Innovation platforms are advocated as a promising way to find solutions to complex problems, such as those in agriculture and natural resource management. As social, economic and environmental problems grow ever more complex, researchers need
to engage more actively with stakeholders such as farmers, development practitioners and policymakers to explore, design and implement solutions. Innovation platforms offer them an opportunity to do so.
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.
Communication is a crucial part of facilitating the process of innovation within an innovation platform. It comprises a broad range of practices and approaches which include information management, publishing, use of information and communication technologies, communication for development, knowledge sharing and knowledge management. Its goal is not just to produce or disseminate more information, but rather to use communication processes to power changes identified by the platform.
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.
Facilitation of innovation is a flexible and adaptive process during which facilitators manage dialogue and stimulate collective problem analysis by multiple stakeholders to overcome challenges or make use of opportunities. The brief describes what facilitation is about, facilitators' functions and roles, skills and attributes, and who facilitates. It is available in Chinese, English, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese.
The Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program, supported by the United States Agency for International Development, aims to create opportunities for smallholder farm households to move out of hunger and poverty through sustainably intensified farming systems that improve food, nutrition, and income security, particularly for women and children, and conserve or enhance the natural resource base.
The Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program comprises three research-for-development projects supported by the United States Agency for International Development as part of the U.S. government’s Feed the Future initiative. Through action research and development partnerships, Africa RISING will create opportunities for smallholder farm households to move out of hunger and poverty through sustainably intensified farming systems that improve food, nutrition, and income security, particularly for women and children, and
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.
The presentation is for the ILRI Innovation Platform (IP) Training Workshop. At the end of this session participants will be able to: Capture basic concepts in IP monitoring and evaluation; Comprehend why it is important to monitor and evaluate IPs; Contribute to fine-tuning of Africa RISING IP monitoring and evaluation framework; Identify IP TG members championing the M&E work at the research sites.
The poster briefs the introducing and utility of education materials and teaching notes on multi‐stakeholder innovation processes and how they work, results and outputs and who the legacy products are useful for.