These proceedings include all the papers presented during the AISA workshop either as oral papers or as posters. It also includes the edited text resulting from the Living Keynote process, an innovation in itself.
The AISA workshop was held on 29-31 May 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya, as part of an international week devoted to Agricultural innovation in Africa. The AISA workshop focused on active social learning among participants, developed a collective "living keynote" about the following issues:
This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example. Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers in developing countries’ agriculture. It concludes that innovation brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such players in the innovation system.
Traditional approaches to innovation systems policymaking and governance often focus exclusively on the central provision of services, regulations, fiscal measures, and subsidies.
This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion in the scientific literature on the advantages and disadvantages of privatization of extension and advisory services and the shift from thinking in terms of the traditional Agricultural Knowledge System towards a broader Agricultural Innovation System.
This study examines the role of public–private partnerships in international agricultural research. It is intended to provide policymakers, researchers, and business decisionmakers with an understanding of how such partnerships operate, how they promote the exchange of knowledge and technology, and how they contribute to poverty reduction.
According to the authors of this paper, actual methods of scaling are rather empirical and based on the premise of ‘find out what works in one place and do more of the same, in another place’. These methods thus would not sufficiently take into account complex realities beyond the concepts of innovation transfer, dissemination, diffusion and adoption. As a consequence, scaling initiatives often do not produce the desired effect.
Desde los años 70, los estudios sobre adopción de innovaciones agrícolas han estado dominados por una perspectiva según la cual la decisión de adoptar es un asunto individual, centrado en la utilidad percibida por el productor. En años recientes ha crecido el interés por comprender el papel de la interacción social en estos procesos. Poco a poco, conceptos como capital o aprendizaje social han ganado terreno entre los analistas. Sin embargo, casi ningún estudio ha utilizado el Análisis de Redes Sociales.
The latest comprehensive research agenda in the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension was published in 2012 (Faure, Desjeux, and Gasselin 2012), and since then there have been quite some developments in terms of biophysical, ecological, climatological, social, political and economic trends that impact farming and the transformation of agriculture and food systems at large as well as new potentially disruptive technologies.
This thematic note discusses the role of innovation brokers in bridging communication gaps between various actors of innovation systems. On the basis of recent experience in the Netherlands, it outlines the success of brokers in finding solutions adapted to the needs of farmers and industry, and thus their positive impact on innovation adoption. This section also examines some issues on how brokers function, particularly with regard to balancing interests, funding their activities, and the role of government.
The process of knowledge brokering in the agricultural sector, where it is generally called agricultural extension, has been studied since the 1950s. While agricultural extension initially employed research push models, it gradually moved towards research pull and collaborative research models. The current agricultural innovation systems perspective goes beyond seeing research as the main input to change and innovation, and recognises that innovation emerges from the complex interactions among multiple actors and is about fostering combined technical, social and institutional change.