Case studies

Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): Developing a roadmap for the future of chemistry

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The Brief

The Royal Society of Chemistry is the largest organisation in Europe for advancing the chemical sciences. Recognising the potential their members have in contributing to a sustainable world the RSC set out to create a roadmap of priority areas and opportunities over the next 5 to 15 years. When developing this project there was a strong desire to involve more of the Society's membership than is normally achieved through small project committee meetings. One of the key objectives was to give members including those based overseas a strong sense of ownership in the eventual plan.

The RSC was looking for input of its members at various stages during the development of the roadmap. To maximise the level of insight gained from the membership, Dialogue by Design was approached to design and run a series of online consultations, which made it easy and convenient for the members to feed in their expertise.

The Process

Dialogue by Design designed and created the consultation website using its bespoke engagement software. The consultation process involved a number of iterations, starting with a set of open questions about the opportunities and barriers perceived by members. These questions were formulated following a series of seven workshops which identified key themes for the chemical sciences.

Dialogue by Design's specialist web-enabled system gave the RSC instant access to submissions throughout this first consultation period. This meant they were able to incorporate feedback from the consultation into the draft roadmap from its very first day. The second iteration gave participants the opportunity to review all submissions made in the first stage and to comment on the draft roadmap created as a result. In total over 400 people provided input online into one or more stages of this consultation process.

The Outcome

The final roadmap was published in 2009 and included priorities set by the membership, thus enabling a high degree of ownership during the implementation phase.

Quotes

"It was very interesting to know the responses, interests and thinking of other colleagues about the issues." - Participant feedback

"The developers of this phase of the roadmap deserve the gratitude of the whole chemistry community and I congratulate them on the quality of their work." - Participant feedback