Evaluating impact: transliteracy and creative business innovation via social media

Evaluating Impact: transliteracy and creative
business innovation via social media
Dr Sue Thomas and Dr Souvik Mukherjee
Published online 3 November 2013
Dr Sue Thomas is an independent scholar and Visiting Fellow at The Media School, Bournemouth University,
Dorset, UK. The research described here was undertaken when she was Professor of New Media in the
Department of Media, Film and Journalism in the Faculty of Humanities, De Montfort University.
sue.suethomas@gmail.com, http://www.suethomas.net
Dr Souvik Mukherjee teaches at Presidency University, Kolkata, India. For the period of this research he was
a Research Fellow in the Department of Media, Film and Journalism in the Faculty of Humanities, De
Montfort University. prosperosmaze@gmail.com http://readinggamesandplayingbooks.blogspot.com/

Abstract
This article outlines the emergent theoretical framework which informed a series of initiatives developed at
De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, between 2005-11 with the aim of stimulating the use of social media
for business innovation, and analyses their impact in relation to the Research Excellence Framework (REF)
exercise to be held in the UK in 2014 (in so far as it was understood in the first half of 2011). The new
concept of transliteracy, developed at the Institute of Creative Technologies at DMU, was a key element in
the theory informing the projects, some of which were also underpinned by research on the Amplified
Individual undertaken at the Institute for the Future, Palo Alto. Although they differed in style and reach, all
shared a focus on the use of social media by small to medium sized creative businesses and non-profit
organisations in and around the city of Leicester, UK. In the light of the importance of assessing impact in
today’s academic climate, Dr Souvik Mukherjee was appointed in 2011 to look at how that combination of
research and practice might be used to demonstrate impact and make recommendations for future
research. We understand that many other countries are already, or soon will be, conducting a similar audit
of the ways in which higher education effects knowledge exchange and public engagement, so this article
should also be of interest outside the United Kingdom.

Introduction
This article outlines an emergent theoretical framework which informed a series of projects designed to
stimulate the use of social media for business innovation, and discusses how they may be used to
demonstrate impact in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise to be held in the UK in 2014. We
understand that many other countries are already, or soon will be, conducting a similar audit of the ways in
which higher education effects knowledge exchange and public engagement, so this article should also be of
interest outside the United Kingdom.
Our discussion of research is in two parts. We begin with the original framework, triangulating three
elements: transliteracy, structural holes, and amplification, and taking place from 2005-2011. We then
discuss the projects undertaken, followed by a second research section examining research carried out from
Evaluating Impact: transliteracy and creative business innovation via social media
Dr Sue Thomas and Dr Souvik Mukherjee Published online 3 November 2013
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January-June 2011. The projects discussed in the following pages were driven by differing objectives
dictated by their funding, but as the REF impact agenda gained in importance it became necessary to reexamine them from an impact perspective, hence the second research activity. Dr Souvik Mukherjee was
appointed in 2011 on a six-month half-time post to evaluate the projects and analyse outcomes which could
be useful in relation to their relevance to the REF. This process also involved attempting to understand
available impact guidelines provided towards the REF by the Higher Education Funding Council for England
(HEFCE) and match them against the projects along with the emergent theoretical framework which lay
behind them. To achieve this, we formulated two main research questions:

 ‘Do new communication frameworks in social media benefit business practices?’
 ‘What are the roles of transliteracy and amplification in this context?’
This article outlines our findings, makes recommendations for future projects and comments on the
usefulness and appropriateness of the REF impact agenda as understood in the first half of 2011. It is
expected that many academic colleagues will have worked on third stream media projects in past years and
may now be seeking to understand how they might fit the impact agenda. We hope that our experience will
be helpful in that regard and that our attempts to understand what impact means will be illuminating for
others going through a similar process in the UK and elsewhere.

Transliteracy, Structural Holes and Amplification: An Emergent Theoretical
Framework
The concept of transliteracy was developed by the Production and Transliteracy Research Group (PART) at
the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University, Leicester, England, in 2006. It had first
appeared as the plural ‘transliteracies’, coined by Professor Alan Liu in the Department of English at the
University of California at Santa Barbara in relation to the reading of digital texts, but took on a wider
meaning when developed at DMU. In an article published in the journal First Monday in 2007, PART defined
it as ‘the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and
orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks’ (Thomas et al. 2007) and this
definition has not yet been improved upon. Later that year, Sue Thomas and Toby Moores added an
additional element based on Ronald Burt’s theory of structural holes (see below), whereby the ‘holes’ are
seen not as empty, but as a transliterate space which services the networks around it. (Thomas 2007)
Transliteracy, sidesteps the polarised debate around print versus digital by advocating a unifying ecology for
all literacies of reading, writing, interaction and culture, resulting in potential applications in many walks of
life: ‘in e–learning and education; business, commerce and manufacturing; social science, politics and
economics; transdisciplinary studies; philosophy and anthropology; the arts, and many other fields’ (Thomas
et al. 2007). In May 2007, to test the concept in discussion, PART invited forty people from academia,
business and the arts to a Colloquium where they were invited to provide feedback on concept of
transliteracy. After attending the colloquium Roland Harwood of NESTA (The National Endowment for
Science, Technology and the Arts) blogged that he saw applications for transliteracy in his work to develop
business innovation: “All innovation is fundamentally collaborative. With increasing specialization in business
and academia in recent years, this has led to an increasing need for organizations and individuals to develop
wider, more open networks, partnerships and trusted communities to share ideas and to innovate. ...
Technology definitely has a major role to play in supporting these boundary–disrupting collaborations, but
perhaps there is a need to further develop most peoples’ ‘transliteracy’ skills.” (Harwood, quoted in Thomas
2007).
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More recently, transliteracy has been widely discussed in a number of contexts. In the USA it is being
developed in the field of libraries and information science, and has been the subject of extensive blogging,
articles, and conferences. In the UK, universities have been alerted to the need for their staff to be
transliterate: ‘a committee looking at the impact of the "Google generation" on HE has found that 95% of
students are members of an online social network and that more than 50% have a blog or website. These
transliterate students arrive at university with a set of assumptions about how they will use these skills in
their education, and have difficulty if such assumptions are questioned.’ (Brown and Chant 2009) In the THES
in 2008, Hannah Fearn wrote ‘Students are increasingly 'transliterate', communicating across a range of
technologies. Can academics keep up?’ (Fearn 2008).
Although references to it are spreading, the term is still not widely known and for this reason it was not used
in marketing materials for the projects discussed here. As a result, we identified instances of transliterate
behaviour through the observation and measurement of related activities. We will expand upon this in our
discussion of the results.

Structural holes
As noted above, there is an identifiable relationship between transliterate space and Professor Ronald Burt’s
theory of structural holes, which is derived from his work on social capital and networks. In Burt’s
terminology, those who lead to the same contacts and the same benefits within a network are ‘redundant’
contacts, while those who lead to different people and therefore different information benefits are
‘nonredundant’ contacts. Structural holes are the ‘relationship of nonredundancy between two contacts.’
The hole is ‘a buffer, like an insulator in an electric circuit [and] as a result of the hole between them, the two
contacts provide network benefits that are in some degree additive rather than overlapping’ (Burt, 1992: 18).
In plainer terms, the spaces between networks that are not obviously connected and are ostensibly different
from each other might constitute structural holes.
Drawing on Granovetter’s (1973) research on the social importance of weak ties within networks, Burt
shows how people who can traverse structural holes are able to broker the flow of information between
people and control the projects that bring together people from unconnected networks. Weak ties within
networks enable the freer flow of information as it does not stay restricted within a group of people with
strong links with each other but it flows beyond to less connected areas of the networks. Weak ties produce
structural holes and these are areas where the spread of information occurs across networks. Someone who
occupies the structural hole is necessarily better able to negotiate the relationship between the others who
are divided by that hole.
An example provided in the Journal of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship, illustrates the efficacy of
‘structural holes’:
An example of structural holes in networks is evident in the example of Homebusiness New Zealand, a
company built ‘by default, to fill a gap’. This company aims to make information, resources and tools
available to entrepreneurs through creating a virtual community of home-based businesses which can
be accessed through the internet by any home-based business anywhere in New Zealand. [...] Their
clients particularly appreciate being able to tap into a community or network of other home-based
businesses. (Cruickshank and Rolland 2006)
This applies equally well to larger online social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The sheer number of
friends on your Facebook profile does not determine whether one gets new information, especially when all
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of them have access to the same information. Rather, it is the people with whom one has ‘weak ties’ who
provide new information.
The entrepreneur, for Burt, needs to have strong skills to negotiate between people in networks on either
side of the structural hole. One of the key skills is to be able to move between networks with ease and when
the networks are situated within social media as in the two examples mentioned above, transcending mediaspecific boundaries with ease becomes a key requirement for today’s entrepreneur. Reading, writing and
interacting across a range of platforms are key characteristics of those traversing the structural holes and
this has become more obvious with the advent of digital media.

