiences to test or extend theoretical models. Equally, evidence-based research, theories, models and frameworks can be used by practitioners to accelerate the development and application of ideas and influence design.

We make better progress when diverse parties simplify language to align conversations and optimise collaboration. When we constructively engage in critical argument across disciplines to leverage differences, we spark innovation and engage in cocreation of new knowledge and insights – the catalysts for sustained future growth.

Some initial context about optimising value from this article

To optimise our learning from each other, we benefit from engaging in constructive conversations in which all parties feel safe and trust that their perspectives will be respected and professionally engaged. This requires mutual respect, active listening and open minds, facilitated in an applied social learning ecosystem. To achieve this, it is useful to consider:

You can’t successfully listen with your mouth open, act with your mind closed, or lead with a dispassionate heart. Conservations are richest when the relationships between participants are important and respected. In fact, the relationships are an important outcome of constructive conversations and form a strong foundation for even more powerful future conversations.

Creating the optimal environment for interactions between people is a big part of how we accelerate productivity with any group of professionals, especially when we deliberately seek to get diversity of views across disciplines.  As virtual interactions become more common in the age of remote working, videoconferencing and Artificial Intelligence (AI), building a trusted environment in blended spaces is a critical element of leadership and professional facilitation. Having read this article, try to find others who will constructively argue their interpretations and insights with you, so that you can all learn from each other.

The benefits of arguing and collaborating across disciplines

Imaging travelling to a city for a knowledge event from wherever you were before. Your journey from your departure point to your destination is unique. Each person at that same event will tell a different story of what happened along their way, and how this impacted them. They describe the things they noticed and cannot describe the things they did not notice. So, their description of the journey is inevitably incomplete and based on personal perspectives of the limited things they can take in. Multiply this incompleteness across each individual in attendance, and then multiply that by the directions they came from, the distance they travelled and the modes of transport. A huge diversity of experiences that generated their knowledge of the trip to that same point. Each individual journey is evidence-based reality for each person, and yet it is incomplete knowledge of the total possibilities. Imagine if everyone in attendance had all knowledge of all possible journeys.

This is why conversations about shared experiences and their differences are critical to develop a more complete understanding of our total reality. This is what we are trying to achieve in knowledge management. More complete understanding of everything relevant to that context (and sometimes adapting that from other experiences). How we engage in conversations, what we choose to share  and our perspectives on that can that lead to better decisions, actions and learning, if we choose to engage constructively around differences.

Even within one discipline we have significant diversity of understanding of the situations faced. The theorists have deep knowledge of how to explain various aspects of that field in a controlled environment. Practitioners have a very different set of perspectives about how difficult it is to achieve a controlled environment in the “real world” and are often unaware of what foundational theories may influence their outcomes. Investing in facilitating conversations across people from these different backgrounds to constructively challenge each other, inevitably brings greater insights to everyone involved. So what is the issue?…

A few fundamental truths (“problems” we perhaps may not wish to admit)

1. Academics don’t read practitioner literature.
2. Practitioners don’t read academic literature.
3. Synergy opportunities are being lost because of the lack of cross-discipline interactions.
4. Language nuances are barriers to understanding.
5. There is a big difference in the focus and purpose of theorists and practitioners.
6. Visualization can be of greater help to stimulate creative knowledge co-creation.

The best way to frame a “problem” is to look at what value can be created if it can be resolved. That is, frame it as an opportunity, rather than a challenge. Shifting the frame of mind, adjusts our thinking from convergence to to divergence and opens up potential benefits.
The insights hidden inside this opportunity to be harvested are:

• We more clearly see the nuggets of gold on both sides for all parties which not being leveraged.
• We generate stronger links and respect between theorists and practitioners.
• Fostering these links is important to grow the profession of knowledge management.

From this opportunity perspective we can begin to explore how to address challenges and realise the benefits they hold. Facilitating knowledge-generating conversations is a combination of science and art. It involves engaging all participants into the conversation by building rapport and trust. Humans are social creatures that engage across the capabilities of knowing (thinking involving knowledge, insights, experiences, stories, imagination etc.), doing (actions involving talent, insights, projects, processes, tasks etc.) and being (behaving involving feelings, perspectives, motivation, empathy etc.).

