Design withcommunities,not for them.
The 80:20 Pathway helps researchers, innovators and funders engage the communities they serve, turning listening into evidence, funding and impact.
You built something good. But will the people it's for actually use it?
Most innovations don't fail for technical reasons. They fail because the people they're intended for were never really part of the process. The result is familiar: pilots that don't scale, funding that isn't renewed, and good work that quietly goes unused. The fix isn't a better product. It's better listening.
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Experience with
- RTC North
- Innovate UK programmes
- Carbon Trust
- University of Warwick
- Smart Villages Research Group
The 80:20 Pathway was built in the field, not in a boardroom.
Dr Emma Heywood is an internationally recognised expert in communication, community engagement and innovation adoption, drawing on over 15 years of research and partnership work across Africa, Europe and the Middle East. She has worked with researchers, innovators, funders and communities to understand why some projects achieve lasting impact while others struggle to gain trust and uptake.
She has seen first-hand how good ideas stall when the people they're meant to serve aren't part of the conversation, and built a practical way to fix it.
Advise · Train · Evidence.
A practical path from listening to the proof your funders are looking for.
Advise
Work alongside you to design engagement that fits your context and the communities you serve.
Train
Equip your team with listening-led communication skills, in person or through our online course.
Evidence
Turn what you hear into the proof of adoption and value that funders increasingly expect.
The foundation of great communication is listening.
Our name reflects a simple but powerful principle: listen 80% of the time, talk just 20%. Lead with listening and you build deeper trust, encourage openness, and strengthen every relationship, with your team, your clients and your community.
We don't just teach people to speak effectively. We show them how to truly hear what matters, because when people feel heard, everything else follows.
Who we work with
Organisations that lead with social purpose, with commercial strategy, or recognise they need both, and want a practical way to connect them.
The technology is rarely the problem.
The same project can succeed or stall on one thing: whether listening actually changed the decisions. Here is how that plays out, drawn from a real engagement case.
- The signal
- Packed, enthusiastic meetings. The team reads the warmth as demand and leaves confident.
- What's missed
- No one in the room has the authority, budget or time to actually adopt the solution.
- How it ends
- Follow-up stalls. Partners stay supportive but non-committal, and adoption never happens.
- The signal
- The same meetings, but the first questions are who can approve, pay for and sustain it.
- What surfaces
- The gap between interest and commitment shows up early, while it's still cheap to act on.
- How it ends
- Effort goes where adoption is real, or the design changes to fit reality before launch.
That is the shift the 80:20 Pathway makes, turning listening into evidence, and evidence into decisions that hold.
See the full case examplesHighly practical, engaging and immediately applicable to real projects.
Training & workshop participant
Testimonial 1 of 6: Training & workshop participant
Build the skills in your own team.
A self-paced course for people introducing innovations into places they do not live in. It's open now, for individuals and teams.
Training a team or organisation? Talk to us
What people ask us
- What is The 80:20 Pathway?
- An evidence-informed innovation consultancy whose expertise is community engagement. We help researchers, innovators and funders engage the communities their work is meant to serve, built on the principle of listening 80% and talking 20%.
- Who do you work with?
- Funders, project and programme leads, innovators and start-ups, and researchers, across the UK and Low- and Middle-Income Countries.
- Why do innovation projects fail to reach communities?
- Usually not for technical reasons, but because teams don't engage end users or local context early enough. We give teams a structured way to build two-way communication and gather evidence of adoption.
- How do you work with teams?
- We work directly with organisations through consultancy, which can include advice, bespoke workshops and training. We also offer an online course your team can use. Every option is on our Services page.
Ready to make sure your work gets used?
Tell us what you're working on, and we'll show you where stronger listening could make the difference.