Building and Sustaining Knowledge Partnerships

The Global Knowledge Initiative’s guiding objective is to stimulate fruitful science, technology, and knowledge partnerships for development.

 
What is a fruitful knowledge partnership?

Answer: a partnership that builds the capacity of people and organizations globally to generate new knowledge or transfer existing knowledge from those who have it to those who need it.

The Global Knowledge Initiative’s programs aim to facilitate resource sharing. For most of the challenges facing humankind, the resources required for their amelioration exist, be those resources knowledge-based, human, financial, technological or institutional. When such resources cannot be identified, challenges persist. People dub those challenges "intractable" for which resources are scant and partners absent.

The Global Knowledge Initiative helps people and institutions marshal the resources needed to solve problems. Our programs combine these resources in unique ways to deliver knowledge where it is needed, spurring innovation and problem-solving. Learn more about our programs here

For developing country-based scientists, forging knowledge partnerships means boosting the participation of developing country-based universities and research institutes in cooperative arrangements that address development needs. These development needs might range from building climate resilient cities or enhancing the nutritional content of staple crops to developing vaccines for neglected diseases or training teachers to use open and distance learning methods to enhance science and math education.

For the researchers, teachers, and scientists of the training and research institutions of wealthier countries, identifying opportunities to collaborate expands the universe of potential partners.  These partners might engage in a variety of partnership activities, ranging from co-authorship or joint-research to technology development or content creation and resource sharing. The ad hoc nature of most universities’ partnership activities with foreign universities underscores the need for a strategic approach to partner identification and partnership development and maintenance.