Transformative innovation: What do applied innovation studies look like?

Research and analysis of agricultural innovation processes and policies over the last 20 years has made a major contribution to scholarship on and the understanding of the nature of innovation. To an important, but much lesser degree this has also led to re-framing practice at the research-innovation interface. Innovation studies (for want of a better word), like many branches of science, finds that it needs to deliver solutions across the full spectrum of discovery (concepts and theories) to application in both policy and practice domains. There is, however, a shift in the center of gravity of the discipline to a much more applied role, particularly where the discipline is housed as a value adding capability within applied research and innovation organisations like CSIRO, AgResearch New Zealand and possibly the CGIAR also. This observation highlights a critical design challenge in a research and action program being developed on Transformational Pathways for New Zealand agriculture