Cornerstones of Impact Management: How to Plan, Implement, Assess, and Understand Factors for Success

by Anne-Maree Dowd (Editor), Thomas Keenan (Editor), Kathryn Graham (Editor)

Overview

Cornerstones of Impact Management is a comprehensive and practical guide to all aspects of impact management. It provides insights and expertise from leading practitioners from around the world, who have decades of experience in starting impact management from scratch, shifting cultures, developing systems and processes, and establishing leading-edge practices. It explores planning, implementing, scaling and assessing impact interventions, particularly within research and innovation, and policy, contexts.

Whether you’re a seasoned impact practitioner or just starting your journey, Cornerstones of Impact Management is the definitive resource for understanding and optimising the impact contribution of your project, team, organisation or broader system of operation. It provides invaluable insights for researchers and research managers, policy makers, evaluators, knowledge mobilisers and quality improvement practitioners.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781041125150
Publisher:	CSIRO Publishing
Publication date:	10/07/2025
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anne-Maree Dowd PhD is the Executive Manager of Performance and Evaluation at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO. She has led the impact agenda within CSIRO since 2014 and has been involved at the international level on research impact.

Thomas Keenan PhD is the director of Tractuum, an impact management consultancy based in Queensland, Australia. He led the planning and evaluation activities of the CSIRO Impact Team from 2016 to 2019 and continues to support the advancement of the CSIRO approach to impact management as a consultant.

Kathryn Graham PhD, FCAHS is a Professor of Research Impact Assessment at the University of Calgary, Canada, and was previously at Alberta Innovates. Her name is synonymous with advancing both the science and practice of impact. She has 30 years of experience in advising impact driven organisations on how to strategically design, measure, scale and maximise their impact performance.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The foundations of impact  1. Impact by design  2. Inspiring and fostering a positive impact culture  3. Managing your culture shift  4. Mitigating risks to impact  5. Integrated impact planning approaches and processes  6. Communication and engagement at the planning stage  7. Risks at the planning stage  8. Monitoring progress and risk  9. Why and when to undertake impact evaluation  10. Impact evaluation principles and approaches  11. The role of economics in assessing impact  12. Assessing the value of impacts  13. Quality assurance for impact assessments  14. The art of making impact visible  15. Forecasting impact: Potential value from innovation  16. What’s on the horizon for the impact field