Innovation Platforms (IPs) are seen as a promising vehicle to foster a paradigm shift in agricultural research for development (AR4D). By facilitating interaction, negotiation and collective action between farmers, researchers and other stakeholders, IPs can contribute to more integrated, systemic innovation that is essential for achieving agricultural development impacts. However, successful implementation of IPs requires institutional change within AR4D establishments.

Multi-stakeholder (MS) platforms, such as innovation platforms (IP), public-private partnerships (PPP) are becoming more common but what they can achieve in innovation and scaling is limited and depends on different factors. This poster and the broader research paper provide evidence what MS platforms can and cannot achieve in their early phases and give insights about effectiveness and efficiency of Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D) interventions such as CGIAR research programs (CRPs) in low and middle income countries.

The development of effective agricultural monitoring networks is essential to track, anticipate and manage changes in the social, economic and environmental aspects of agriculture. The authors welcome the perspective of Lindenmayer and Likens (J. Environ. Monit., 2011, 13, 1559) as published in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring on their earlier paper, “Monitoring the World's Agriculture” (Sachs et al., Nature, 2010, 466, 558–560).

The organization of the Nutrition Innovation Labs represents a novel model for focusing U.S.- supported research on food and nutrition issues in developing countries. Their aims are to discover how policy and program interventions can most effectively achieve large-scale improvements in maternal and child nutrition, particularly by leveraging agriculture and build human and institutional capacity for applied policy analysis, research and program implementation. 

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Grain Legumes (Legume Innovation Lab; LIL), supports ten multi-disciplinary collaborative research and institutional capacity strengthening subcontracted projects working in 13 Feed the Future countries in Africa and Central America and the Caribbean involving scientists at 10 US universities, 3 USDA/ARS research centers, and 23 developing country national agriculture research systems and universities.

Innovation platforms are fast becoming part of the mantra of agricultural research and development projects and programs with an innovation objective.

This poster has been developed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Wageningen University (WUR) under the CGIAR research program on Roots Tubers and Banana (RTB) and describes shortly the science-based methods to identify and overcome bottlenecks for scaling of innovation. It breaks down innovation packages and analyses its individual technological, policy, market and partnership components along a 9-Level Scaling Readiness Ladder science-based methods to identify and overcome bottlenecks for scaling of innovation

Although much has been written on how to implement and facilitate innovation platforms efficiently, few studies support ex-ante appraisal of when and for what purpose innovation platforms provide an appropriate mechanism for achieving development outcomes, and what kinds of human and financial resource investments and enabling environments are required. Without these insights, innovation platforms run the risk of being promoted as a panacea for all problems in the agricultural sector.

Multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) have been playing an increasing role in interventions aiming to generate and scale innovations in agricultural systems. However, the contribution of MSPs in achieving innovations and scaling has been varied, and many factors have been reported to be important for their performance. This paper aims to provide evidence on the contribution of MSPs to innovation and scaling by focusing on three developing country cases in Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwanda.

Multi-stakeholder platforms have become mainstream in projects, programmes and policy interventions aiming to improve innovation and livelihoods systems, i.e. research for development interventions in low-and middle-income contexts. However, the evidence for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions and their added value is not compelling. This paper focuses on stakeholder participation as one of the channels for multi-stakeholder platforms' contribution to the performance of research for development interventions, i.e.