Managing your Research Career – Where to Start?On value chains, ikigai, and why you don’t actually manage time
After last week’s free post, I thought I would create a bit of a list and resource of which Friday posts are now available for free. Catch-up service:
There’s more, but I am running out of time and will provide a full list soon. I teach strategy, so I have taught the value chain and related frameworks to students for years. When I was still an early-career scholar, I found myself in a position that many doctoral students might recognise: so many things seemed possible, and it was genuinely difficult to know what to do first or how much time to give to any of it. At some point, I decided to try one of the strategy models I teach and apply it to my activities and career. So I asked myself: What does a value chain look like for an individual? It turned out to be quite a fun exercise (yes, really). Not because the result was perfect, but because it forced me to look at the pieces, think about how they fit together, and be honest about the trade-offs. I have a tendency to say yes to everything, and it helped me see why that was not working. This post grew out of the BAM Doctoral Fridays session in May 2026, on managing the doctoral journey. BAM Doctoral Fridays are a British Academy of Management initiative for doctoral researchers. This is what I talked about at the BAM Doctoral Fridays session last week. One of these things I like to say yes to. And, actually, rarely regret. The value chain of a researcherPorter’s value chain is a tool for understanding how an organisation creates value: what comes in, what gets processed, what gets delivered to market, and what support functions underpin it all. It was designed for firms. Turns out it works okay for academic careers, which is either reassuring or alarming, depending on your disposition. My version looks roughly like this: On the research side — inbound resources (reading, data, ideas, networks), operations (writing articles, preparing grant applications), and delivery (submitting, navigating peer review, publication). Teaching sits alongside this as a parallel track: preparation, delivery, assessment. And then the key element at the end, which is frequently overlooked: visibility. Which is something that most of us ignore – but if you spent a lot of time and effort on creating the best work possible, you want it to be visible in your community, sure? Self-promotion always seemed to be more warmly embraced by our American colleagues (sorry guys), at least that was my impression during the PhD, so many years ago. These days, social media has changed the playing field. Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez and I are planning a small, affordable e-Book that brings together blogs and broader practice in dissemination as a guide. And in the meantime, LinkedIn has emerged as the academic marketplace of ideas that some say Twitter once was (I was not so involved in social media at the time). But back to the value chain exercise. What are the equivalent support functions for an academic career? Procurement means finding opportunities, securing funding and securing protected time within your institution. Continuous development means investing in your knowledge of literature, identifying training opportunities and expanding your skills. Building your infrastructure: reference management, databases, AI tools, whatever your digital setup looks like – and if you need help with that, check out the “Tech Stack” section on this blog. Doing this exercise was a useful audit that made me feel more confident about balancing the different demands and opportunities in an academic career. Yours might look different; that’s kind of the point with these diagnostic business models. I immediately noticed that I was putting almost no energy into visibility — the part where people actually discover your work. Conferences, LinkedIn, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, a blog. As you can see, I have now taken care of these, and I even blogged about your essential and optional to-dos. Also worthwhile drawing on Anne-Wil Harzing’s resources; her blog and YouTube channel are worth checking out if this is not something you have already sorted out. The other thing the exercise clarifies is trade-offs. A primarily research-focused academic will have a very different value chain from a teacher-scholar. But ultimately, all of us have kind of portfolio careers, which means facing a wide range of choices that need to be balanced. The ikigai of scholarly publishingThere is a Japanese concept, ikigai — roughly “life value” or “a sense of purpose.” In its popular form, it describes the overlap of four things: what you love, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for. You have probably seen the diagram. It’s cute, and a good way to dig a little deeper into what motivates you. And there is no part of an academic career where you need to be more motivated than scholarly publishing. Sadly. For scholarly publishing, I think the four circles should be: what you love to write about, what the world needs to read, what gets recognised by your peers, and what gets published in the journals that count in your field. The overlaps are perhaps more interesting:
Most of the time, you are navigating trade-offs between these four things. Knowing where you are willing to make these trade-offs should be a central part of your research strategy. And if a research career does not actually appeal once you think it through clearly, that is important information too. Maybe teaching, or more impact-oriented work with practitioners, or indeed management, is what you end up finding more appealing. That is fine. Strategy is mostly about what you are NOT going to do. After the paywall, we look at practical ways to manage your time (which is not actually possible, more on that later), some systems that I found to work well, and some resources that help you figure out what might work for you. Also, the usual collated list of reading suggestions from media and blogosphere, and a completely gratuitous picture of a lovely Venetian craft shop (that you should totally visit if you are there) if you scroll all the way to the bottom :-)... Continue reading this post for free in the Substack app
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Friday, 15 May 2026
Managing your Research Career – Where to Start?