Transliteracy and Structural Holes
In Ronald Burt’s view, people with connections across the spaces between networks are more prone to have
good ideas than people in densely interconnected but closed networks. In his analysis, these holes are
necessary in order to facilitate innovation. According to Sue Thomas, these holes certainly exist, but they are
not empty (Thomas 2007). Instead, they are full of transliterate materials, behaviours and, indeed, people.
Whilst Burt distinguishes between those people who stay within networks and those who travel between
them, Thomas adds a third type, someone who is a permanent resident in the structural hole itself – the
transliterate individual. This person feels most comfortable in the constant flux of a highly transliterate
environment characterised by creative experiments, complexity, and transdisciplinarity, a place of
translation and collaboration which uses multiple platforms and multiple literacies. A place in which
mistakes, failures and misunderstanding are integral to success. The transliterate space has permeable
boundaries along the edges of networks, and its inhabitants often act as guides and facilitators to those
passing through. It can often, of course, be seen as a disruptive influence.
The usefulness of transliteracy as an active agency operating between structural holes, a kind of ‘hidden
hand’ at work beneath more obvious interactions, has been recognised by a number of observers. For
example, the KnowledgeWorks Foundation has declared transliteracy to be a major trend that characterises
amplified organisation and a direction in which learning is predicted to change in a decade from now.
According to them, ‘in the emerging decade, ideas will migrate across multiple social media platforms:
podcasts, digital video, virtual worlds, microblogs, wikis, social networking, tagging, etc. The amplified,
transliterate organization will have the capacity to communicate across these platforms’ (KnowledgeWorks
2010). The impact that this attributes to transliterate communication is essentially the communication
process earlier shown as necessary for the functioning of the structural holes. It might be well argued that
besides Burt’s original criteria based on social cohesion and interaction, a key measure of the effectiveness
of the structural holes is the level to which the player within that space is transliterate.
Toby Moores, CEO of media company SleepyDog. and a co-founder of CreativeCoffee Club, believes that
transliterate networks make it easier to break down disciplinary barriers. In his view transliteracy is about
redefining the boundaries of media and uses the example of film as not a single medium, or literacy, but a
multiplicity of both.
The design of the projects discussed here included various permutations of the notion of a set of networks
connected by transliterate spaces whose sophistication evolved as the research itself developed. In the
earliest projects it was driven by the intention to bring business networks together with each other and with
the university but, as understanding grew, more attention was paid to the nature of the transliterate space
between those networks, and to ways of developing and capitalising on it. Amplified Leicester was a fullEvaluating Impact: transliteracy and creative business innovation via social media
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blown attempt to do this very explicitly in a ‘cocoon-like’ setting, and Vision2020 extended the model in an
‘emergent’ environment.
The inclusion of the concept of the ‘Amplified Individual’ further enriches these active synergies.

The Amplified Individual
In 2007 Sue Thomas was invited to give a presentation about transliteracy to the Institute for the Future
(IFTF), a Palo Alto thinktank, where IFTF researcher Andrea Saveri introduced her to the Institute’s research
on the Amplified Individual. Thomas saw an opportunity to combine both sets of research in the
development of a new project, Amplified Leicester.
The Institute for the Future proposes that the amplified workers of the future share four important
characteristics1. First, they are highly social. They use tagging software, wikis, social networks, and other
human intelligence aggregators to supplement their individual knowledge and to understand what their
individual contributions mean in the context of the organization, giving meaning to even the most menial
tasks. They are also highly collective, taking advantage of online collaboration software, mobile
communications tools, and immersive virtual environments to engage globally distributed team members
with highly specialized and complementary capacities. In addition, amplified individuals are highly
improvisational, capable of banding together to form effective networks and infrastructures, both social and
professional. And finally, they are highly augmented. They employ visualization tools, attention filters, edisplays, and ambient presence systems to enhance their cognitive abilities and coordination skills, thus
enabling them to quickly access and process massive amounts of information.
IFTF proposed that as people become more networked via social media they develop an amplified skill set
which includes some or all of the following features:











Mobbability—the ability to work in large groups, and to organize and collaborate with many people
simultaneously.
Influency—knowing how to be persuasive in multiple social contexts and media spaces, and
demonstrating awareness that each context and space requires a different persuasive strategy and
technique.
High Ping Quotient—responsiveness to other people’s requests for engagement; propensity to reach
out to others in a network.
Protovation—fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles.
Open Authorship—ease with creating content for immediate public consumption and modification.
Emergensight—the ability to prepare for and handle surprising results and complexity.
Multi-capitalism—fluency in working with different capitals (e.g., natural, intellectual, social,
financial, virtual).
Longbroading—thinking in terms of higher-level systems, massively multiple cycles, and the very big
picture.
Signal/Noise Management—filtering meaningful information, patterns, and commonalities from the
massively multiple streams of data and advice.
Cooperation Radar—the ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators
on a particular task.

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This was a complex set of ideas with a significantly Californian verbiage which made it difficult to convey to
an English audience, but it also had considerable potential to offer a new perspective on the ways in which
social media, along with transliteracy, are transforming our professional and personal lives. There has been
some discussion as to whether transliteracy should be added to the list above as a further, eleventh, feature,
or whether the whole discourse of amplification should be simply folded into transliteracy. Either way, there
is clearly a great deal of synergy between them.

The Projects
From 2006-2011, Sue Thomas developed a series of projects which shared the common focus of exploring
social media as a means of stimulating creative innovation in business, non-profit, and community life in and
around the city of Leicester. They were based jointly in the Faculty of Humanities and the Institute of
Creative Technologies, and also took place at the newly-built Phoenix Square Film and Digital Media Centre.
From 2005-11 the HEIF-funded NLab Network organised seminars, workshops and conferences on the
applications of social media to small creative businesses, starting with training in blog-writing in the early
days of the blogging boom, through support in using Facebook and then Twitter. It also offered businessfocussed social media mentoring and, in collaboration with Toby Moores, CEO of the Sleepydog media
company, initiated a fortnightly CreativeCoffee business networking club. In 2009-10 the NESTA-funded
Amplified Leicester project and the collaborative Vision2020 Conference both developed learning from NLab
into more experimental social media initiatives. An early objective of NLab had been to build networks and
over the period this has gained increasing importance both inside and beyond academia and has fed into
growing interest in the ways in which social media networks build social capital, defined as ‘the collective
value of social networks […] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other’
(Putnam 1995). With the increasing impact of social media on all walks of life, an understanding of how new
sets of communication frameworks can advantage business and community development has become one of
the ‘grand challenges’ of modern-day research.
The team supporting the projects was led by Prof Thomas. Over the years it encompassed a range of
researchers, coordinators and guest speakers, some employed on a freelance basis and some by De
Montfort University. Extra capacity was added as needed for workshops and conferences, and the networks
were further supported by regular attendees prepared to help facilitate networking. In addition, Amplified
Leicester had a substantial Advisory Board which included national specialists, and Vision2020 was managed
within a partnership framework.
It would be fair to say that the projects developed an overall ‘brand’ of informal exposure to new
technologies and ideas along with the opportunity to interact with a very mixed group of business people,
artists, community organisers and academics. The projects described below were driven by different agendas
but shared many common features such as the application of academic research to real-life problems,
especially in relation to transliteracy and amplification; the connection of cutting-edge research into social
media innovation with local creative businesses, and the creation of a network linking De Montfort
University with small businesses, non-profits, and local agencies. We did not offer formal accredited courses
but favoured instead an emphasis on creating a high degree of informal interaction in a variety of physical
and social media spaces involving participants and project members from inside and outside the university
and enabling knowledge transfer to take place via a culture of trusted participation and collaboration.

