This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example. Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers in developing countries’ agriculture. It concludes that innovation brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such players in the innovation system.
This paper builds on experiences from the Research Into Use programme in South Asia that tried to up-scale promising research outputs into wider use. The experience suggests that while facilitating access to technology is important in putting research into use, it has value only when it is bundled together with other innovation-management tasks such as: developing networks, organising producers, communicating research needs, mediating conflicts, facilitating access to inputs and output services, convening innovation platforms, and advocating for policy change and other negotiated changes in
The flyer points up an overview of: (i) new approaches to capacity building and institutional change; (ii) ICRA’s role in the South; (iii) ICRA’s role in the North and in linking South and North.
This Guide is prepared based on the concepts, principles and practices of the innovation systems, with particular reference to integrated agricultural research for development (IAR4D) which uses innovation platforms (IPs) in agriculture value chains and food systems. The contents of this Guide have been informed by the experiences and lessons learned from the IPs in agriculture value chains and food systems of CORAF/WECARD, National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS) and FARA projects, as well as the CTA’s training.
This paper sets out an analytical framework for doing research on the question of how to use agricultural research for innovation and impact. Its focus is the Research Into Use (RIU) Programme sponsored by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). This is one example of a new type of international development programme that seeks to find better ways of using research for developmental purposes.
The GFA ITAACC final workshop in Nairobi was attended by more than 80 people comprising representatives of farmer organizations, NGOs, government, private sector and research institutions. The workshop proved to be an excellent platform for actors in the innovation system to share, discuss and validate the findings of the assessment of the match between needs and supply of agricultural innovations in Africa.
This facilitation guide was developed to support the training of scientists who are members of the CCAFS Working Group on impact pathways and M&E for results-based management. The group attended a highly participatory introductory training from 1-5th April 2014 in Segovia, Spain. The objectives of the workshop were: 1. To introduce working group members to outcome thinking; 2. To present elements of the CCAFS theory of change (TOC), impact pathway (IP) and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework; 3.
This paper examines different practical methods for stakeholders to analyse power dynamics in multi-stakeholders processes (MSPs), taking into account the ambiguous and uncertain nature of complex adaptive systems. It reflects on an action learning programme which focused on 12 cases in Africa and Asia put forward by 6 Dutch development non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Institutional innovations are critical for effective performance of agricultural research centres in natural resource management projects that often include multiple and diverse stakeholders with contrasting objectives and activities. This report shows how institutional histories of projects can be used as tools to help reveal institutional innovations thereby promoting Institutional Learning And Change (ILAC).
This book documents a study on the concept of Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IAR4D) that was developed by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). The IAR4D concept forms the basis for the Sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA CP), which is the only CGIAR Challenge Programme limited geographically to a particular region of the world. The focus of SSA CP is to facilitate substantially greater impact from agricultural