An experienced knowledge leader intuitively “reads the room” to generate a sense of connection between the participants. They skilfully facilitate the conversation to engage the participants in a conversation in which they desire to contribute to and learn from. This takes a lot of practice and a deep understanding of the theories behind complex social interactions. Such conversations are highly emergent and fluid. They can turn in a moment on a single comment or even expression of body language. The facilitator needs to be highly adept at noticing shifts and constructively guiding the participants, without leading them into a predetermined agenda. Getting balance in these interactions right, motivates participants and the group as a whole into a journey of becoming. That is, evolve the individuals and the collective capabilities to be more than they were before the conversation happened. Successful people are constantly stimulating their capabilities, connections and confidence through participation in such interactions. In doing so they build their assets such as reputation, credibility, trust and contribution.

The practitioner-theorist language barrier

A productive conversation requires a common language and a shared purpose.  Unfortunately, theorists (academics) and practitioners are very different in both these areas. Table 1 shows the vast gaps in their focus (purpose) and the language they use to communicate their challenges and findings. This contributes to why they do not engage with each other and why they do not read each other’s literature.

Table 1. Differences in purpose and language of practitioners and theorists.

Although shared with a little humour, the point is made that to get the best out of a cross-discipline conversation we need to clarify the purpose and be clear about what aspects of this conversation we want to explore. Each participant will come from one side or the other (occasionally with some experiences of both) and can interpret the same word differently. For example, a “result” could be a theoretical idea to an academic. In contrast, an idea is seen as a possibility to be tried to a practitioner and not a “result” as such. These differences can add to the quality of the conversation if acknowledged and embraced as a source of insights. However, if the facilitator does not generate some dialogue about these at the beginning misunderstandings are likely to occur. In these situations, the conversations are more likely to lead to conflict, rather than cocreative collaboration.

Facilitating productive conversations

Two of the key levers a facilitator uses to generate positive flow in conversations are the level of control they apply, and the level of socialisation they stimulate. This is a fine balance that shifts in different stages of the conversation. Figure 1 shows some of the outputs (shorter-term tangible results) and outcomes (long-term intangible impacts) that are generated at different stages of the conversation and how the balance is shifted across these two levers.

Too much of either of the levers at the wrong time will reduce the benefits generated (both outputs and outcomes). For example, all socialisation and no control will lead to everyone just having fun (or fighting), nothing gets captured and often the conversation goes off topic. With too much control and insufficient socialisation, people do not share, stifling participation and cocreation. Often there is more control at the beginning of a conversation (e.g. to establish purpose and guidelines for engagement) and at the end (e.g. to ensure insights have been captured and next steps are clear). In the middle there is more socialisation to enable everyone to be involved and allow ideas to bounce off each other. However, it varies depending on the situation (business as usual or a crisis), the level of risk involved, the level of familiarity between participants, the diversity of participants (age, seniority, gender, ethnic backgrounds etc.) and the level of trust between them. This is where the capabilities of the facilitator shine (or fail). They are not there to inform or determine what ideas are better than others, they are there to get the participants to determine that. They operate best when asking questions and seeking clarification from as many people as possible, and of course, generating some creative friction (deliberate constructive disagreement).

Augmentation with AI and other social media technology can play a key role in facilitating these conversations. A conversation can now include people not in the room at that time (either via real time virtual participation, or asynchronous involvement through social media and virtual collaboration board platforms). AI input and virtual reality technologies can also stimulate and support learning and the creation of new ideas. Visualizations can enhance the quality of the conversations by providing creative input stimulants and also for summarizing outputs (which then become the input for the next level conversation). Computer generated visuals are becoming more powerful as they can capture complex insights and draw them into creative imagery. People engage and learn better when engaged in a continuous process of social interaction across a diversity of perspectives and deploying creative tools to enhance their experiences. Far better than attempting to learn in isolation from just their own interpretation of documents and other “flat content”.

Greater understanding emerges from sharing knowledge that facilitates the creation of new ideas and potential innovation. Both consciously and unconsciously, as we interact with others, we develop a deeper understanding of others and ourselves. Fostering an appreciation for diversity, expanding the domain of potential ideas and creating collaborative advantage are now more possible than ever. We are able to gain the advantage of other’s thinking at or above our personal level of thinking, while simultaneously creating in a way that remains uniquely ours, whilst concurrently informed by others.

