Get involved
Get involved — in a way that fits your week.
IRDG's evidence, practice groups, stories and training all come from members giving time. None of it is an obligation of membership. Every route below says plainly who it is for and what it involves, and IRDG scopes the ask before you commit to anything.
Why this page exists
Nearly everything useful on this site started as somebody's time.
The policy positions come from members telling IRDG what is actually happening. The practice groups run because members turn up and compare notes. The stories exist because companies agreed to be written about. The training reflects what companies said they could not hire for.
So the honest way to describe contribution is not as a duty but as the mechanism. If nobody contributes, there is nothing to represent and nothing to share. If you have twenty minutes or a morning, the routes below are what they turn into.
Give evidence
Put evidence into the record.
Three routes that put what is happening inside your organisation into the record IRDG argues from.
Raise a policy or implementation issue
Share what is happening, who it affects and why it matters. IRDG assesses whether it is an individual support question or evidence of a wider issue.
Contribute to policy work
Respond to consultations, contribute through the Policy Working Group and help test whether a proposed position reflects experience across the network.
Take part in the Innovation Index
Add evidence to IRDG and KPMG's annual picture of investment, priorities, incentives and barriers.
Share practice
Pass on what you have already worked out.
Six routes that move what one company has learned to the companies that have not learned it yet.
Join a practice group
Compare approaches with peers in Innovation Management, AI for Innovation, Sustainable Innovation or another group formed around member demand.
Ask Members Question Time
Put a candid question to the network through IRDG. Identifying details are removed unless you expressly agree otherwise.
Host or contribute to a member session
Host a site visit or practice session, share a case, frame a challenge or help another team understand what implementation looks like in practice.
Mentor another member
Help someone in another member company work through a defined innovation question where your experience is relevant — a scoped conversation, a sense-check, or a place on the Cross-Sector Mentoring Programme panel.
Attend, speak or give feedback
Use events, roundtables and site visits to contribute experience, test ideas and tell the team what would make the network more useful.
Share a member story or case study
Work with IRDG to turn a practical innovation, capability or collaboration experience into a useful story. Nothing is published without company approval.
Shape capability
Tell us what your team cannot do yet.
What the network can do next depends on what companies say they cannot currently do.
Shape training priorities
Tell IRDG Innovation Skillnet what your team needs to build. Requests help inform future courses, cohorts and in-company options.
Help steer
Take a turn steering it.
IRDG is directed by a voluntary Board drawn from member companies. That only works if members put themselves forward.
Express interest in Board or committee service
Tell IRDG what experience you could contribute to a committee, working group or future advisory role. An expression of interest is not an appointment: any formal appointment follows the governance requirements that apply to the body concerned.
What contributing looks like
Someone in the room did the work you are about to read.
Every session, group and story on this site exists because a member gave it time. Sometimes that is an hour on a panel, sometimes a morning hosting a visit, sometimes a page of practice written up so the next company does not start cold.
None of it is an obligation of membership. It is simply where most of the useful material comes from.
How IRDG handles it
What you are agreeing to, and what you are not.
Offering something does not commit you to it. These apply to every route above.
- No open-ended volunteering: the purpose, audience and time are agreed first.
- No contact details are passed on without permission.
- Commercially sensitive material is not published without explicit approval.
- Contributions are handled within the agreed process and use; public attribution requires permission.
- A contribution is an invitation, not an obligation of membership.
If none of them quite fits
Start with a conversation instead.
Plenty of useful contributions do not match a route on this page. If you have something the network would benefit from and no obvious place to put it, say so and we will find the right home for it.
Mary ByrneDirector of Member Success
Offer something
Tell us what you would like to contribute.
One form for every route above. Say which kind of contribution you have in mind and we will come back with what it involves — no commitment at this stage.