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“Innovation”: re-labelling research or a shift in paradigm: the current debate in

agricultural research for development?

A Talk to the STEPS programme

Andrew Barnett,

The Policy Practice Limited

January 16th 2009

Links between RIU and STEPS• STEPS: “how to make science and

technology work to reduce poverty and

increase social justice”

• RIU: Why is research-based knowledge not

used (sufficiently) in development to reduce

poverty?

• We now all know what the innovations

systems approach is. Why is it so difficult to

do it: “walking the talk”

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Renewed interest in “innovation”

• Old hat a SPRU (DTI web site, OECD) but

not in developing countries

• World Bank, IFPRI, Uppsala

• DFID Research Strategy

• Driven by search for “impact”

• Widely misunderstood or hotly contested

• Why is this? Explore in light of DFID’s

Research into use programme

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The Sussex Manifesto

• Geoff Oldham set what it did well and what

it did less well.

• Does it contain the seeds of innovation

system thinking? Possibly : Demand and

infrastructure. But no mention of innovation.

• Now clearer about limits to what

governments can do: innovation mostly

outside the government sector (private

sector, households, farms and firms, NGO?)

• Problems of exclusive “meta” language?4

Innovation Systems Paradigm• Beautifully summarised by Arnold and Bell

• Above all a “system”

• An approach, and attitude of mind rather

than a cookery book.

• Importance of political economy – power,

trust and incentives and the need to

change the rules of the game –

“institutional change” and “organisational

change”

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The Arnold and Bell

National System of Innovation Diagram

Business

system

Education

& research

system

Infrastructure

Framework Conditions

Demand

Intermediary

functions

• Incentive to over-complicate and re-label

well known ideas rather than build on them

• Difficulties of dealing with systems

• Can complex ideas be conveyed simply

• Is it a matter of saying more simply?

- Simple but not simplistic

• The search for a simple manual neglects

the tacit knowledge of experience.

• Walking the talk

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Why cant people get it?

The Research into Use

Programme

• DFID Concern: limited evidence of impact

so far from DFID research in Renewable

Natural Resources (RNRRS)

• Response the £37.5m Research into use

(RIU) programme

• Explicitly implementing an innovation

systems approach.

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RIU’s Task

• To find ways of increasing the “demand”

for (and use of) scientific and

technological knowledge to create wealth

and reduce poverty

• To determine what works in what

conditions

• To learn from the experience and tell

others about it

The key elements Of RIU• Test interventions in Country Programmes

– Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria

and possibly two others

• Test Knowledge Market innovation

• Increasing access to research-based

knowledge thru call for proposals in Asia

• Test a Venture Capital approach

• Monitoring Impact and Learning

• Policy Dialogues and communications

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My involvement• Assist in the design of a programme in

Rwanda

• Chair a “innovation resource group” of

people with experience of the theory or

practice of innovation

– Provide a group of pre-qualified advisors with

a diversity of skills and experience on which

the programme and it partners can draw.

– Provide a simpler and simpler explanation of

the innovation system approach:

• 100 pages, 20 pages, 5 pages and now the search

for a Haiku 12

Towards a Haiku• The importance of both the supply push and

the demand pull of users of new knowledge

• Importance of intermediary functions

• The framework conditions and infrastructure

are critical determinants of the nature, form and

extent of innovation

• Innovation requires both tacit and codified

knowledge

• Importance to successful innovation of

networks that provide effective channels for two

way communication, resources and knowledge

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Key Interventions• Undertake a diagnosis of the system and the power

relations between the elements

• Facilitate an interaction between a diverse range of

actors: build trust, develop the value chains, build the

infrastructure

• Strengthen the “demand side” of the system (poverty is

part of the cause)

• Strengthen organisations and individuals who perform

“intermediary functions”

• Increase the incentives and reduce the disincentives that

motivate people and organisations which do or should

play a role in innovation

• Experiment and invest in learning from this experience

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The Programme in Rwanda• Driven by a “system diagnosis”

• Build on existing policies & organisations• New “institutions” not new “organisations”

• An open Innovation Network and an

“Innovation Coalition” jointly

administering a RIU competitive fund

• “Innovation Platforms”

• Three mechanisms supporting innovation

• A knowledge market

• An innovation facility

• An intelligence gathering facility

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Innovation Platforms

• “A network of partners, working on a common theme and using research knowledge in ways it has not been used before to generate goods/services for the benefit of the poor”.

– “A MECHANISM”

– “A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE” –

– “MINI COALITION”

– Not “single innovations”: But communities capable of innovating.

• Each platform may have activities in more than one geographical area

Knowledge market experiment

• Expand MPAIS in Uganda (Joffe/Kisauzi)

• Support Nat. Agric Innovation Network

• Private sector service provider to facilitate

“many to many” electronic market making

mechanism

• Jump start supply response; intelligence

gathering

• Energise by electronic vouchers to “users”

• Codified and tacit knowledge

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Innovation facility• A mechanism to buy down the risks of

doing new things

– Partial risk guarantees (debt and equity?)

– Facility to buy the best technical knowledge

for promoter and investor

• Work with financial institutions

– Banques Populaire in association with Rabo

Bank

• Can it be made financially sustainable –

the issues of re-flows18

3. RIU

Innovation Facility

Service Provier

Finds, manages and

pays for the best

scientific , technical

business advice to

Project

1. “innovative

project”

2.

“Associated

financial

institutions”

such as :

Banques

Populaire

FINA

Grofin and

others

7. Debt

finance

or equity

4. RIU

Innovation

revolving

fund

10.

Facilitation

fee for

providing

deal flow??

9. Financial

reflow as

equity stake

or fees

6.

Effective

business

plan

8. “comfort”

and or

partial risk

guarantee to

the investor

5. BDS

Sci and

Tech

advice

Intelligence gathering facility

• Agricultural Research institutions

destroyed

• Economies face overwhelming quantity

and quality of research-based knowledge

• How to access it? Internet?Informediaries?

• Evolution of the traditional research

facility?

• Dedicated demand side facility – informed

buyer linked to knowledge market and

ISAR20

Does it work?

• How would one know?

• 1/3 of RIU on M and E

• Attribution in complex systems

• Returns to research: the macro and micro

• Rwanda programme high risk

• But does provide a framework for asking

sensible questions – evolve interventions

in the light of experience

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Why is ISA so hotly resisted

• Implies a change in balance of power

– Central to Freeman and Arnold and Bell?

• “Not invented here”

• Based on OECD industrial sector? Vs

summary of what worked best practice

• Simplistic dichotomies and antagonistic

advocacy?

• Implications of complex systems and the

search for attributable impact.

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Thank you!

• Much more information on the web site

• www.researchintouse.com

• Andrew.Barnett@thepolicypractice.com

• Arnold, Erik and Martin Bell, Some new ideas

about research for development, in Danish Ministry of

Foreign Affairs, Partnership at the Leading Edge: a Danish Vision for

Knowledge, Research and Development, April 2001, p. 288.

Download from http://www.um.dk/NR/rdonlyres/7CD8C2BC-9E5B-

4920-929C-D7AA978FEEB7/0/CMI_New_Ideas_R_for_D.pdf.

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