Impact as an Iterative Process: Building Continuity through Teamwork

Much literature and research has focused on the tensions and problems of doing impact-driven research, even as the need for greater impact upon the grand challenges facing society has become an imperative for strategy and organization scholars. In this paper, we draw upon a case study of a 14-year team-based program of research that was intended from the outset to have impact. We explain the evolving nature of our impact, which we attributed to two features of our research process. First, the process of doing impact through iteration between co-creating, translating, and performing activities, from which new research questions emerge, new collaborators become engaged, and new impacts arise. Second, our ability to remain in the field over sufficient time, and with sufficient scope, due to our teamwork approach to research and impact. Based on our case study, we develop a framework for teamwork and its implications for practical and academic impact over the long-term. Our case contributes to a more dynamic understanding of the process of doing impact, and to the means of attaining continuity to have impact within a field.