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NLab Creative Network
NLab was funded by HEIF (The Higher Education Innovation Fund) from 2005-11 to connect small creative
businesses working with new media to generate pioneering partnerships. HEIF’s remit is to support and
develop a broad range of knowledge transfer activities which result in economic and social benefit to the UK.
In order to address this remit, the aims of NLab were to engage with SMEs, typically with five or less
employees, to encourage creativity and innovation through networking and collaboration; to form
partnerships with relevant business support agencies and business associations in order to share knowledge
and expertise; to enable local SMEs to connect with national and international networks, and to facilitate
increased wealth generation. Its target sectors and organisations were SMEs and their representatives
including business people, academics, teachers, public sector workers and managers, business support
agencies and business associations. It was open to everyone but most of the participants are based in the
East Midlands, especially the Leicester area.
In 2006 NLab ran a series of professional workshops and seminars on blogs, wikis, games and new media
writing, and in 2007 it presented the first-ever European conference for and about women blogging for
business. In 2008 it held an international conference on Social Networks for Small Businesses and
commissioned Digital Livings, a pilot research project looking into professional opportunities for writers
working in new media. Other social media initiatives included the long-running CreativeCoffee Leicester
small business network founded in 2007 with media company Sleepydog and the first Vision2020 Conference
(2010).

Amplified Leicester
Amplified Leicester was funded by NESTA (The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts)
and ran for one year from 2009-10. It was a city-wide experiment designed to grow the innovation capacity
of Leicester by networking key connectors across the city’s disparate and diverse communities in an
incentivised participatory project enabled by social media. It aimed to develop a transferable model for
amplifying a diverse city’s grassroots innovation capacity through connecting diverse communities through
key individuals, and to provide practical examples of how collaborative technologies can be exploited in a
city context. The resulting model proposed a two-stage process consisting of the creation of
1. A consciously Amplified Group via a trusted collaborative space where deep diversity flourishes,
ideas flow, and social media connects (Cocoon) followed by
2. Emergence from the Amplified Group to the Amplified City via a public and trusted collaborative
space.
Amplified Leicester was a high profile project within the city and its influence continue to reverberate in
conversations about Leicester’s pride in its creativity and ambition. Although unlikely to be repeated in its
original form, it gave rise to the Amplified Resilient Community, a project directed by Dr Thilo Boeck of the
original Amplified Leicester team and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The full report on Amplified Leicester can be accessed from the NESTA website
http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Amplified_Leicesterv8.pdf.

Vision2020
The recommendations from Amplified Leicester for a Stage Two process in the form of a public space were
taken forward in October 2010 in the shape of Vision2020, a one day partnership conference with a remit to
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amplify the collective intelligence of Leicester and imagine the city in 2020 Developed at the request of local
agencies interested in the impact of Amplified Leicester, Vision2020 was funded by NLab along with
additional financial and in kind support from a number of city agencies such as Prospect Leicestershire,
Leicester City Council, LCB Depot and companies including BT and Harvey Ingram LLP. Its aims were
developed collaboratively by the partners and represent a combined set of objectives, namely to:





Create a vision of the socio-economic environment of Leicester and Leicestershire in 2020 and the
impact of new technologies on business
Contextualise emerging technologies and their potential for the creative industries sector in
Leicester and Leicestershire
Raise the profile of Leicester and Leicestershire and in particular the Cultural Quarter and Phoenix
Square and Digital Media Centre among the business community
Raise the profile of the creative sector in Leicestershire's well earned reputation for creativity, with
key stakeholders in the city and region

The event produced a ‘wishlist’ of recommendations for Leicester in 2020 and is currently being addressed
by a number of agencies including Leicester City Council, Prospect Leicestershire, and other agencies and
companies. As with its parent project, Vision2020 has caught the imagination of the city and it is hoped to
repeat it annually until 2020.

Impact Research 2011
Dr Souvik Mukherjee was appointed in 2011 on a six-month half-time post to evaluate the projects and
analyse outcomes which could be useful in relation to their relevance to the REF. This process also involved
attempting to understand available impact guidelines provided towards the REF by the Higher Education
Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and matching them against the projects along with the emergent
theoretical framework which lay behind them. This section describes that process.

Impact as Defined by HEFCEthe REF and RCUK
The Research Excellence Framework (REF hereafter) defines ‘impact’ as ‘all kinds of social, economic and
cultural benefits and impacts beyond academia’(HEFCE 2011). For the REF, the impact needs to be evident
between 2008-2012 and the underpinning research may go back to fifteen years before the impact provided
the institution remains active in the area. The present project falls within both of the above criteria.
Research Councils UK (RCUK) categorises impact separately as academic impact and economic and social
impact. Academic impact is described as ‘the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to
academic advances, across and within disciplines, including significant advances in understanding, methods,
theory and application’ (RCUK 2011). As far as this project was concerned, the academic impact is mainly
important inasmuch as the theory of transliteracy and related concepts made an economic and social
impact. Economic and social impact is defined as the demonstrable contribution that excellent research
makes towards ‘fostering global economic performance, and specifically the economic competitiveness of
the United Kingdom, increasing the effectiveness of public services and policy and enhancing quality of life,
health and creative output’ (RCUK 2011). The scope of such benefits reaching beyond academia is huge and
impact can be evidenced in a multiplicity of ways that do not necessarily follow a clear framework or are
easily quantifiable.

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When planning our research, we tried to agree on some broad indicators. REF recommends the use of
‘reach’ and ‘significance’ as key indicators of impact. Reach, defined by REF as ‘how widely felt the impact
was’ (HEFCE 2010). Significance, although one of the key HEFCE requisites for judging impact, has not been
defined clearly. Some of the definitions that can be inferred are ‘how much difference it made to the
beneficiaries’, ‘incremental improvements that are wide-ranging but have been demonstrated’ and ‘major
value with wide-ranging relevance’ (HEFCE 2010). In this project, however, the understanding of reach and
significance seemed to be informed by the hidden hand of transliteracy.

Impact and Public Engagement
As the HEFCE guidance stresses that the benefits should be those ‘arising from engaging the public’, this
analysis examines the project according to established national parameters of public engagement in the UK.
Public engagement is understood as per the NCCPE (National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement)
definition whereby, ‘Public engagement describes the main way in which higher education institutions and
their staff and students can connect and share their work with the public’ (National Co-ordinating Centre for
Public Engagement 2011). This project addresses a number of key benefits earmarked by the NCCPE, such as:






Developing cultural and intellectual assets with and for the community.
Creating new community networks
Helping people learn throughout their lives, new subjects, new skills
Expanding the resources available to tackle real life issues and problems
Generating economic growth

Our project and REF impact indicators
For any project whose impact spans across disciplines rather than limiting itself to a homogenous area, the
framework of indicators designed by REF and RCUK are quite restrictive in that they define the boundaries
of impact to very specific and narrow outcomes and , therefore, do not relate to the multiplicity of impact
that this project addresses. Therefore, while remaining within the broad REF categories of reach and
significance, it was necessary to use a more flexible set of indicators so as not to risk ignoring significant
impact that has not yet been categorised by REF. As the REF formulation is still not fully defined, the
indicators developed within this project are useful in addressing HEFCE’s concern that ‘there will be
particular issues and challenges for assessing impact in a number of other disciplines not covered by the
pilot’. We certainly encountered a number of problems which involved making uncomfortable decisions or
assumptions based on limited knowledge, including the following:








