strategy and relationship building with medical research institutes (MRIs)

dandolo partners have developed a unique concentration of expertise in consulting with medical research institutes around Australia. Senior Consultant Michelle Stratemeyer (MS) talked with Director Joe Connell (JC) to learn more about the range of work that dandolo has undertaken over the last five years in this unique sector.

MS: Joe, this interview is a bit different to some of the other ones we’ve done as we’re not talking about a specific project. Instead, we’re going to talk more broadly about the types of work we have done when working with a specific sector – medical research institutes (MRIs). Let’s start by talking about what MRIs are, and how they’re a unique type of organisation.

JC:  Sure. MRIs are unique because of their strength of focus on research. Unlike universities they don’t do teaching and lecturing – although they do supervise some graduate students. They just do research. And while they frequently work very closely with hospitals and clinicians, they don’t have patients. The actual research they can do really varies. In Melbourne alone you have some MRIs with a ‘basic science’ research focus – upstream research about how our bodies and diseases in them work, you have others that incorporate a translational focus, and others still  that work on public health or even social science research. But the unifying theme of all the MRIs is that strength of focus on research.

MRIs are a big part of the medical research ecosystem in Australia and Australia has a proud history of medical research innovations. The Cochlear implant is probably the iconic and historic example. But we’ve worked with MRI clients who are commercialising a new leukemia drug, and others who are manufacturing gene therapies to treat rare and horrible conditions in children.

Melbourne, in particular, has one of the best medical research output in the world, second only to Boston. And there’s a big collection of MRIs in Melbourne. But we’ve worked with significant MRIs interstate, too.

MS: Okay so they have a singular focus on research, what does that mean for the way that they operate?

JC: Well it certainly presents some challenges in terms of operations and funding. Universities get funded through student fees and government contributions for teaching students. It’s widely accepted that they cross subsidise research. Hospitals that do research are funded on an entirely different basis. But if all you do is research then all you can be funded to do is research.

Research grant funding has always been competitive, and that’s a good thing. But funding has gotten more competitive. For example, its more common now for projects to receive grants, compared to researchers receiving fellowship funding. As a result, there are instabilities in staffing. Coupled with this is an increasing appetite – particularly from government funders – for MRIs to be producing research that is translational and outcomes-focused. There’s new government funding – the MRFF – that will eventually match the size of the NHMRC funding, but is specifically targeted to translation. So, MRIs are needing to think much more strategically and commercially about the work they produce to meet these expectations.

On top of that, science is an inherently uncertain area to work in. Discoveries are made through investigation and testing, which means that it’s often people with a strong internal drive and curiosity who end up in this type of work. That can make it really hard for researchers to take a step back from the highly intense, specialised work they do to look at a broader picture where trade-offs between projects, areas and researchers have to be made for commercial viability. As outsiders, we often have a more objective view of which areas are strategically better placed for funding, but it’s also really hard for us to say which diseases or medical health issues deserve more attention. It can be a source of frustration for everyone involved!

MS: That gives a really good sense of the environment that MRIs work in, and some of the challenging aspects of their day-to-day operation. What sort of work has dandolo done with MRIs over the last few years?

JC: First off, let me say that our work is not about lobbying. What we are aiming to do is create strong, well argued, analytical strategies for the MRIs which we know will resonate and be understood by the intended audience, including government. Now, having made that point, I think you can consider our work as falling into one of two buckets. First, we have done a lot of work on strategic planning. Given the passionate, curious minds in medical research, this means having to bring people on board to take a hard look at the work being done and making decisions about what they will and won’t do in future. This is the basis of good strategy, but can be very hard to do. We encourage MRIs to develop strategy that focuses on priorities based on what is currently known, and to stay the course unless new evidence emerges which favours other priorities. Our value-add here is to clarify thinking: by identifying priorities we help MRIs to develop strong identities and distinguish the work they do from others in this space.

Our strategy guidance can also extend to helping MRIs work out how to present themselves to external parties. For example, MRIs tend to be relatively small compared to their typical partners in government, hospitals and universities. This can mean they have limited bargaining power by themselves. However, there is often value in collaborative relationships between MRIs to increase their clout. For example, we helped with a trio of medical research institutes that specialised in paediatrics. These MRIs had similar areas of expertise and focus, but were fragmented and working across multiple locations and facilities. They were also, at least indirectly, in competition with one another for funding (ARC, NHMRC, MRFF). By bringing them together, as well as creating cohesion with their associated universities and hospitals, we helped them develop a strategy for a funding pitch that they successfully made to government, resulting in ~$25 million in funding.

MS: And what’s the second type of work that we can help with?

JC: Second, we have had a number of projects that have been around understanding and strengthening MRI relationships with other organisations, typically either government or partner organisations such as universities or hospitals. One of the challenges of partnerships between different sectors or types of organisations is the lack of a shared language to communicate, or a shared sense of the value that MRIs produce with their work. So, some of our work in this space is just to develop an understanding of MRI value-adds, especially in economic, health and reputational terms.

This sense of value is then very useful in supporting MRIs for requests from government. For example, although MRIs attract a lot of funding via grants, fellowships and the like, these typically do not include indirect costs, such as those required for ensuring administrative and back-end support for the vital research work they undertake. Our approach was to take this evidence base around the value of MRIs, and use this to take an ‘upside’ approach to the benefits to the state, ensuring indirect funding was finally promised after 12 annual attempts.

But it’s not just about working on relationship building with government – it’s also important that the universities have strong relationships with their partner universities and hospitals. These relationships are symbiotic – both parties get something out of it. For example, universities benefit from the research output of MRIs, which contribute to their international rankings. MRIs benefit from getting access to research higher degree students and funding opportunities through partnerships with the universities. In helping to make that relationship flourish, we provide the MRIs with a strong evidence base for the dynamics of that relationship, which can inform the way they behave with their partners.

MS: We’ve talked about a lot of different kinds of work that dandolo has done with the MRI sector. In your opinion, what makes our work in this area iconic for us as a firm?

JC: First, I think we’ve managed to slowly but steadily build up a really diverse portfolio of work within this sector. It’s been great to really come to grips with lots of aspects of MRIs, including their relationships with other organisation and with government, and the role that they play in innovation. At this point, we can proudly state that we have dozens of MRI clients that we have worked with, and that these span multiple jurisdictions ranging from those with a single MRI to those with a thriving hub. It’s an unusual concentration of expertise to have built up and it is wholly unique to dandolo.

Second, I think that the work we’ve done in this space really speaks quite well to our capacity to have strategic cut through. We’re working with organisations that do incredibly important, impactful work but that sometimes lack the ability to communicate this in a way that connects and resonates, for example, with government. We’ve been able to take our knowledge and really use it to shape an approach to communication and strategy that has paid dividends for this sector. It’s been a very rewarding experience.

Finally, we’ve generated some really great outcomes. We’ve mentioned above the millions of dollars of well targeted funding that we’ve brought to MRIs from government. But we’ve also helped them make great decisions about things like where to invest in new technologies, or to expand or change their focus. In all of our work we like to see a path to impact, there is something special about knowing you’re helping to fund high quality research that can improve and save lives.