Thursday, 14 May 2026
Autistic Mental Health Is A Rights Issue
Autistic Mental Health Is A Rights IssueA collection of blogs and more to help you understand Autistic mental health better
Autistic mental health has been talked about, theorised over, and pathologised for decades. What it hasn’t been, nearly enough, is understood on our terms, in our language, by us. Over the past couple of months, we’ve been building a body of writing at NeuroHub that attempts to do exactly that. Below you’ll find four articles that approach Autistic mental health from the inside out, as a lived reality shaped by systems, environments, and a world that was not designed with us in mind. We’ve also got two unmissable events coming up, one free, one the biggest thing we do all year, and we’d love to see you at both. New from the NeuroHub BlogThe Essential Guide to Autistic Mental HealthIf you’re looking for somewhere to start, whether you’re Autistic yourself, supporting an Autistic person, or working in a professional context, this is it. This piece offers a grounded, accessible introduction to Autistic mental health that centres the world we actually live in, rather than a clinical abstraction of it. Autism and Mental Health: The System Wasn’t Built for UsThe numbers are stark. Autistic people experience mental health difficulties at significantly higher rates than the general population, yet routinely find themselves excluded from, failed by, or actively harmed by the very services that are supposed to help. This article examines the systemic reasons why; and what genuinely supportive, Autistic-informed mental health provision could look like. Autism, Complex Mental Health, and the Right to Be Fully HumanComplex, co-occurring mental health experiences aren’t the exception for Autistic people; they’re the rule. So why does so much of the support on offer fail to account for that complexity? This piece explores what it means to approach Autistic mental health holistically, and argues that anything less is a denial of our full humanity. Lilipadding, Monotropic Split, and Autistic BurnoutCo-authored with Tanya Adkin This is one of our longest and most practical pieces to date; a 12-minute read that’s worth every minute. If you’ve ever wondered why Autistic and monotropic people are so vulnerable to burnout, or felt like you were running on empty no matter how hard you tried to manage your capacity, the frameworks of monotropic split and lilipadding offer something genuinely useful; not a productivity hack, but a path toward sustainable living that actually works with how our minds operate. FREE EVENT — Autistic Stim & Glim Online PartyThursday 18th June 2026 · 4pm BST · Online · Free Autistic Pride Day is coming, and we’re celebrating it the way it deserves to be celebrated, with our NeuroKin, stimming freely, and sharing the glimmers that make life worth living. The Stim & Glim Online Party is a free, joyful, low-pressure online gathering for Autistic people. Come as you are. Bring your stims. Share your glimmers. Be around people who just get it. This is a space made by and for Autistic people; no masking required, no performance expected. This event is 100% free to all members of our online community, or you can access it for £10. I recommend joining the community and getting the free ticket! 2026 Autistic Mental Health Conference14–16 August 2026 · Hybrid (Online + In-Person, Brighton) · Tickets from £50 In partnership with Autistic Inclusive Meets This year’s conference is built around a theme that sits at the heart of everything we do at NeuroHub: Ecosystemic Causes of Mental Health Issues, because Autistic mental health cannot be understood in isolation from the environments, systems, and structures that shape our lives. Across three full days (10am–6pm BST), you’ll hear from a rich line-up of neurodivergent-led voices: lived experience speakers, researchers, and practitioners who approach Autistic mental health from the inside. The programme includes 40-minute talks, lightning sessions, and pre-recorded contributions, all recorded and made available to ticket holders after the event. Online access is available for all three days. Saturday 15th August also offers an optional in-person day in Coldean, Brighton & Hove, with stalls, food, and community alongside the live sessions. NeuroHub Community members receive a 33% discount on all ticket prices. Contact our admin team for your discount code. For The Professionals: Upcoming Training & CPDWe believe Autistic voices should lead the conversation about Autistic lives. Everything we produce at NeuroHub, our writing, our events, our community, exists to make that possible. We are excited to let you know that our six-point framework for Supporting Autistic People is releasing as a course and toolkit, pre-orders and access to the live webinar can be purchased now for 50% off, meaning it costs just £9.99 for access to the full offering. Thats:
All available for £9.99 if you pre-order it now. David & the NeuroHub Team Invite your friends and earn rewards
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Managing your Research Career – Where to Start?
On value chains, ikigai, and why you don’t actually manage time ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ...
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CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: AOM 2025 PDW ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ...



