Interact

InterAct seeks to “pioneer human insight for industry” and is a call to arms for academics from the social sciences to support the innovation and diffusion of digital technologies that will result in a stronger, more resilient UK manufacturing industry. Working alongside other partners within the wider Made Smarter community, the long-term vision is to build a strong, vibrant, interdisciplinary community to support UK manufacturing.

Officially launching at Digital Manufacturing Week, this is an exciting 38-month programme of work, commencing from November 2021 and is due to end in December 2024. Along with Prof. Jan Godsell and Prof. Jill MacBryde, supporting the programme is a dedicated Network Management Team and a core research team from Loughborough, Strathclyde, and Sheffield Universities.

Jan and Jill undertook preliminary work throughout the summer, talking to stakeholders, understanding their needs, and designing the network. Between March and July 2021, over 30 stakeholders from industry and academic were interviewed, along with other information gathering sessions, such as town hall events, workshops and a nudgeathon. The InterAct network and programme of activity will take these learnings to ensure it meets the needs of stakeholders.

There are 5 key elements to the programme:

• A Commissioned research programme will provide the opportunity to curate, augment and amplify insights from the ESS to support the diffusion and adoption of IDTs. 5 different funding mechanisms have been adopted to broaden the appeal of the programme and increase participation. These include systematic reviews, small projects, a sandpit, Early Career Researcher (ECR) Fellowship programme, and an impact acceleration fund resulting in 18 interdisciplinary projects.
  
  
• A Knowledge exchange programme is critical to the diffusion of ideas from the ESS to the policy makers, manufacturers and IDT providers who could benefit from the adoption of IDTs. The comprehensive programme includes a range of activities that amplify the core research programme (international webinars, discovery days, annual conference), provide education and insights (impact workshops, insight days, summer school), support academic publication (special tracks, journal special issue) and enable and amplify the diffusion of ideas (website and curation platform, mentoring programme, access to Emerald impact services).
  
  
• The Core research programme compliments the commissioned research programme base by addressing more systemic problems that require a longer term and more in-depth research. It has the additional benefit of providing a common purpose to galvanise the team. Future focused it considers the future of manufacturing ecosystems (Prof. Jan Godsell and Dr Alok Choudray, Loughborough), future of work (Prof. Jill MacBryde and Prof. Colin Lindsay, Strathclyde) and the future of the economy (Prof. Vania Sena and Prof. Philip McCann, Sheffield).

• An Impact acceleration programme. There are lots of ESS insights currently in existence, that are not in a form that is easily accessible to policy makers, manufacturers, and IDT providers. Researchers often lack the time and skills to turn their work into more accessible outputs. An impact acceleration programme has the dual benefit of building impact capacity within the ESS community whilst making the insights more accessible to end users.

• A Storytelling fellowship programme. The ability to use storytelling as a methodology and form of dissemination is a key research skill for economic and social scientists. The storytelling fellowship programme has the dual benefits of building storytelling capacity within the ESS whilst using stories to make insights more accessible to the end users, the network and society at large.