Communicate to Innovate Innovate to Communicate

inscico is devoted to science and innovation communication.

Our Institute conducts contract research with and for public funders and industry. We audit and design methods for impact evaluation, and facilitate change management processes in communication.

Our Academy branch offers customised trainings to support the professionalisation of your team.

For various forms of media production, we also run our own publishing house with a film studio and a software development team, for instance for mobile apps.

Research & Evaluation

Dovetailing Scholarship and Practice

With more than 40.000 reads, our manifesto on “Evidence-based Science Communication” (Jensen & Gerber, 2020) has given voice to a need for exchange between practitioners and scholars of science communication. We have tried to foster these forms of transfer and ‘praxis’ in applying our research as part of various projects, both directly contracted by industry, and through various projects funded by the European Commission, national and regional RFOs, private foundations, and NGOs.

Social Research Toolbox

We specialise in evidence-based design, testing and validation of sophisticated research instruments for measuring the impact of science & innovation communication. When clients ask us to audit their existing evaluation practices, most of the tools normally do not pass the methods test. Even many standard tools such as surveys, interviews or focus groups often bear severe design flaws, which inevitably results in misleading data and thus potentially wrong decisions.

By carefully mixing and triangulating different methodologies and types of data, our evaluation strategies can help reveal strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats of institutional communication, many of which the client often was not aware of.

In addition to the standard toolbox of applied empirical social science research methods, inscico is also experienced in ethnographic approaches, comparative and trans-cultural studies, environmental economics, and automated data-rich content analyses.

Research-based Governance Change

Besides helping organisations improve their understanding of communication impacts, we also support internal strategy development much earlier in the process. Approaches such as Design Thinking and Theory of Change can help organisations reassess their communication strategies and complement those with innovative communication initiatives. As a driver for change, we often recommend conducting a systematic stakeholder analysis, possibly even by co-creating the future strategies with those stakeholders as part of the process.

Consulting & CPD

Professionalisation Through Customized Training

Science communicators find themselves under increasing pressure to professionalise. While communication can only be as effective as the practitioners are skilled, the majority of them are actually career changers. We therefore help organisations close this gap between rapidly increasing demands and available methodological skill-sets in the communications team. Our Academy offers training and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) both face-to-face and online, in-house or externally, as short impulses or long-term programs, for large or small learning groups as well as individual coaching for executives.

Government and Policy Advice

inscico has provided several governments and trans-national organisations with guidance on how science / innovation / technology policy can be designed to foster certain forms of communication and transfer, especially in the areas of transdisciplinary research, social innovation, and RRI.

Publishing & Media Production

Your Trusted Publishing Partner

With experience both in various fields of science / innovation on the one hand and publishing / film production / software development on the other, we support your projects with out-of-the-box solutions, online and printing.

As a ‘general contractor’, we can help with concept and story-mining, script-writing or journalistic content and film production, text editing and lectorate, layout, graphic design and animation, online and offline content marketing, programming of websites and mobile apps.

Direct Orders

To order books directly from our publishing house (instead of through your local bookstore, online vendors, or e-book providers), please contact us under verlag@inscico.eu.

The following books are available to order to order at the moment:

edition innovare

Trendstudie Wissenschaftskommunikation
(Gerber)

Science Communication Research Field Analysis
(Gerber et al.)

edition wissenschaftsmarketing

Wissenschaftssystem und Wissenschaftsrecht
(Wolf & Hauf)

Events in der Wissenschaft
(Kirchner et al.)

Public Affairs in der Wissenschaft
(Mono)

Wissenschaft als Marke
(Jänig & Labahn)

edition poetis

Visits (Crawford)