Reach is seen here through the indicators of networking, influence on non-participants, demographic
reach according to gender or age, attendance figures for the events and online presence on websites
and social media.
The definition for significance has been interpreted in the project context in terms of difference in
networking, innovation, generating business opportunities, improvements in business promotion
and so on in terms of improved knowledge and application of social media. The information has
been collected from participant responses.
The project demonstrates a variety of impact-types such as improving business performance and
improving public engagement with research but these categories and the corresponding REF
indicators did not prove adequate to the analysis.
Some of the indicators overlap between the two categories.
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Methodology
Given that the events concerned and their target groups were quite diverse, it was decided to capture as
much rich data as possible from interviews with current stakeholders and to analyse archival data from 2005
onwards . To further explore trends revealed in the narrative and qualitative data, the researcher conducted
a survey among the participants of the events. The results of the survey were matched with the qualitative
data analysis to come to the conclusions outlined in this report. Due to multiplicity of the project, it was not
possible to place the outcomes within any one extant theoretical framework. As a result, the theoretical
framework above has been derived after considering the various different aspects of the outcomes. Finally, a
set of recommendations on the project and on future impact analysis exercises has been drafted. A brief
outline of the processes of analysis is detailed below.
The qualitative data sources were extremely varied, ranging from documents, both online and offline to
social media responses on Youtube and Twitter. These were coded and analysed using qualitative data
analysis software (MAXQDA). The documents were categorised into participant responses, organisation and
planning by the team and the guidelines and hopes of the experts who ran the sessions. The researcher also
conducted additional interviews of a varied range of participants including regulars, newcomers, people from
various professions among others. He also devised and conducted an online survey that was sent to
everyone who had registered on any of the events. The responses were all anonymous and the respondents
were free to answer only those questions that they wanted. The survey ran for over a month and the results
were analysed for both qualitative and quantitative data. The key indicators of impact that emerged (for
example, ‘networking’ as an evidence of reach) were correlated with other factors such as event attendance,
social media usage and other indicators. The responses evidencing impact were obtained using a 4-point
likert scale and treated as ordinal data. The results were then analysed using crosstabulations in SPSS (a
statistical software package) and by using queries designed in Microsoft Access or SQL. The 4-point scale
was chosen to avoid ambiguity and encourage focused responses.
The survey results were compared with similar data from the past years where possible and any change was
noted and analysed. Another smaller survey of the Amplified Leicester participants was undertaken to
analyse whether / how perceptions about what qualities are important to them have changed in the year
after the Amplified Leicester project came to an end. In both cases, the surveys take a sample population
into account.
In addition to these, the researcher also analysed related databases and attendance records as well as online
login statistics of the event websites. Activity on Facebook and Twitter was also captured as much as
possible, given the fact that with the high exposure to social media there was a growing trend among the
participants to use these to voice their opinions and ideas.
The final analysis presents related data from the various sources listed above so as to enable a comparative
analysis. As implied above, both qualitative and quantitative analyses are involved although qualitative
methods have been preferred mainly because much of the data is based on interviews and the depth of
information obtained is richer.
As noted earlier, the project is characterised by multiplicity and, although driven by a common aim, it is not
homogenous. Such an analysis can be only indicative at best and at the risk of missing out important impact
has to define arbitrary indicators. The two main categories of indicators outlined by REF, those of reach and
significance, have emerged as the primary ones and as such, the impact will be judged based on the degree
of increase of both reach and significance considered from the outset of the project in 2005 to the present.
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The transmedial aspect of the project sets it apart from other business-related or media-related analyses and
because of this the indicators of impact have been analysed with their relation to transliteracy and
transdisciplinarity in mind.

Results
Stories from CreativeCoffee and Amplified Leicester
Since he had not been previously involved either as an organiser or a participant, Dr Mukherjee was able to
approach the project as a newcomer and with few preconceptions. He attended a number of CreativeCoffee
Club meetings and Amplified Leicester events and was therefore able to interact informally with a wide
range of attendees, from first-timers to regulars who have been involved with various aspects of the project.
He also invited some attendees to meet with him for one-to-one interviews designed to provide more indepth qualitative data. He reported that he founds peaking with a CreativeCoffee Club gatherings to be a
richly varied experience every time. From newcomers to regulars and people coming to it from the very early
NLab days, participants commented on how the events made a difference to them and their work practice.
He found that attending the Amplified Leicester events or meeting the participants of the Amplified Leicester
programme, provided a similar experience even though the focus is slightly different.
From these meetings, and via the survey, he was able to gather personal stories from people working in
different sectors who had attended a range of events. For example, one of the interviewees told him that,
‘After redundancy, self-employment seemed the only option. With no real contacts the networking through
these kind of events was important to me for showing me how others do it. Simple human contact was a
factor when you suddenly find yourself working from home all day’. Another participant in a similar situation
agrees: CreativeCoffee gave her an ideal opportunity ‘to get out there and network’. Many come to the
events even at the cost of business and work time. The main benefit for them is networking with a diverse
group of people – within and outside their areas. Another respondent commented that, ‘As a small business,
we are always looking at ways to network, build strategic alliances and partnerships, develop our knowledge,
expand our ideas and share commercial/ business know-how with other businesses’.
For others, the events proved useful in their career and professional development either as ‘part of a careerswitch strategy’ or by giving ideas to people about modernising their systems: one of the respondents to the
survey said: ‘I was a legacy intranet manager in a large corporate. Your events assisted me in my efforts to
modernise the systems’. The resulting career development also goes beyond the walls of offices and
businesses for some, for example a respondent ‘started an Open University Degree in e-learning’ after
attending the events.
Much of the conversation also revolved around creativity. Connecting creatively with others, which a survey
respondent identified as a key need, involves major developments in both innovation and networking.
Creativity is a major imperative for businesses because as a respondent describes, it is absolutely necessary
to be ‘on top of the game’. This addresses a key aim of the UK Department of Business Innovation and Skills
aim and is discussed in detail in the next section.
Participants also wanted to share tips on how they use social media to increase awareness about their
businesses. One of them said that she ‘made greater use of audio and video for community work’, and a
participant on the Amplified programme had devised an even more focused agenda for using social media to
promote awareness about her work
Page 11

David, one of those who highlighted the improvement in customer relationships, said that he used social
media to ‘put on something once a year, old clients, friends, potential clients; providing the opportunity to
get together, we like it, not immediate benefit.’ This comment is interesting in two ways: the customer
relationship angle that events like NLab promote and also the fact that the benefit is a gradual rather than an
immediate outcome.
Besides the importance of networking, innovation, business promotion and customer relationships,
participants also spoke about trust. Ian, an Amplified participant, stresses on the importance of the transfer
of trust. He sees CreativeCoffee as a great networking opportunity and likes it because it has no fixed
programme but is emergent. For him, CreativeCoffee and Amplified ‘get people to think’.
Summing up the overall development of such a multifaceted project is no easy task. The observation of a
participant provides an interesting picture of progression:
I came to the events to meet more creative people and academics involved in the creative industries. I
was curious about how this would translate for attendees. At first I found the events quite academic in
nature, and noticed some people struggling with how this translated into their business. But as time
moved on they became more practical, more translatable, more popular and as creatives joined from
different disciplines I noticed the cross over and creativity improving.
This comment could be further unpacked to see the process of engagement between academia and the
business community. The process of introduction to new ideas and technologies is seldom, straightforward
and it can be assumed that the participants’ approach to the ideas and concepts introduced in the
programme will have involved a gradual process of osmosis whereby they could link the academic and
instructive aspect of the events with their business practice. Again, this is indicative of the gradual but highly
impactful development of the project that led to the crossover of ideas and a meld of business, creative arts
and academia – in effect, a fulfilment of some of the initial aims.
While most participants commented on the business benefits and the transdisciplinary impact of the project,
some went deeper to analyse the process that is seen as driving improvements in networking and business
practice. For one of the survey respondents , ‘communicating the concept of transliteracy has been quite
important in the context of the way things are developing with new technologies in current society’ while
another identified transliteracy as the framework used to discuss everyday communication. Therefore,
although transliteracy might be initially difficult to grasp, regular participants at the events have been able to
perceive how it can operate in their business practice.
The personal stories sampled above provide an informal way in to understanding the impact of the projects.
That qualitative data is supplemented by quantitative material, and the two will now be discussed together.

Synthesis of Qualitative and Quantitative Data
This section analyses data drawn from a qualitative analysis of interviews and responses recorded for the full
period of the report along with a more recent survey conducted in April 2011 (called ‘the survey’ hereafter)
designed to reflect the current scenario. In certain cases, the indicators themselves have been further
subdivided into the relevant categories: for example the demographic survey data has been subdivided into
sector involvement and age, gender and ethnicity. The results are analysed in two sections according to the
two broad REF categories of reach and significance. Each section begins with an overview of indicative
trends then provides an expanded level of detail.
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Key impact indicator I: Reach
Indicative Trends






People benefited through an increase in the number of networks they connected to.
This was matched by an increase in collaborative practice.
The project reached individuals from a wide range of subgroups in business and creative industries.
The projects also spanned a wide demographic range in terms of gender, age and sectors of work.
A high percentage of participants said they were able to influence non-participants.

Given the nature of the events, online reach was expectedly high. However, the website access figures have
shown a big dip and participants seem to have moved more towards Twitter in the past year. Most of the
website traffic centred around Leicester, London and Birmingham. Participants in the survey were mostly
based in Leicestershire.
The attendance records also show a considerable rise in the number of participants between 2007 to 2010
and the trend already looks positive in 2011. The total number of SME’s and community organisations
reached by the project has also seen a rise over the full period. The following sections provide a detailed
explanation of all the above indicators.

