Dr Andrew Barnett, Director, Policy Practice Ltd gave a seminar in the Innovation, Sustainability, Development: A New Manifesto series. His seminar was entitled 'Innovation - re-labelling research or a shift in paradigm: the current debate in agricultural research for development'. Find out more at: http://www.steps-centre.org/manifesto/index.html

1. “Innovation”: re-labelling research or a shift
in paradigm: the current debate in
agricultural research for development?
A Talk to the STEPS programme
Andrew Barnett,
The Policy Practice Limited
January 16th 2009
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2. Links between RIU and STEPS
• STEPS: “how to make science and
technology work to reduce poverty and
increase social justice”
• RIU: Why is research-based knowledge not
used (sufficiently) in development to reduce
poverty?
• We now all know what the innovations
systems approach is. Why is it so difficult to
do it: “walking the talk”
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3. Renewed interest in “innovation”
• Old hat a SPRU (DTI web site, OECD) but
not in developing countries
• World Bank, IFPRI, Uppsala
• DFID Research Strategy
• Driven by search for “impact”
• Widely misunderstood or hotly contested
• Why is this? Explore in light of DFID’s
Research into use programme
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4. The Sussex Manifesto
• Geoff Oldham set what it did well and what
it did less well.
• Does it contain the seeds of innovation
system thinking? Possibly : Demand and
infrastructure. But no mention of innovation.
• Now clearer about limits to what
governments can do: innovation mostly
outside the government sector (private
sector, households, farms and firms, NGO?)
• Problems of exclusive “meta” language? 4

5. Innovation Systems Paradigm
• Beautifully summarised by Arnold and Bell
• Above all a “system”
• An approach, and attitude of mind rather
than a cookery book.
• Importance of political economy – power,
trust and incentives and the need to
change the rules of the game –
“institutional change” and “organisational
change”
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6. 6

7. The Arnold and Bell
National System of Innovation Diagram
Framework Conditions
Demand
Education
Business Intermediary
& research
functions
system
system
Infrastructure
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8. Why cant people get it?
• Incentive to over-complicate and re-label
well known ideas rather than build on them
• Difficulties of dealing with systems
• Can complex ideas be conveyed simply
• Is it a matter of saying more simply?
- Simple but not simplistic
• The search for a simple manual neglects
the tacit knowledge of experience.
• Walking the talk
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9. The Research into Use
Programme
• DFID Concern: limited evidence of impact
so far from DFID research in Renewable
Natural Resources (RNRRS)
• Response the £37.5m Research into use
(RIU) programme
• Explicitly implementing an innovation
systems approach.
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10. RIU’s Task
• To find ways of increasing the “demand”
for (and use of) scientific and
technological knowledge to create wealth
and reduce poverty
• To determine what works in what
conditions
• To learn from the experience and tell
others about it
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11. The key elements Of RIU
• Test interventions in Country Programmes
– Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria
and possibly two others
• Test Knowledge Market innovation
• Increasing access to research-based
knowledge thru call for proposals in Asia
• Test a Venture Capital approach
• Monitoring Impact and Learning
• Policy Dialogues and communications
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12. My involvement
• Assist in the design of a programme in
Rwanda
• Chair a “innovation resource group” of
people with experience of the theory or
practice of innovation
– Provide a group of pre-qualified advisors with
a diversity of skills and experience on which
the programme and it partners can draw.
– Provide a simpler and simpler explanation of
the innovation system approach:
• 100 pages, 20 pages, 5 pages and now the search
for a Haiku 12

13. Towards a Haiku
• The importance of both the supply push and
the demand pull of users of new knowledge
• Importance of intermediary functions
• The framework conditions and infrastructure
are critical determinants of the nature, form and
extent of innovation
• Innovation requires both tacit and codified
knowledge
• Importance to successful innovation of
networks that provide effective channels for two
way communication, resources and knowledge
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14. Key Interventions
• Undertake a diagnosis of the system and the power
relations between the elements
• Facilitate an interaction between a diverse range of
actors: build trust, develop the value chains, build the
infrastructure
• Strengthen the “demand side” of the system (poverty is
part of the cause)
• Strengthen organisations and individuals who perform
“intermediary functions”
• Increase the incentives and reduce the disincentives that
motivate people and organisations which do or should
play a role in innovation
• Experiment and invest in learning from this experience
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15. The Programme in Rwanda
• Driven by a “system diagnosis”
• Build on existing policies & organisations
• New “institutions” not new “organisations”
• An open Innovation Network and an
“Innovation Coalition” jointly
administering a RIU competitive fund
• “Innovation Platforms”
• Three mechanisms supporting innovation
• A knowledge market
• An innovation facility
• An intelligence gathering facility 15

16. Innovation Platforms
• “A network of partners, working on a common
theme and using research knowledge in ways
it has not been used before to generate
goods/services for the benefit of the poor”.
– “A MECHANISM”
– “A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE” –
– “MINI COALITION”
– Not “single innovations”: But communities capable
of innovating.
• Each platform may have activities in more than
one geographical area
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17. Knowledge market experiment
• Expand MPAIS in Uganda (Joffe/Kisauzi)
• Support Nat. Agric Innovation Network
• Private sector service provider to facilitate
“many to many” electronic market making
mechanism
• Jump start supply response; intelligence
gathering
• Energise by electronic vouchers to “users”
• Codified and tacit knowledge
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18. Innovation facility
• A mechanism to buy down the risks of
doing new things
– Partial risk guarantees (debt and equity?)
– Facility to buy the best technical knowledge
for promoter and investor
• Work with financial institutions
– Banques Populaire in association with Rabo
Bank
• Can it be made financially sustainable –
the issues of re-flows
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19. 1. “innovative
5. BDS 7. Debt
project”
Sci and finance
Tech or equity
advice 6.
Effective
9. Financial
3. RIU business
reflow as
2.
Innovation Facility plan
equity stake
“Associated
Service Provier or fees
financial
Finds, manages and
institutions”
pays for the best
such as :
8. “comfort”
scientific , technical
Banques
and or
business advice to
Populaire
partial risk
Project
FINA
guarantee to
Grofin and
the investor
others
10.
Facilitation
4. RIU
fee for
Innovation
providing
revolving
deal flow??
fund

20. Intelligence gathering facility
• Agricultural Research institutions
destroyed
• Economies face overwhelming quantity
and quality of research-based knowledge
• How to access it? Internet?Informediaries?
• Evolution of the traditional research
facility?
• Dedicated demand side facility – informed
buyer linked to knowledge market and
ISAR 20

21. Does it work?
• How would one know?
• 1/3 of RIU on M and E
• Attribution in complex systems
• Returns to research: the macro and micro
• Rwanda programme high risk
• But does provide a framework for asking
sensible questions – evolve interventions
in the light of experience
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22. Why is ISA so hotly resisted
• Implies a change in balance of power
– Central to Freeman and Arnold and Bell?
• “Not invented here”
• Based on OECD industrial sector? Vs
summary of what worked best practice
• Simplistic dichotomies and antagonistic
advocacy?
• Implications of complex systems and the
search for attributable impact.
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23. Thank you!
• Much more information on the web site
• www.researchintouse.com
• Andrew.Barnett@thepolicypractice.com
• Arnold, Erik and Martin Bell, Some new ideas
about research for development, in Danish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, Partnership at the Leading Edge: a Danish Vision for
Knowledge, Research and Development, April 2001, p. 288.
Download from http://www.um.dk/NR/rdonlyres/7CD8C2BC-9E5B-
4920-929C-D7AA978FEEB7/0/CMI_New_Ideas_R_for_D.pdf.
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