Mental and institutional barriers to creating impact

PurposeIn this impact paper, I outline how a new inclusion theory generated non-scholarly impact even before it was published and share my personal experiences with mental and institutional barriers to creating that impact. With this, I hope to (1) help readers relate to and understand the issues that they are facing in creating impact and (2) inspire academics and academic institutions to remove obstacles to creating impact.Design/methodology/approachAfter outlining the new theory and the impact it has generated, I autobiographically describe the barriers to impact that I experienced, split up into two categories: mental and institutional barriers.FindingsI discerned six main barriers that I had to overcome. Three of these are mental obstacles: impact order beliefs, prioritizing impact and a lack of examples. The other three are institutional obstacles: a lack of incentives for doing impact work, a lack of resources and an incompatibility between the impact form and the institutional environment.Originality/valueIt can be daunting to hear about the impact that others are having when the journey to get there is being left out and success stories run the risk of pretending that there were no or only a few obstacles involved. In sharing the struggles involved with doing an impact in my particular case, I hope to provide a more realistic insight into the barriers that one is likely to face in doing impact and issue a wider call for removing barriers to making impact.