Dr Wade Kelly is a Senior Lecturer in the Researcher Development Academy at Deakin University, specialising in developing researchers’ impact and engagement capability across the career span.
An influential contributor to the impact discourse in higher education, Dr Kelly brings extensive experience advising university leadership, faculties, institutes and funders on strategically embedding impact into policy, practice, and culture.
When we consider examples of industry-engaged supervision, the current policy environment fosters an instinct to look toward internships, placements, or partnerships that emerge during candidature — particularly in the first 18 months. But this framing risks missing something more fundamental: by the time these opportunities are being considered, we may already be too late.
Industry engagement and research impact are often treated as adjacent but separate agendas. In practice, they overlap far more than we tend to acknowledge. If their relationship were visualised, it would look less like a neat Venn diagram and more like an egg—substantial overlap, but with areas that extend beyond each other. Not all industry engagement leads to impact, and not all impact depends on industry. But meaningful engagement—whether with industry, government, or community—dramatically increases the likelihood that research will travel beyond the walls of universities.
Done well, industry engagement and impact are not retrofitted; they are designed in from the outset.
Before the PhD: Selecting for engagement and impact potential
If engagement and impact are expectations, they need to be considered at the point of selection. This is not about requiring fully formed industry partnerships or polished impact plans, but about identifying candidates who show curiosity about where their work might land.
Assessment processes can surface this. Can candidates explain why their research matters beyond disciplinary terms? Do they show interest in working with people outside academia? Have they had prior exposure to industry, government, or community contexts?
Candidates anchored in problems that exist beyond the university often approach their work differently. They are more likely to seek collaborators, recognise opportunities for engagement, and persist when challenges arise because their work has somewhere to go.
At this stage, impact is not demonstrated by outputs, but rather, orientation. This is where institutions signal what is valued. If universities — including school and faculty-based processes — seek industry-engaged and impact-oriented research, this needs to be reflected not only in rhetoric but in recruitment, scholarship framing, and selection criteria.
At the start: Setting expectations and giving permission
The earliest stages of candidature are where expectations are set—often implicitly—about what a PhD (or a masters!) is for. If engagement beyond academia is positioned as optional or peripheral, candidates rapidly internalise that message.
Supervisors play a critical role here. Giving permission to engage in diverse ways is not an abstract idea; it is a practical act. It involves making it explicit that engaging with industry or other external partners is not a distraction from the thesis, but part of doing strong research. It may be a side road off the main highway, but the journey will pay dividends.
This might include introducing candidates to industry contacts, sharing examples of past collaborations, or mapping existing and potential networks. It also involves early conversations about career trajectories. Candidates heading toward industry, policy, or clinical roles should often engage differently from those pursuing academic careers; supervisory approaches can reflect this.
Industry engagement often begins not with formal partnerships, but with simple exposure: conversations, guest speakers, advisory relationships, or informal collaborations that broaden a candidate’s understanding of where their work might connect.
At this stage, impact and engagement look like expectations, exposure, and early connections—the conditions that make later collaboration possible.
During the PhD: Designing research with partners in mind
Once candidature is underway, engagement and impact need to remain part of how research is shaped. This does not require every project to become an industry-partnered PhD, but it does mean asking outward-facing questions early.
Who, outside academia, would benefit from this research? Where are they? How might they be engaged? Playing with language like next-user, end-user, partner, stakeholder (though acknowledging this is contested for its colonial roots), beneficiary, etc., helps graduate researchers think through their relationship to industry, community, and/or the public(s).
In co-designed projects, these questions are explicit from the beginning, with industry or external partners shaping research questions, methods, and outputs. In other cases, engagement may take the form of placements, advisory groups, or ongoing dialogue that influences how the research evolves.
These forms of engagement do more than create pathways to impact; they often strengthen the research itself. External perspectives can refine problem definitions, challenge assumptions, and shape outputs in ways that increase relevance and usability.
Supervisors also play a key role in building the capabilities that make this possible. Many candidates are highly skilled in academic writing but less confident communicating with non-academic audiences. Developing this capacity—clear communication, adaptability, and audience awareness—is central to both industry engagement and impact. Activities like 3MT are not a distraction, but rather a key space for developing core competencies—presenting, synthesising knowledge, pitching, understanding audience, etc.
At this stage, industry engagement is visible through relationships, co-designed questions, and evolving research practices. Engagement is no longer an add-on; it is part of how the work is done.
At completion and beyond: From pathways to movement
By the time a candidate reaches submission, engagement and impact should already be underway. The difference is that translation does not begin from scratch; it builds on relationships, skills, and pathways developed over time.
Candidates who have engaged throughout their PhD are better positioned to work with industry partners, contribute to policy, or implement findings in practice. They know who to talk to, how to communicate their work, and what forms of output matter beyond academia.
At this stage, impact is movement—research travelling into industry, policy, practice, or public discourse through pathways established earlier.
Supervisors and institutions as enablers
Frameworks such as the Supervision for Societal Impact Ecosystem (Kelly & Given, 2024) position supervisors as enablers of possibility. But this responsibility does not sit with supervisors alone.
Universities also shape what is possible through the structures they create: how scholarships are framed, how industry engagement is supported, and how success is defined. If industry engagement and impact are priorities, they need to be embedded in these systems, not left to individual initiative.
From permission to practice
Candidates who go on to make a meaningful difference rarely do so because they were instructed to engage. They do so because they were given permission—early—to see themselves as researchers whose work could matter beyond the university, and were supported in acting on that.
Industry engagement is one of the most powerful pathways to that outcome and is critical to realising future impact.