How we work
Demos as strategic partner
Demos is a strategic advisor to the National College for School Leadership, a new organisation which offers career learning and development opportunities for teachers. Working with NCSL, we are developing ‘networked learning communities’, which enable teachers to share their professional best practice. With backing from the Department of Education and Skills, this project incorporates a unique approach we describe as ‘real time research’. Demos also has a role of identifying and communicating process and content knowledge that the programme generates to relevant national policy makers.
Private sector innovation, public interest
How do you create a policy framework that promotes competition and innovation, while safeguarding the public interest? This was the important question which Demos and Cable & Wireless set out to answer in a research project which examined the future of telecoms regulation.
Timed to coincide with the creation of Ofcom, the new communications super-regulator, the Demos study explored the changing nature of innovation in a network society, and suggested a regulatory strategy which was designed to enhance Ofcom’s long-term effectiveness.
The project included a series of high-level seminars and a co-ordinated dissemination and media strategy. This was aimed at maximising the impact of the argument at a crucial moment in the debate on network regulation.
For Demos, this project provided an opportunity to deepen our analysis of the relationship between technology and society, which has been a consistent theme of our work.
Helping organisations face the future
They have been described as ‘long fuse, big bang’ problems – the kind of challenges that threaten organisations which fail to make themselves future proof. This idea is fairly well understood by the private sector, and now Demos has developed a new approach to working with public sector organisations to help them anticipate the big bangs.
When the DTI wanted to understand how the concept of learning would have changed by 2020, and how that might affect British competitiveness, Demos helped to build some possible scenarios. At a residential workshop for senior civil servants, senior academics and CEOs, we started by identifying the key drivers of change, which include demography, economics, technology and innovative capacity.
Demos has used scenario planning as one of its distinctive research tools for several years. It was originally developed as a policy analysis tool, but as part of our commitment to ‘change from within’ it has become a useful way of helping organisations in all sectors prepare for an uncertain future in a complex world.
Our International Work
Our international work has grown significantly in the past few years. We understand that the best ideas come through working internationally. That’s why we work with partners around the world to find solutions to the problems they have in common, from public service reform to democratic renewal; look for effective ways to tackle transnational policy challenges, such as migration and security; and facilitate an international network for the spread of the latest thinking and best practice.More about our international work.
Transparency (the Website)
Our website is designed for interaction and transparency. Find out more about the tools on the Demos site by going to the dedicated website project. Your feedback is welcome.Some highlights include:
The Greenhouse is a weblog - or, as they are more commonly referred to, a 'blog'. It is a site where our staff and associates can regularly post short items of interest, whether they are ideas, points for discussion, or references to information elsewhere. Visitors to the site can then add their own comments.
First and foremost the Greenhouse is our ‘outboard brain’. We find it’s a simple and accessible way to capture useful data, knowledge, informed opinion, cuttings and other weblinks - the raw stuff which our ideas are based upon.
It’s also a bit of an experiment in ‘open policy’ creation. We’re very keen to follow a more open approach to policy research and formulation – to build public policy in public, as it were. Occasionally we’ll try out new ideas on the blog before they’re published, in order to get input directly via comments from readers.
We also hope it provides a useful information resource for the policy community – people in government, business, other research organizations, the media and the wider public.
Please feel free to visit and add your own comments. Or you can get the Greenhouse RSS feed.
Social Bookmarking
We started to use del.icio.us for bookmarking sites and articles of interest anywhere on the internet. We liked the idea so much that our new site includes bookmarks within every project on the website. You can browse what we're reading from each project, or see what we’re reading on the del.icio.us site.
RSS (what is this?)
Subscribe to get project RSS updates from within each project - these include bookmarks, blog posts and blog comments. Look for the orange icon on pages with feeds. If you're interested in seeing everything we're reading, get the Demos del.icio.us RSS feed.
Demos Flickr
We believe in that old saying about pictures and 1,000 words. Or even if we don’t, we like using our digital cameras. See the faces behind the names or you can get the Demos Flickr RSS feed. We'll also include the photos from flickr on in each Demos project.