Opening design and innovation processes in agriculture: Insights from design and management sciences and future directions



View results in:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X18306024
DOI: 
10.1016/j.agsy.2018.06.004
Provider: 
Licensing of resource: 
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Type: 
journal article
Journal: 
Agricultural Systems
Number: 
165
Pages: 
111-115
Author(s): 
Berthet E.T.
Hickey G.M.
Klerkx L.
Description: 

This editorial paper brings together different streams of research providing novel perspectives on co-design and co-innovation in agriculture, including methods, tools and organizations. It compares empirical experiences and theoretical advances to address a variety of issues (e.g., innovation ecosystems, collective design management, participatory design methods, affordances of system analysis tools and network leadership) that shed new light on co-design and co-innovation in support of sustainable agriculture and more broadly transitions towards a diversity of food systems and a circular bioeconomy. This introductory paper presents crosscutting insights and distills from these three directions for future research and practice in agricultural design and innovation: 1) Further opening design and innovation techniques and tools to better account for visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory expressions in evolving designs and what they afford users; 2) Further opening innovation networks in view of creating and stimulating integrative niches that can foster sustainability transitions, which also requires network managers instilling a reflexive stance of network members and broader awareness of power structures attached to organizational, sector and paradigmatic silos in agricultural systems; and 3) Further opening the range of innovation actors to include non-human actants to better account for the agency of the material and ecological

Publication year: 
2018
Keywords: 
Open innovation
co-innovation
agricultural innovation systems
Interactive design
Design reasoning
sustainability transitions
Actor-network theory
Materiality
Boundary objects
Affordances
Network management
Food systems
Circular economy
Bioeconomy