Networking
Networking featured quite highly on the participants’ list of benefits with people expressing interest in
bridging trans-area gaps and increasing social networking. A participant at the Amplified Leicester
programme in 2009 stated that she has ‘begun to network as much as possible to be a more active
participant in currently formed communities as well building new ones.’ Another participant at the
CreativeCoffee Club in 2008 commented:
For me, it's connecting with people that I already know but who are geographically not near; about
enhancing those relationships on a more personal level; staying abreast of what key people think
whether I've met them or not; potential to network with people that you wouldn't normally get a
chance to network with; it's about self-promotion; communicating personal information (family and
friends).
Over 78% of the survey respondents reported a significant increase in useful networking. When asked about
whether they networked within their fields or outside as well, there was a strong correlation indicating that
people who increased their networking within their fields had also mostly done so outside their fields as
well. A greater percentage of respondents (76%) said they had increased networking outside their fields after
attending these events. For some, their expectation of ‘opportunities to interact with some different people,
i.e. people I wouldn't meet at other networking events’ was met.
Notably, 13% of people networked outside their fields but not within. These people could be seen as
occupying the in-between zones or structural holes between the fields where they do not need to connect
inward into a field but to connect to those people who network both within and outside. They networked
externally, towards the transliterate space / structural hole area, rather than internally within their own
network.

Page 13

Influence
An Amplified Leicester participant commented that she shared her knowledge from the events with both
people in and out of the Amplified programme. This is clearly in agreement with the ‘influency’ element of
amplification where the ability to be persuasive in multiple social spaces is of key importance.
Data from the survey shows that 63.3% of the respondents said they had influenced people who had not
participated in these events to adopt new ideas and practices. Also comparing the extreme points of the
scale, the percentage of those who strongly agreed to being able to influence others was much greater than
those who strongly disagreed.
A moderately positive and statistically significant correlation was observed showing that those who said they
had increased their networking also said they were able to increase their influence. This relationship was
observed as being much stronger between those networking within their fields than those networking
outside their fields. A possible reason for this difference could be that networks within one’s field are usually
less difficult to set up as there are already some connections in place. Conversely, talking across fields
involves different vocabularies and therefore the relationship is not so easily determinable.

Collaboration
There was also a trend towards collaboration although more people were interested in networking than
collaborative work. As one Amplified Leicester participant comments, he used his ‘improved cooperation
radar to increase [his] team of collaborators.’ Another respondent, a participant in both NLab and CCC also
seems to have improved his collaboration skills and sees clear advantages; however, he nevertheless
identifies some problems:
Building trust relationships allows people to take risks, express ideas, be a bit more honest “that is
rubbish”. In some places, you just wouldn’t say that. Can see extreme collaborations, but sometimes
haven't got time to accommodate within a normal business model.
Trust, as a key element in building social capital, was also seen as having increased among the participants.
Sue Tilley, Head of Inward Investment at Prospect Leicestershire, comments that events formed the platform
where academics from De Montfort University, marketing and business professionals from Prospect
Leicestershire and LCB could collaborate and make their different agendas work together. As a result of this
collaboration and cross-networking amongst otherwise very disparate organisations, she says she is ‘much
closer to DMU, the City Council, LCB etc.’ than she used to be.

Demographic reach
The events have had a wide demographic reach. As a respondent in the recent survey comments, they were
about meeting people ‘from many different backgrounds and interests’. Data from interviews show that most of
the participants were from business and finance organisations and this was closely followed by people from
the creative industries. The range, however, was much wider and included professions like tourism and
heritage, the public sector, teaching, Continuing Professional Development, journalism, environment and
hairdressing. There were also many self-employed participants. Participants also represented minorities,
multi-ethnic groups, single mothers and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT) groups.

Page 14

70 % of the attendees at CreativeCoffee Club were from small businesses in the East Midlands. This is
followed by 11% from small businesses outside the East Midlands, 10% from self-employed / freelance
backgrounds and 9 % from academia (students and academics).
All of these groups showed a high increase in participation with the figures for small businesses in the East
Midlands (11 in 2007, 19 in 2008, 35 in 2009 and 112 in 2010) showing the most increase.
On examining sector-wise reach on a much larger scale that encompasses all the events, a slightly different
picture emerges. The highest representation in the survey was from people who were in microbusinesses (10
or less employees), retail, medium-sized businesses (51-20 employees) and creative businesses. Each of
these sectors consisted of about 11 to 16 % of the total distribution. As opposed to 41.9% who were
involved in only one sector, 59.1% of the respondents were involved in multiple sectors. Most of the latter
were involved in 2 to 3 sectors.
In general, this shows that the impact, although spreading across many sectors is, is concentrated around the
key target areas of small to medium businesses and the creative industries. The current number of
microbusinesses and SME’s reached exceeds 320. The general distribution is illustrated in the chart below. 2

Sectors reached (survey 2011)
2% 3%
16%
14%
7%
5%

2%
6%

9%

11%

11%
6% 5%

3%

Microbusiness (10 or less employees)
SME (11-50 employees)
Medium-sized business (51-20 employees)
Over 250 employees
Creative Business
Retailer
Corporate
Independent
Non-profit
Education
Student
Self-employed
Unemployed / carer
Other (please specify)

Figure One: Sectors reached (survey 2011)
The survey also pointed out that the age groups 31-40 (21%), 41-40 (28%) and 51-60 (28%) were the most
benefited. A possible reason for this is that the events bring elements of social media closer to age-groups
that may be less familiar with web 2.0 technologies. These are also people who are in a relatively more
advanced stage of their careers.
The gender groups were almost equal, showing that the events had an equal reach among both males and
female groups. Most (81%) of the survey correspondents were White British.

2

A large percentage of people in the ‘Other’ category were from public service.
Page 15

Data from attendance / participation at events
Attendance figures for CreativeCoffee increased from 82 to 448 from 2007 to 2010 and the number of
individuals from 55 to 160. The number of returning participants (i.e. those who attended more than one
event / session) rose from 16 to 83.
The survey revealed that 45% of the respondents had attended more than one event as opposed to 43% who
had stayed within the same event.
From the NLab sessions (2005-2008), 290 small and medium enterprises and 4 non-profit organisations have
participated in the events.

Media
The events have seen a wide reach being achieved via a widespread engagement with media, both nondigital and digital. As the main focus of the events is social media, it is not surprising that a high percentage
of dissemination of the events has occurred through blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter. However,
traditional media has also focused on the importance of these events and the events have been featured in
the local press.
Print
The Amplified Leicester Showcase event also received full feature-length coverage in Leicester Mercury, the
local daily newspaper. The local press also covered the Vision 2020 event.
Website
Access data for the Amplified Leicester and the NLab websites were analysed to estimate the online reach of
the project.
The Amplified Leicester website showed a rise from 366 individual visitors logging on to the website in
March 2010 to 439 in April 2010. However, this dropped significantly to below 100 in May 2010, seeing a
short rise in August 2010 and then staying around the range of 50 to 60 from November 2010 to March
2011. The NLab website showed a steep rise in January 2008 to 611 individual visitors and subsequently
showed sharp dip in April only to rise to 468 in June 2008. Since then the plot shows a steady dip below 100,
except for peaks in November 2008 (249) and June 2009 (287). From October 2010 onwards, the number has
seen a steady fall to 39 in January 2011 and to 11 in March 2011. The peak periods of access correspond with
activities related to the events around those times. More recently, modes of communication have been
moved to social media platforms such as Ning, Facebook and Twitter. The present Ning (a social networking
site platform) website has 200 members and there are regular requests for membership.
Facebook
CreativeCoffee Club has two Facebook groups, one with 527 members and the other with 133. Both of these
have had a resurgence of activity on them recently, after about a year’s gap. Amplified Leicester has a
Facebook page that is updated with current information and has 31 ‘likes’.

Page 16

Twitter
Using the hash tag #Amplified Leicester as an indicator, a total was 5198 tweets was recorded since the start
of the hash tag on 15 / 04 / 2010 (just over a year). 277 people tweeted on this hash tag. 80% of them
tweeted more than once. Analysing the tweet content, key words like the below emerged: community, DIY,
economy, event, idea, media, meet, technology, talk, tweet, using, video etc.
However, only 3% of the twitterers account for about 59% of the tweets. This could be partly because the
hash tag has been used for people’s personal business practices and experience as evidenced from the
conversation analysis.

