The policy brief addresses five key messages:

• Actionable knowledge is context-specific knowledge that assists actors in their decision-making to be better positioned to achieve their goals.
• Producing actionable knowledge with multi-actor approaches requires more than gathering ‘multiple actors’ around the table; it requires attention for the settings and processes that stimulate social learning, empower actors, and build social capital leading to consensus for action.
• Effective actionable knowledge production is based on mutual understanding, trust, and a common vision among researchers and societal actors; consortia should be enabled to stimulate social learning and build this social capital both before as well as over the course of a project.
• The inherent unpredictability of innovation processes requires funding schemes that foster adaptive, learning-oriented project governance approaches replacing the accountability-focused schemes currently in place.
• More experimentation with innovation-sensitive funding instruments is needed to better understand how to effectively cross-pollinate scientific and practitioner knowledge and address pressing global issues. 

The brief concludes with recommendations to promote the production of actionable knowledge. These include changes to proposal development and project governance, facilitated through an adapted research policy designed to create impact.

For more information:

• Read more about DiverIMPACTS here
• Download the policy brief here