ARC Linkage Projects with Professor Bruce Smyth

My colleagues and I are currently evaluating 10 popular divorce smartphone apps. These apps seek to help separated parents manage their parenting arrangements. They vary in cost and features, and typically comprise a messaging tool, shared calendar, and expense tracker. Family courts around the globe are mandating the use of apps despite no evidence of efficacy or safety. Some apps can inadvertently do more harm than good by fuelling conflict or be technologies of power, control, and abuse. We're developing a free web-based tool to help family law professionals and separated parents understand the benefits and risks of different apps. Our Partner Organisation is Relationships Australia.

Many of the world's biggest problems cannot be solved by any single discipline or by the 'lone scholar' model. Building strong relationships with industry and not-for-profit organisations can drive innovation, create mutually beneficial opportunities for real-world change and future projects. Aside from their higher success rate, LPs build research capacity for the good of the nation. We could not have conducted our interdisciplinary study without the support and knowledge of our partners, and vice versa. Projects come and go, but relationships can be long lasting and produce great research.

Early genuine engagement with partner organisations is the foundation stone on which successful LPs are built. Developing respectful and trusting relationships is critical but takes time and effort. We usually start with an informal chat over a cuppa with a colleague in an organisation who might be willing to be a champion for the project and take it up the line with a concept brief (i.e., 'the pitch') setting out how a project fits with an organisation's strategic plan. These early discussions can take anywhere between six months to two years. Once the project starts to takes shape, we rely heavily on the advice of Rebecca Payne and her team.

Writing grant applications necessitates a distinct set of writing skills compared to traditional academic outputs. It requires persuasive storytelling, combined with a thorough understanding of both the specific objectives and requirements of the ARCs funding scheme and the Partner Organisation's objectives and requirements. To be successful, LP applications need to ensure they effectively communicate the benefit, value for taxpayer dollars, impact, and alignment with the ARC and Partner Organisations' goals. As my colleague Professor Emma Shultz emphasised in our recent discussion of LPs: simply pursuing funding for a project solely for monetary reasons is unlikely to succeed.

Some projects simply cannot be done without university and industry partnerships. The life of a tree flows in both directions: from the roots up, from the leaves down. Co-design and co-production are more than buzz words. Our current LP has been successful and the team such a joy. Even though our partner investigators are outstanding researchers themselves, they work alone and say they have gained a lot from working as a team. We've benefitted from their real-world insights on how things work on the ground. Win-Win.

There are some key learnings I would like to share. First of all, start early, especially engaging potential partners with a strong mutually advantageous idea; seek seed funding from within the College to do some early groundwork to demonstrate 'proof of concept'; build a strong team that will get along - just one difficult team member can destroy a great project; set-up clear rules about how the team will work; lock-in the budget ASAP so the scope of the project can be determined early; be prepared for partners to drop out at the last minute - have a Plan B; find funds to allow someone to develop an ethics proposal: ARC funds cannot be accessed without ethics approval; and never 'hit-and-run' by using a partner for money or resources and then ignoring them forever after.