Summary of Reach
There is clear evidence of increased networking , influence on outsiders and collaborative ventures that
bring disparate institutions closer. A reasonably wide demographic reach in terms of gender, age and sector
involvement was noted. The survey did not reveal much ethnic diversity and this might prove of interest to
further research since Leicester is noted for its highly diverse population. The online reach has been very
high and has varied over the years moved from traditional websites to social networking based media, in
keeping with the spirit of the project.
These trends match up very well to some key amplified qualities such as mobbability, influency, cooperation
radar and high ping-quotient. The events in general seemed to make participants more ‘mobbable’ or willing
to work in large groups evidenced by the increase in networking and collaborative practices. High pingquotient and cooperation radar are respectively connected to increased networking and collaboration.
Influency, as discussed, corresponds to the increased influence of the participants amongst the general
populace.

Key impact indicator II : Significance
Indicative trends
In the light of the parameters of benefits, incremental improvements and value by which significance has
been judged, projects show the following changes: a significant change in attitudes (such as more innovative
thinking), increased application of social media to work practices, a framework helping participants articulate
expectations and challenges of new media as well as to seek solutions to the key challenges. Other impact
has mainly been in terms of the increase of social capital evidenced by the improvements in business
promotion, customer relationships, enhancing networking and business opportunities.
The trends observed were as follows:





These events, especially at the outset, helped people to articulate their expectations of social media
and to understand its challenges.
A very high percentage of the respondents claimed that they were able to generate innovative ideas
and solutions at their workplace.
The increase in networking and influence contributed to bettering business promotion and
opportunities.
The gains that people identified, such as business promotion and creating opportunities, seemed
more gains in terms of social capital rather than financial capital.
Page 17




Social media was seen as playing an important role in people’s business practices, particularly in
networking, innovation and influence.
Social media, community, the arts and creative commons emerged as the areas where people felt
the main impact of the events.

Articulating the challenges and expectations of new media
Some of the key challenges articulated by participants in 2006 were that people were having difficulties with
instant messaging tools and blogs. Later on, in 2009, the challenges that were put forward were more
conceptual rather than about technical skills. People were asking questions like ‘can social media bring back
village connectedness?’ and would it ‘exclude people due to technological barriers?’
In 2006, a survey of the NLab seminar participants revealed their expectations as follows:
Out of the 67 people surveyed, 80% were more interested in developing their learning , 64% were more
interested in finding collaborators with whom they could develop business ideas and 56% aimed to increase
the use of ICT in their business / academic practice.
In June 2009, the participants of CreativeCoffee Club were surveyed (Pitt 2009) and their expectations were
as follows:
Around 80% of people came to CreativeCoffee Club to build their network and / or make new contacts.
Around 30% came to find new ideas. About 20% said they hoped to gain more business. About a third
mentioned other reasons which include: strengthening links between business and academia, an interest in
social media, a desire to meet like-minded and creative people and a need to raise awareness about an
organisation or service amongst small businesses.
Although some of the expectations have remained the same in the three years and for different groups of
people, it can be argued the impetus shifted from the narrative connection of the events and developing
learning more towards a clearer business focus on networking, gaining new ideas, collaboration, promotion
and opportunities. A comment from the recent survey perhaps sums it up best:
I was making a transition in my life, I knew the Internet and online communities were important and I
needed to know more about their significance. During the course of my relationship with NLab and
CreativeCoffee Club, I put together a new personal and professional development plan which I am now
realising. Of course, the process never ends for curious people ....

Innovation
The events I attended helped me to innovate within my existing role, and later to develop a new role
within a completely different industry after I was made redundant from my original job
This comment from a respondent indicates the importance of the increase in innovation that these events
have facilitated. Another respondent writes, ‘NLab events have given me the confidence to innovate and
create a completely new role within my organisation.’ This is even better reflected by the participants in the
Amplified programme’s stress on ‘protovation’ or ‘fearless innovation in iterative cycles’. As the participant
programme announces ‘amplified individuals are highly augmented. They employ visualization tools,
attention filters, e-displays, and ambient presence systems to enhance their cognitive abilities and
Page 18

coordination skills, thus enabling them to quickly access and process massive amounts of information’ . This
was borne out in the results of the survey conducted in 2011.
87 % of the respondents to the survey agreed that they were able to generate innovative ideas and solutions
after attending these events.
There was a positive correlation between the increase in business opportunities and innovation; all those
who said they increased business opportunities also saw an increase in innovation. However, not everyone
who gained innovative ideas was able to increase business opportunities. People who network more
reported a significant increase in generating innovative solutions. A greater percentage of people who
generated innovative ideas claimed to have networked outside their fields. The transdisciplinary interaction
means that there are less ‘redundant’ connections, as Ronald Burt describes it, and as such there is a freer
flow of ideas. There was no strong correlation between generating innovative ideas and promoting one’s
business but those who promoted their business more also saw an increase in innovation. One assumption
to explain this would be that promotion of business necessitates an increase in innovativeness.
Overall, the events promote innovation in alignment with the stated aim of the Department of Business
Innovations and Skills : ‘We want to make sure that Britain is the best place in the world to run an innovative
business or service - this is critical to the UK's future prosperity, our quality of life and future job prospects’
(Department of Business Innovation and Skills 2010). The relevance of this project to UK’s programme for
enhancing innovation is even more evident from the fact that NESTA funded the Amplified Leicester project.
The events, however, promote innovation not just for business but also for community engagement and this
has to be kept in mind when reading the statistics since not all of the participants who generated innovative
ideas did so with a direct business motive. Inspector Bill Knopp, of the Leicestershire Constabulary and a
participant in the Amplified Leicester programme, is a key example. Knopp used new media ‘to reduce the
impact and dispel fears’ among the Leicester populace when the English Defence League demonstration
threatened to get out of control by tackling rumours by updating people via Twitter. As he says, ‘our tweets
were getting sent on and on and on’ and that they reached 50,000 people. As a result of his connection with
the programme, all the police inspectors in Leicester City now have Twitter accounts and Knopp feels that
the Leicester Police is possibly one of the heaviest users of social media among the country’s police forces.

Business promotion and opportunities
Participants of the Amplified Leicester programme describe how they learned about using websites to
promote their business. Farhana Shaikh, who runs the successful The Asian Writer website, says that she
was inspired by Amplified Leicester. Joy Marsden, who runs a training and development business and is also
an Amplified Leicester participant, similarly brought her business online after attending the events. In a
separate survey conducted a year after the Amplified programme ended, both of the participants who
successfully promoted their businesses agreed that mobbability, high ping quotient and cooperation radar
were important to them, indicating a correlation between business promotion and other outcomes such as
networking and collaboration.
Sujata Bhalla, of the charitable online scheme Giving World, says that ‘the networking has generated strong
interest in our work and people attending have then passed on information to colleagues, business/charity
friends’ thus indicating the It might be instructive to match such a hypothesis with a larger sample of data
from the survey.
Page 19

According to the survey data, around 50% of the respondents agreed that they had been able to promote
their business better and around 43% said they had improved business opportunities.
There was a low correlation between networking and business promotion and a moderate one between
networking and business opportunities. It was found that for those who networked within their fields, an
increase in networking could mean an increase in business promotion. However, those who networked
outside their fields indicated that it was business promotion that was the determining factor rather than the
other way round.
Again, it seems that the pre-existing links within a field makes networking easier and networks themselves
can promote business promotion. However, according to Burt’s model, these linkages are weaker across
different fields. Therefore, the gaps need to be bridged by establishing a common vocabulary - hence, the
need for promotional activities to develop the business network. In this regard, it might be instructive to
explore the role of business promotion within the structural holes and to examine the role of those
occupying the structural holes in developing the common vocabulary across fields.

