This paper analyzes how the Papa Andina Partnership Program, based at the International Potato Center, functions as an innovation broker in the Andean potato sector. As a regional initiative, Papa Andina operates as a second-level innovation broker, backstopping national partners who facilitate local innovation processes in their respective countries. Papa Andina works to strengthen local innovation capacity and to foster innovations in innovation the development of more effective ways of bringing stakeholders together to produce innovations that benefit small-scale farmers.

This paper briefly reviews three conceptual frameworks: namely, the national agricultural research system (NARS), the agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) and the agricultural innovation system (AIS) concepts. Next, the paper reviews the definition of ‘innovation’ and proposes that agricultural innovation can occur at four different but interlinked domains.

In this paper, results from a study on the use of improved coffee production technology schemes among smallholder coffee producers in three prominent coffee producing regions in Honduras are presented. The impact of various schemes (trajectories) in which different agents influence the producers’ decision to use new technologies was analyzed. In particular, there are differences in the influence of a) private coffee buying organizations and b) government and public development agencies on the innovation behavior of coffee growers.

The inadequate linkage of knowledge generation in agricultural research organizations with policy-making and economic activity is an important barrier to sustainable development and poverty reduction. The emerging fields of sustainability science and innovation systems studies highlight the importance of “boundary management” and “innovation brokering” in linking knowledge production, policy-making, and economic activities. This paper analyzes how the Papa Andina Partnership Program, based at the International Potato Center, functions as an innovation broker in the Andean potato sector.