So here’s something we’ve learned.

It’s about #thinktanks and how we improve our information environments through better public engagement.

A thread 1/11

“We light fires under brave ideas” has been our tagline for 3 years

But now we think it doesn’t reflect what we do (or what we *want* to do).

Because it’s not enough to light a fire under a pre-formed idea and then expect it to spread on its own. 2/11

This is a common issue we see many #thinktanks and research-focused organisations grappling with.

Often, ideas only get to the communications team when they are to be put out into the world. At which point, they’re often already in the wrong form. 3/11

Effective ideas need to be moulded, worked and reworked, and shaped by an end goal in order to have salience and impact.

You’ll know this if you’ve ever published something and then felt it could be better... 4/11

Communicating your work to others makes you see it in a totally different light.

You might end up wishing you made different decisions at the research stage. Or like @billsavedoff discovered, it might help you better understand your own work https://twitter.com/billsavedoff/status/1179803808362356736 5/11

That's because communicating your work to others requires you to see it through their eyes. In that sense, it’s a very human act.

Think tanks are in the business of ideas made by people for people. These ideas shape our lives. We can’t forget that. #thinktanksmatter 6/11

And nothing about remembering our humanity undermines academic rigour. That’s a false binary we come up against a lot and we don’t accept it. 7/11

We want to reflect the fact that prioritising the human is a big part of what we do, a big part of what we want *think tanks* to do.

Which is why we’re bonfiring our brand. Next month we’re changing our tagline, we’re changing our name. 8/11

It’s not like it hasn’t been fun using pretty images of fire in our proposals... 9/11

And we’ll be carrying a spark of it forward with us.

You know that feeling you get sitting round a fire mesmerised by its light and warmth?

That exists in all of us. And these days it feels important to focus on those things we share. 10/11

Woah, that got deep.

TL;DR we want think tanks to be more human and we’re changing our name to reflect that goal. Watch this space… 11/11