Social media and transliteracy
Being conversant in the innovative use of social media emerges as a key theme in the interviews with the
Amplified Leicester and NLab participants. A respondent in the recent survey comments, ‘social media can
enable everyone to express themselves and connect creatively with others in their locality to enrich their
own lives and improve their community.’ Another person says that he or she was interested in the ‘power of
social media’. In earlier interviews, Interviewed in 2009, Amplified Leicester participants said that they ‘made
greater use of Twitter using Tweetdeck’, ‘integrating social media into (their) artistic process and post
performance’ or ‘used Flickr to research story idea and Leicester’s history.’ The recent online survey also
provides some indicative statistics.
Of the survey respondents, 56.8% used one social media tool, 28.4% reported using two to three tools and
13.5% reported that they used four or more. 50.8% used Twitter thus making it the most popular choice,
25.7 % used LinkedIn and 23% used Facebook and blogs respectively.
The survey results indicated a correlation between innovation and the number of different types of social
media used. The indication is that innovation increases with the increase in the number of social media
platforms used. A similar correlation exists with influence although there is no clear dependence of one
factor over the other. Those who increased networking did not show any statistically significant correlation
with the increase in the types of social media used. The number of people who used just one tool (usually
Twitter) was only marginally lower than those who used more than one. For users of more than one type of
social media, two to three seemed the optimum. More people used multiple types of social media to
network within their field than across fields. For networking outside fields, more people preferred one type
of social media tool, again usually Twitter. The preponderance of Twitter could be attributed to its ready
accessibility, transmedial and portable presence (from mobile phones to computers), its low learning-curve
and obviously, the huge reach and the need to get messages out quickly but pithily. An investigation of the
particular preference for this tool could be of interest for further research.
The above statistics, however, do not fully capture the extent of use of social media. For example, it is
possible that people who have been using just one type of tool have nevertheless used it very extensively.
Responses to the survey show that people who feel more aware of transliteracy use more types of social
media. It might be worth exploring whether the influence in innovativeness and influence that seems to
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increase for people using multiple social media can be linked to their level of transliteracy. In addition, the
relation between networking across fields and social media could be explained by the fact that people
probably need to combine more face-to-face interaction and traditional networking approaches together
with social media usage because of the possible diversity of their target groups. In such a case, they may still
be highly transliterate because they keep interacting with both non-digital and digital media for networking.
In general, the survey showed that the number of people who had agreed that they felt they were
increasingly transliterate was low (28%). However, the statistical result does not reflect the fact that
although they might experience it, most people who are unfamiliar with the concept might not realise this as
is obvious when a respondent asks, ‘What is transliteracy?’ despite having a full definition and scenario made
available in the survey. Further, as a wide range of people were surveyed, it is possible that many of them
would not have been exposed the concept: ‘I have only attended one event and did not experience this but
perhaps I might do at another one’ is a typically representative response. However, others seem to have a
better grasp: a respondent sums it up as ‘being able to converse on a wide range of topics in a wide range of
media, often rapidly.’ Importantly, it was observed that those who agreed that they had increased their
transliteracy also showed a moderate correlation with the rise in innovation, influence and business
opportunities. Both of these factors were depending on their transliteracy levels. There was no statistically
significant correlation between business promotion or between networking within a field and transliteracy.
For networking outside their fields, there was a moderate correlation with transliteracy; however, a very
large percentage of these networkers disagreed.
Given the fact that despite low agreement, there is still a moderate to strong indication of the importance of
transliteracy to innovation, influence, business opportunity creation and networking across fields, more
research needs to be done in the area. Particularly, the lack of a statistically significant correlation between
business promotion and transliteracy is curious. This is also similar to the lack of correlation between
multiple social media usage and promotion – one would expect promotion to be connected to usage of a
larger number of media but this does not seem to be the case for the group surveyed. Similar studies are
needed for analysing how networking works in terms of transliteracy. The positively significant correlation
between networking across fields and transliteracy, however, could possibly be explained in terms of the
theoretical framework discussed above: those who occupy structural holes implicitly need to be able to
move between networks with relative ease and this would not be likely if they cannot adapt to the variety of
media that different networks use.

Business revenue, employment and grant support
Of the people who agreed that they had received business revenue, employment and grant support as a
result of attending the events, about 14% generated revenue, 12% gained employment and 7% gained grant
support. Moving from the survey respondents to the interviews of some who have been associated with the
project for a while, however, reveals a different story. For example, Sujata Bhalla says that the events have
‘generated company donations and we have also been invited to attend other business networking events
through other attendees.’

Areas of Significant Contribution
Some of the key areas where significant contribution was evidenced by survey respondents were social
media, arts and media, community and retail. The breadth of areas covered is illustrated in the figure below:

Page 21

Major impact areas (2011 survey)
Finance

3%

Arts / Media

12%

Retail

20%

Green space
25%

3%
6%

Religion
Community
Governance

5%

21%

5%

Social media
Creative Commons

Figure Two: Major areas of significant contribution
The other impact areas as identified in earlier surveys and responses were education, customer relationships
and consultation.

Summary of Significance
Basing the analysis on the REF’s description of significance as ‘incremental improvements that are wideranging but have been demonstrated’, the above indicators show significant evidence of improvements in
innovative business and community practices, influence of social media (in particular, social networking) ,
the development of business opportunities and networks. The impact spreads to a wide range of areas. The
main development is evidenced in the increase of social capital and yet it is clear that for the majority of the
participants this has emerged as a key element in furthering business and community development. As a
respondent commented in her interview, the focus of business and marketing is now on ‘knowing who
rather than knowing how and events like Vision2020’ facilitate just that.
As outlined earlier, the projects target the use of social media by communities and small and medium
businesses, in particular. As such it focuses on helping people build and develop networks, use innovative
solutions involving social media to tackle real life issues and through the generation of ideas and networks,
promote economic growth. It also brings communities closer through targeted key themes of interest: such
as environment, religion, food, creative industry, customer relations, open source industry, education and
business consultancy among others. The project also connects to the NCCPE manifesto for the ‘engaged
university’ inasmuch as it ‘creates a shared understanding of the purpose, value, meaning and role of public’
(National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement 2011).

Summary and Recommendations
In early 2011 we set out two research questions:



‘Do new communication frameworks in social media benefit business practices?’
‘What are the roles of transliteracy and amplification in this context?’

From the data analysed, it is possible to draw broad conclusions to address the above questions. With regard
to the question of whether new communication frameworks in social media benefit business practices, we
Page 22

found that the increase in social media platform usage showed a clear correlation with an increase in
networking, influence and innovation. Attendees reported a significantly high increase in business
opportunities and business promotion. Collaboration was another key area in which an implicit improvement
was observed. The majority of the attendees who indicated a high usage of Twitter and at least one other
new social media communication platform indicated improvements in their business practices. The events in
general, with their focus on social media, contributed to business improvement.
In relation to the role of transliteracy, improvement outlined above was seen to have been informed by an
increase in transliteracy and although this might not be obvious to all the participants, those who said they
understood the concept and saw an increase in transliteracy also showed a notable increase in networking
across fields, innovation, influence and business opportunities. The issue of amplification was most closely
related to the Amplified Leicester programme, and this was evident in the data. Participants of that
programme were seen to display amplified qualities to a greater extent than those whose attendance had
been confined to the other projects. This indicated to us that a systematic programme of Amplification is
necessary for a focused way of using social media for improving business, and is less likely to happen
organically as is often the case with transliteracy. Based on the evidence above, we offer the following
recommendations for further research:
1. Collaboration was implicit in many accounts of networking. Further studies should be undertaken to
examine how high quality collaboration takes place between different types of creative businesses and
across networks.
2. Networking within a field of interest saw more types of social media being used than for networking
between fields. Further research should be undertake into the reasons and processes behind this.
3. The function of structural holes has already been demonstrated by Ronald Burt. We recommend a study
of the roles played by both transliteracy and amplification within structural holes, with specific
reference to ways in which they may enhance creative innovation and the development of a strategy
and toolset to support this.
4. Transdisciplinarity was not explicitly identified as a key theme in the projects discussed here but it is
likely that transdisciplinary practice underpins much of the networking we observed. More research
should be conducted with groups such as these to examine the role of transdisciplinarity in business
networks and collaborations.
5. Given the indicative statistics from the survey, it could be useful to investigate the reach of social media
among the business practices of the diverse ethnic communities in Leicester.

