Learning to work differently: a scientist's reflection on acting as a broker for Food Systems Innovation

In 2012, the Food Systems Innovation (FSI) initiative was set up between four Australian organisations working to improve the impact of agriculture and food security programs in the Indo-Pacific region. The author was assigned to facilitate a stream of work in the partnership, working as an internal partnership broker in one of the four partner organisations, the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). A scientist by training more comfortable with scientific research and its outputs, she had to move out of her comfort zone into the world of facilitated collaboration working amongst organisations with a shared vision but with very different interests and expectations. She had no formal training as a partnership broker when she joined the initiative. The article relates her experiences and insights of her partnership brokering experience, and how it became a test in “becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable”.