Moving towards cocreative KM through collaborative research

Everyone is capable of cocreating research insights, provided they are open to and apply these  actions and characteristics in a safe inclusive social environment:

• Proactively organising interactions to include participants across disciplines with both theorists and practitioners.
• Adjusting language to suit a wider target readership.
• Facilitating applied social learning ecosystems that actively include diversity of perspectives.
• Create collaborative projects across multidisciplinary teams that have both strong theoretical foundations and practical application.
• Share stories of these projects and their outcomes across multiple communication channels.
• Publish more insights in open access media for greater exposure and application.
• Listen to different ideas with an open mind.
• Being insatiably curious and collaborative.
• Invest to build trusted networks across disciplines.
• Respectfully engage in “Creative Friction” to encourage safe experimentation.
• Proactively enable the full potential of others through inclusive social interactions.
• Being SELF adaptable and help others adapt.
• Being prepared to apply your ideas in a real project to test them in practice and stimulate learning through open reflections on the outcomes.

Optimising the environment for collaborative research is a complex challenge, as depicted in Figure 2. All parties being role models of inclusive behaviour are critical to building trust. Once this environment is created, a spirit of a connected team grows. Collaborative conversation spirals generate the flow that leads to the co-creation of new ideas, knowledge and most importantly, trusted relationships. There are great synergies that flow from this constructive challenging of a range of perspectives, as new insights emerge in the gaps between the experiences of the participants.

A few tips on how to accelerate your conversations across research and practice

• Facilitate Collaborative Conversation Spirals (everyday).
• Leverage creative conversation starters to encourage socialisation.
• Engage teams in Creative Friction (deliberate constructive disagreement).
• Deliberately (& safely) engage people outside familiar comfort zones.
• Focus on generating new insights, not just transferring existing knowledge.
• Stimulate MindFLEX interactions to use and adapt tacit insights in innovation.
• Focus on outcomes more than outputs for long-term creative development.
• Acknowledge learning is a critical outcome of every interaction (and intangible benefits are usually more important than the short-term outputs).

In summary

Recognise the value of association and how conversations enable new insights to be generated across disciplines. We better prepare our minds by looking at the world through multiple frames of reference. This is amplified by interacting intelligently with others, creating a place where new ideas emerge, and accepting that emotions have a role to play. To thrive, research requires outward focus and inclusion of feedback from practical experiences and creative conversations. Knowledge sharing, collaboration and cocreation across disciplines accelerates mutual learning and increases benefit generation.

So when you organise your next interaction or event, don’t just invite those who will agree with you. Open the forum to a range of views and facilitate the conversations and environment in a way that encourages active constructive disagreement. A forum that is one-way preaching from experts, at best transfers some existing perspectives and known knowledge. It is many listening (not necessarily learning) to one contributing. When your forum is open conversation in a trusted ecosystem, with all reflecting on what is shared, and then providing their perspectives on that, we have many learning from many. This is where real new insights are sparked to generate cocreation of new knowledge and drive innovation (when the ideas are put into practice).

Biography:

Dr Shelley commenced his scientific career as an industry practitioner interested in research to understand how and why things work better. Early in his career, he did a Master of Science (by research) in parallel with working on research projects in the food industry. His interests in continuous improvement led to quality management and then knowledge management in the mid-1990s, and ultimately to his role as the Global Knowledge Director for an international company. In 2007, he re-entered an academic career in parallel with his own strategic knowledge consulting business. He received an Australian Office of Learning and Teaching Award in 2014 for his project-based knowledge management course in the executive MBA at RMIT University, Melbourne. His 40 years of experience cover international corporate, government, and tertiary education sectors across 12 countries. He has been an active contributor to RealKM Magazine, AusKM, SIKM Leaders, KMGN, KM4Dev and led the Melbourne KM Leadership Forum for over a decade. Arthur is internationally recognised as a knowledge thought leader, in lists compiled by SIKM Leaders and GO-TKM. He is the sole author of four books (and coauthor/contributor to many more), author of many peer-reviewed research articles, a small business founder, a regular international conference speaker, a Non-Executive Board director, and PhD Supervisor for candidates in three countries.

Presentation resources: PowerPoint slides.

Header image source: © Dr Arthur Shelley.

Artificial intelligence (AI) statement: AI was not used in preparing this article.

Open source bibliography of related concepts:

• Instant Insights. Short video “Conversation Starters”.
• Applied Social Learning Ecosystems. Cocreative environments to innovate.
• Reverse Bloom Learning Framework. Leaders as facilitative learners.
• Becoming Adaptable. Being the best possible future you.

Primary source references:

Bennet and Shelley (2024). Innovative Creativity. Creating with innovation in mind. MQI Press.

Shelley (2017). KNOWledge SUCCESSion. Sustained performance and capability growth through strategic knowledge projects. Business Expert Press.

Shelley (2021). Becoming Adaptable. Intelligent Answers.