The REF: final comments
Despite best attempts to quantify it, not at all impact is direct, obvious or even straightforward and this is
true of the projects analysed here. Most of the analysis was based on observations by the participants about
the change in their business practices, results which do not happen overnight and are difficult to map.
Although not much direct financial gain was reported by the participants, most of them claimed a heavy and
significant impact in their day-to-day practice. This was further corroborated by the popularity of the events,
as evidenced by the attendance records.
It was, therefore, perplexing when we applied the sample indicators of impact as provided by REF and RCUK..
Rather than fit neatly into the categories, the impact seemed to be spread out across a number of indicators
across the various recommended categories, yet to ignore them would be to miss key outcomes.
Considering the transdisciplinarity of the project, the varied nature of the events and the participants, the
Page 23

homogeneity assumed by the impact agenda needed to be challenged and replaced by a framework that
supported multiplicity and indicators which reflected the variety as well as the depth of the impact.
Further, even after redefining the indicators according to their relevance to the events, there are still
unresolved issues in that there is a risk of missing significant impact. Some of the impact, therefore, remains
latent and often takes a long time to become obvious. In terms of this project, the figures for increase in
transliteracy as gathered from the survey were low. However, on exploring the relationships between
innovation, business opportunities and transliteracy, a moderate to high correlation emerged between these
indicators, an outcome which would have been missed if the data were taken at face value.
There were also clear overlaps between the indicators for the two broad categories of ‘reach’ and
‘significance’ showing that these cannot be seen as watertight. Reach was relatively easier to map given the
variety of sectors, the large extent of networking and the high influence on non-participants, although
HEFCE’s definition of ‘reach’ can be construed as being too vague for assessing impact. Significance,
however, proved more problematic to measure as its scope was broader but did not seem to include impact
experienced over time as well as the not so obvious increase in impact such as increase in trust, a key
element in social networking.
The REF recommends a ‘four-star’ rating for reach and significance so as to consider any research outcome
as being impactful. ‘Ground-breaking or transformative impacts of major value or significance with wideranging relevance’ is the criterion for a four-star rating of impact. If the impact is ‘highly significant or
innovative’ but not ground-breaking REF will award it a three-star ranking. In the above study, although the
impact conformed to the REF standards, in certain cases it was found difficult to differentiate between the
four and three star categories.

Conclusion
Even in the early formulations of transliteracy, such as the ‘Crossing Divides’ article in First Monday, the
concept was already being viewed as having a wide range of potential applications. Narrowing down the
broad scope of transliteracy, our research into the events discussed here has concentrated on demonstrating
the impact of transliteracy on business practices, especially by introducing new frameworks of social media
for communication and business innovation. Such a framework also facilitated the application of the
Institute for the Future’s model of the Amplified Individual in the context of UK’s small and medium
industries and community projects. The combination of transliteracy and amplification showed a clear and
focused impact on business improvement. However, this research revealed the need for further exploration
as outlined above. As pointed out by Knowledge Works, the amplified, transliterate organisation seems to
be a potential driver of change by the year 2020. More research in the impact this framework has on
business improvement is therefore necessary.
The research outlined above was carried out as part of an initial exploration of the impact of transliteracy
and social media on business improvement. Occurring in a period when impact figures high on the agenda of
UK research funding, this research project decided to apply the criteria advocated by REF to analyse the
impact. During the research, however, several problems emerged with the REF recommendations. These
issues were especially evident due to the transdisciplinary nature of the projects and the many possible
scenarios where the REF formulations failed to detect impact that was obvious when other parameters were
used. These findings also correspond with similar conclusions reached by other independent studies that
were published during the period of the research. For example, Tim May writing in the Times Higher
Educational Supplement states that ‘the real work and worth of the academy can’t be described by ‘business
Page 24

performance’ metrics and management-speak’ (May 2011). We have observed this to be true even when the
work is itself related to business performance. This research therefore recommends further refinement of
the REF parameters for analysing impact along with the imperative that transdisciplinary factors must be
taken into account. To omit them is to ignore the fact that in the real world, if not in the academy,
transdisciplinarity is a given element of most business and cultural practice.
In sum, in the process of revealing the impact of social media and transliteracy on business improvement,
this research also points towards the need to take into account the transdisciplinary nature of impact itself.
In its demonstration of non-standard but highly significant impact, this study highlights the need to redefine
the concept and analysis of impact itself.

References
Andretta, S. (2009) Transliteracy: Take a Walk on the Wild Side, Keynote at the IFLA/ World Library and
Information Conference, Milan, Italy http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla75/94-andretta-en.pdf.
Brown, R. & Chant, M.( 2009). Getting in Getting on: The Essential Higher Education Guide for Advisers 7th
ed., Gloucester: University & College Admissions Service, pp. 26-7
Burt, R. (1995) Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University)
Cruickshank, P. and Rolland, D. (2006) Entrepreneurial Success through Networks and Social Capital:
Exploratory Considerations from GEM Research in New Zealand in Journal of Small Business and
Entrepreneurship, Volume 19 Number 1 January 2006. Saskatchewan: University of Regina.
Department of Business Innovations and Skills (2010), ‘Innovation’,
http://www.bis.gov.uk/policies/innovation.
Fearn, H. (2008) Threads that twist and tangle Hannah Fearn, Times Higher Education Supplement.28
February 2008, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=400746.
HEFCE (2011) ‘Decisions on Assessing Research Impact – Ref 01.2011’ (Bristol: HEFCE)
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/research/ref/pubs/2011/01_11/
Institute of the Future (2007) The Future of Work Perspectives, Institute for the Future Technology Horizons
Program, October, 2007 SR | 1092-A http://www.iftf.org
Knowledge Works Foundation (2010) Transliteracy: A Trend of Amplified Organisation, 2020 Forecast:
Creating the Future of Learning, http://www.futureofed.org/trend/Transliteracy.aspx
May, T. (2011) ‘What’s going on? Impact metrics won’t tell you’. Times Higher Education Supplement, 11
June 2011, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=416470&c=1 .
National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (2011), ‘Manifesto of Public Engagement’
Pitt, A. (2009) Creative Coffee Club Leicester: Review of Provision, De Montfort University.
Putnam, R. (1995) Bowling Alone: America’s Social Capital in Journal of Democracy, Volume 16:1 January
1995, pp. 65-78. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html
Research Councils UK (2011), ‘Pathways to Impact’
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Thomas, S. (2007) ‘Diagramming Transliterate Spaces’ .weblog entry.Transliteracy.com blog.Posted 29
September 2007. http://nlabnetworks.typepad.com/transliteracy/2007/09/diagramming-transliteratespaces.html
Thomas, S. and Boeck, T. (2010) Amplified Leicester: Impact on Social Capital and Cohesion, NESTA,
http://www.nesta.org.uk/library/documents/Amplified_Leicesterv8.pdf.
Thomas, S., Joseph,C., Laccetti,J., Mason,B., Perril,S., and Pullinger,K. (2008) ‘Transliteracy as a Unifying
Perspective’in The Handbook of Research on Social Software and Developing Community Ontologies, eds. S.
Hatzipanagos.S. and S.Warburton. London: IGI Global
Thomas, S, Joseph, C., Laccetti, J., Mason, B., Mills, S., Perril, S., and Pullinger, K. (2007) ‘Transliteracy:
Crossing Divides’, First Monday, Volume 12
No.12,http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2060/1908

Event websites and hashtags
Amplified Leicester, http://ampleic.ning.com/, #ampleic
CreativeCoffee Club, www.creativecoffeeleicester.com/ #ccleic
NLab, http://nlabnetworks.typepad.com/
Vision 2020, http://vision2020.org.uk/, #vis20leic

Acknowledgements
Much of this research has been the result of tapping into networks, interviews, surveys and also the
following up of the painstaking research on the project done earlier. We would like to thank everyone who
has been involved, directly or indirectly, in making this research possible.
Without the patient help and timely inputs of Jayne Childs, the research on the CreativeCoffee Club and
Amplified Leicester would not have been possible. Thilo Boeck and Toby Moores provided valuable guidance
and information on the later and the early events. Dr Beth Lunt and Beverley Lambie of De Montfort
University’s Research and Development Office very kindly shared their research on impact and the REF
parameters of measuring it. The HEFCE helpdesk were also extremely cooperative in providing us with their
latest information.
As far as the data gathering was concerned, we were able to gain many key insights from our interviews with
Ian Davies, Inspector Bill Knopp of the Leicestershire Constabulary, Sue Tilley and Pankaj Mistry of Prospect
Leicestershire, Sujata Bhalla of Giving Worlds online, Joy Marsden, Farhana Sheikh, George Ballentyne and
attendees of CreativeCoffee Club and Amplified Leicester. Anna Pitt’s report on CreativeCoffee Club also
contributed important data. We would also like to thank all those who responded to our survey and to those
who offered valuable inputs at our presentation at DMU.
Last but not least, Souvik would like to thank everyone with whom he shared his office for bringing that
extremely necessary element of fun into the long hours of data analysis.

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