The IFAD Innovation Strategy does not set new objectives for staff, but rather defines what is needed to create an innovation-friendly environment and to support staff in achieving the expected results.To strengthen its innovative capabilities and become a better catalyst of pro-poor innovation, IFAD will focus on four clusters of activities: (i) Building capabilities and understanding of challenges requiring innovation; (ii) Nurturing partnerships and facilitating an innovation network; (iii) Embedding rigorous innovation processes and the related risk management into IFAD’s core business
This paper was prepared to present at the Farmer First Revisited: 20 Years On conference at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, December, 2007. Its focus is the challenge of strengthening agricultural innovation systems. The paper prefaces this discussion by reflecting on an apparent paradox. While agricultural innovation has never been better studied and understood, many of our ideas about innovation have failed to fundamentally change the institutional and policy setting of public and private investment intended to promote innovation for development.
Au Brésil, la diffusion du modèle de gestion intégrée des ressources en eau varie fortement selon l’environnement socio-territorial. Le Sud présente un dynamisme certain s’appuyant sur des initiatives locales. Les acteurs locaux sont organisés en comité de bassin et développent des actions pour améliorer la gestion des ressources. Dans le Nordeste, la marche vers ces nouveaux modes de gestion paraît difficile tant les inerties sociales et culturelles freinent un partage réel du pouvoir, des ressources et des coûts.
Many capacity development (CD) programs and processes aim at long‐term sustainable change, which depends on seeing many smaller changes in at times almost invisible fields (rules, incentives, behaviours, power, coordination etc.). Yet, most evaluation processes of CD tend to focus on short‐term outputs focused on clearly visible changes.
This ‘Tourist Guide’ is a resource document charting the emerging landscape of systems studies on rural innovation. Note that the term ‘rural innovation’ is used rather than ‘agricultural innovation’ in recognition of the wider scope of knowledge applications that are important in contemporary rural livelihoods. There is a growing body of literature dealing with rural innovation with some research groups developing ideas over the last 20 odd years on the topic.
In this paper, presented at the 8th European IFSA Symposium ( Workshop 6: "Change in knowledge systems and extension services: Role of the new actors") in 2008, the authors discuss a conceptual framework that understands innovation processes as the outcome of collaborative networks where information is exchanged and learning processes happen. They argue that technical and economic factors used to analyse drivers and barriers alone are not sufficient to understand innovation processes.
This paper, presented at the 8th European IFSA Symposium ( Workshop 6: "Change in knowledge systems and extension services: Role of the new actors") in 2008, discusses the innovation network Waardewerken, a Dutch network of rural entrepreneurs pioneering in multifunctional agriculture. which aims to contribute to a professional multifunctional agriculture sector in the Netherlands. For this purpose it cooperates with researchers and policymakers in order to improve policy conditions and to develop knowledge for multifunctional farmers.
This declaration, by the participants of the V FORAGRO Meeting, aims at promoting agriculture with knowledge and at adopting the perspective of innovation in the technological policies and in the organisations.
The purpose of this report is to show how development issues and policy initiatives shaped the design and structure of the science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity-building program that eventually emerged from the partnership between the Government of Rwanda and the World Bank.
The purpose of this sourcebook is to pull together into a single document a collection of common sense tips and recommendations based on actual practices and experience around the world.