As part of the EU funded AgriSpin project (www.agrispin.eu), which aimed at “creating space for innovations” in agriculture across Europe, this contribution addresses the above mentioned knowledge gaps by a. elaborating a generic typology appropriate to capture the variety of ISS, b. structuring selected innovations along the degree of technological change and coordination levels, and c.

Innovation is often presented as one of the main catalysts for more sustainable and inclusive development. In the agricultural and food sectors, innovation is characterized not only by specificities arising from its relationship to nature, but also from the wide diversity of its stakeholders, ranging from farmers to consumers, and including intermediaries such as the research community and advisory services. Innovation emerges from interactions between these actors, who mobilize resources and produce knowledge in collaborative mechanisms in orderto generate changes.

This chapter reports on the different functions fulfilled by existing mechanisms for supporting collective innovation in the agricultural and agrifood sectors in the countries of the Global South in order to identify the potential contributions the research community can make to strengthen them. The authors show that a variety of mechanisms are needed to create enabling conditions for innovation and to provide a step-by-step support to innovation communities, according to their capacities and learning needs.

The integration of ethics into the day-to-day work of research and innovation (R&I) is an important but difficult challenge. However, with the Aachen method for identification, classification and risk analysis of innovation-based problems (AMICAI) an approach from an engineering perspective is presented that enables the integration of ethical, legal and social implications into the day-to-day work of R&I practitioners.

Women often have less access to agricultural information than men, constraining their participation in decision-making on crops, technologies, and practices. In the design of agricultural extension programs, women may be viewed as insignificant actors in agricultural production. Moreover, even if their role is recognized, valuable information on production does not flow freely within the household from men to women.

This article examines how research on the agriculture and agrifood systems mobilizes the concept of Innovation System (IS). A literature review on the IS provides an analytical framework for determining its theoretical frame of reference, its area of application and its uses.