This paper is a contribution to the establishment of a new capacity development (CD) 9 strategy, a process that the Consortium Office will facilitate, with external input, during 2013. The paper explores the lessons learned from CGIAR’s experience with CD and reflects the findings of a working group that was brought together in late 2012. The objective of the paper is to identify the roles that individual and institutional CD might play in CGIAR in order to increase CGIAR’s impact on the welfare of smallholder farmers and the sustainability of their farming systems.
Adapting through innovation is one way for rural communities to sustain and improve their livelihoods and environments. Since the 1980s research and development organizations have developed participatory approaches to foster rural innovation. This paper develops a model, called the Learning-to-Innovate (LTI) model, of four basic processes linked to decision making and learning which regulate rate and quality of innovation. The processes are: creating awareness of new opportunities; deciding to adopt; adapting and changing practice; and learning and selecting.
An innovation platform is a space for learning and change. It is a group of individuals (who often represent organizations) with different backgrounds and interests: farmers, traders, food processors, researchers, government officials etc. The members come together to diagnose problems, identify opportunities and find ways to achieve their goals. They may design and implement activities as a platform, or coordinate activities by individual members. This brief explains what innovation platforms are and how they work, and it describes some of their advantages and limitations.
Innovation platforms can be complex and challenging so effective monitoring is critical to ensure that they function effectively and achieve their intended purposes. A monitoring system is a collection of methods and tools to track and measure innovation activities, processes among partners, and the results of these processes. This brief describes what a monitoring system does, who is involved, how it works, and what to do with the findings. It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.
One of the most important things that innovation platforms do is to build the capacity of their members to innovate. Some key elements of innovation capacity include: self-organization, learning new skills, changing mindsets, valuing others’ roles in innovation, having a holistic view, being able to adapt to changing situations, creating new ideas, recognizing opportunities, being proactive, using indigenous ideas, and looking to the future. This brief uses the analogy of a traditional African cooking pot to explain how innovation capacity is developed within an innovation platform.
This is the first chapter of the book "Innovation platforms for agricultural development: Evaluating the mature innovation platforms landscape". It introduces the background, case study competition process, case study characterization and readers’ guide, and book outline. Characterization of the case studies includes their geographical spread, age and life stage of the platforms, and specific information on the multi-stakeholder processes, the content matter, platform support functions, and outcomes and impacts.
The CGIAR Research Program on Integrated System for the Humid Tropics, or Humidtropics, works towards transforming the lives of the rural poor in several action sites in Asia, Africa and Tropical America. In doing so, different technologies and innovations were implemented and while at first the capacity development was going on almost intuitively, as an integrated part of the implementation process, it has soon become clear that such groundbreaking activities and ideas require a more organized and supervised approach.
Capacity development (CapDev) is increasingly acknowledged as a crucial part of agricultural development. In the CGIAR Strategic Results Framework (SRF), CapDev is included as a ‘cross-cutting issue’ and as a strategic enabler of Research for Development (R4D) impact for CGIAR and its partners. It goes far beyond the transfer of knowledge and skills through training, and cuts across multiple levels.
This brief is part of a series of ‘Legacy Products’ developed under the CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics – www.humidtropics.org ) to help CGIAR Research Programs integrate key ‘capacity development in systems’ concepts into their work. It introduces the rationale of capacity needs assessment, frameworks/steps and requirements.
Esta guía está dirigida principalmente a aquellos actores que desempeñan el rol de facilitadores de procesos entre los vendedoresy los compradores que se han mencionado anteriormente. Puede ayudarle a usted y a su organización a facilitar un proceso sistemático de aprendizaje entre actores de una cadena de valor seleccionada, y está diseñada para acompañarlo en un proceso de innovación basado en la aplicación de un juego de 4 herramientas participativas:1.