Connections · Members Question Time
Ask the network without naming your organisation.
An IRDG member service for learning from other companies' experience. Send your question to IRDG and we will gather responses without naming you or your organisation. IRDG receives your contact details so we can manage the request.
How it works
How Members Question Time works.
Submit your question
Send the question to the member team with any context that matters. Your company is not named.
IRDG asks the network
We put the question to relevant member companies without naming you or your organisation.
You get a practical summary
Responses come back collated — what members do, what they would avoid and what they would try next.
What members ask
The questions teams can't easily ask in public.
Process choices, tooling, suppliers, team structures, metrics and funding experiences — recurring questions where another member has usually been there already.
Published member examples
How members have used Members Question Time.
The examples below are drawn from member accounts previously published by IRDG. They describe the experience of using MQT; individual response reports are not published here.
Takeda
Finding the right external support.
Takeda asked members for recommendations to support work on its site's mission, vision and strategy. The responses helped the team compare suggestions and draw on other organisations' experience before progressing its project.
Irish Pressings
Finding a route to better production information.
Irish Pressings wanted to modernise its production information. Through MQT, a member recommendation helped the company identify a provider and prepare a project suited to its processes.
Mason Technology
Learning how others retain knowledge.
Mason Technology asked how to bring colleagues' accumulated knowledge into a shared resource. Members' responses helped the company explore an approach it was trialling at the time of its account.
Examples of questions members ask
These are illustrative questions. Individual responses stay within the MQT process; the named stories above are accounts previously published by IRDG.
“How do other companies structure the innovation team?”
Question areaTeam structure
Dedicated team or dotted lines into engineering, who owns the portfolio, and what changed when the organisation scaled.
“What tool did you pick for managing R&D projects — and what would you avoid?”
Question areaTooling
Software and systems choices, what implementation actually took, and what members would do differently second time round.
“Has anyone worked with this kind of supplier or partner?”
Question areaSuppliers and partners
Experience of working with contract labs, research partners, consultants and specialist suppliers — what to check before committing.
“What do you report to the board about innovation?”
Question areaMetrics
The measures that survived contact with a real boardroom, and the ones members stopped reporting.
“What did the funding application actually involve?”
Question areaFunding experiences
The effort, timelines and evidence behind grant applications and claims, from companies that have been through them.
“How are you running this process day to day?”
Question areaProcess choices
Stage gates, validation, documentation, quality routines — how the process runs in practice rather than on the slide.
Have a question the network can answer?
Members Question Time is an IRDG member service. Julia Le Maitre coordinates it and returns the collated summary without naming you or your organisation.