The publication reviews forty years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South.

Papa Andina began as a regional research program focusing on the Andean potato sectors of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, but later shifted its focus to facilitating pro-poor innovation. To accomplish this shift, a number of approaches were developed to foster innovation, by facilitating mutual learning and collective action among individuals and groups with differing, often conflicting, interests.