Agricultural innovation (AI) coaching

Introduction
Innovation in the Dutch agricultural context
Agricultural innovation in developing countries
An enabling environment for continuous innovation
Innovation process facilitators

Introduction
Is innovation a question of having the right people at the right positions at the right time? The facilitation of processes of agricultural innovation has been topic of research among many organizations actively involved in Research & Development (R&D) with regard to Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS). Over the years, one sees shifts in innovation thinking. First, a more technical approach prevailed, now the role of individuals has been given important asset. Whereas formerly science and technology transfer was said to be setting innovation into motion, over time, one sees shifts towards more inclusive views of Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems (AKIS) or Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS), which focus on innovation as an iterative process between individuals and organizations with different kinds of knowledge within a particular context (Worldbank, 2007). Today, the focal question is on how to facilitate agricultural innovation processes. And who should be doing that? Or, is it coincidental that innovation takes place because the right people are on the right positions at the right time? These and other questions have resulted into (action) research (proposals), discussions and sharing of ideas on new concepts that capture the role of innovation process facilitators in jointly written working papers, thematic notes, etc. (New) partnerships are established. KIT, for instance, partners with LINK (Learning INnovation Knowledge) to promote the innovation systems approach in agricultural and rural development. Research into Use (RIU) is another example aiming at sharing lessons to enable innovation in agriculture. Digital era proof initiatives are founded: lessons are shared on virtual platforms, organizational Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Online publishing – and more so open source publishing- makes academia able to meet the whole world by sharing R&D results. Audiovisual channels such as YouTube, slide share, Blip TV, make research and projects easy to visualize and as such accessible to anyone who has Internet connectivity within reach.

KIT, RIU, LINK, WUR, to name a few on the European continent, have all been involved in research and publishing about AI coaching and brokering. Below, some few thoughts on these concepts are given based on writings by Klerkx et al. and work in progress by KIT.

Innovation in the Dutch agricultural context
Klerkx, Leeuwis, van den Ban, Hall, and others have been doing extensive research on agricultural innovation processes in the European and more specifically in the Dutch context, resulting in a number of publications. Klerkx et al. (2008) demonstrated lack of coordination as a serious bottleneck for innovation in highly commercial farming systems in the Netherlands. Klerkx, together with Hall and Leeuwis (2009) ask whether innovation brokers could be the answer to strengthening agricultural innovation capacity. They examine the role of innovation system brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction. Below, some of their conclusions published in the working paper series of the United Nations University are highlighted. Klerkx, Hall and Leeuwis place the emergence and role of innovation brokers in the Netherlands in a historical perspective and discuss the main findings of several studies that have looked at the contribution of innovation brokers for the Dutch agricultural innovation system. The Dutch experience shows that innovation brokers need to be contextually embedded and are unlikely to become effective through centrally-imposed design (Klerkx et al, 2009).

The authors draw a picture of how the Dutch public agricultural research and extension system was characterized by a high degree of interconnections among its main actors. Key factor in the development of innovation capacity within Dutch agriculture was the Research-Extension-Education (REE) triptych which worked well until the mid-seventies. Then, political, cultural, institutional and economic forces made the triangle unstable from the eighties onwards. There was a growing public concern on health issues, production surpluses, and an increasing environmental awareness. Combined with serious food production scandals like BSE, swine fever and foot-and-mouth disease this led to a reduced support for the industrial productivity increase paradigm dominant in the REE triptych (2009, p.13.). A need was felt to reconsider agricultural production in the Netherlands that could deal with new societal, economical and ecological demands. How could the knowledge infrastructure be shaped to respond and support these demands. The interests of policymakers and farmers, once aligned, started to diverge. Publicly funded research and extension was now getting more oriented to reducing environmental impact of farming for instance. And this did not align well with farmers’ economic motives and caused loyalty conflicts among extensionists who wanted to be loyal to their paymaster (government) as well as their clients (the entrepreneurial farmers). All these changes led to organized and less organized (i.e. more self-organized) attempts to establish innovation brokers to challenge knowledge flows with all the bumps and hurdles met along the way to come to a description of seven distinct types of agricultural innovation brokers that can now be seen in the Netherlands: innovation consultants; peer network academies; systemic instruments (e.g., often a civil society organization reflecting its interest in innovation and policies issues that go beyond the conventional domain of government or the private sector); internet portals, e.g. the Agri-logistics Knowledge portal for linking actors and knowledge developed in projects related to agri-logistics); research councils with innovation agency; and, education brokers. The authors further sketch out the contributions that these innovation brokers made or can be making but also pay attention to the vulnerabilities they meet.

They conclude that innovation brokers have helped farmers and other agri-food stakeholders to think about new possibilities to sustain their businesses and supported in network building. They appear to provide a fresh look in diagnosing constraints and opportunities of farmers, production chains, or with regard to regions or sub-sectors. Further, they are good performers of innovation process management and act as translators between different worlds and play mediating roles in case of conflicts. Vulnerabilities met consist of: neutrality tensions (e.g. they risk to be seen as vehicles to realize policy objectives of financiers); functional ambiguity tensions (like the response of established players, for instance established R&D and extension providers who may not fully understand and support the role of innovation brokers); and, tensions concerning funding and willingness to pay, for instance, low private willingness to pay and public funding impatience. The authors state that overall however, after 15 years of experimenting, there appears to be a growing recognition of the value of innovation brokers in the new AIS of the Netherlands. But of course, the incorporation of these brokers into the overall agricultural innovation capacity of a country is dependent on a process of institutional and policy learning and is likely to be a long term process (ibid, 2009). In the remainder of their paper the authors chalk out some practical implications of the Dutch case for developing countries which are also looking into strengthening their innovation capacity. A literature review showed that there are already many parties playing innovation brokerage roles among which: (inter)national NGOs; donor agencies; special projects; farmer and industry organizations etc. The authors give some pointers for further research of the roles and shape of innovation brokers in emerging economies whereby they state that the Dutch innovation brokers may be seen as an inspiration rather than a blueprint, as a ones-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate.

Sources
Klerkx, L. and Leeuwis, C. 2008. Matching demand and supply in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure: Experiences with innovation intermediaries. Food Policy 33(3): 260-276
Laurens Klerkx, Andy Hall and Cees Leeuwis, 2009, Strenthening agricultural innovation capacity: are innovations brokers the answer? United Nations University UNU Merit, 2009, 47pp.

Agricultural innovation in developing countries
Research on how to enhance innovation in developing countries has been taken place for quite some time. The World Bank has been supporting national innovation systems and strategies to reduce rural poverty and remains committed to assisting its client countries in strengthening their agricultural extension and rural information systems. In a World Bank publication of 2007 an innovation system is defined as: “the network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals focused on bringing new products, new processes and new forms of organization into economic use together with the institutions and policies that affect the system’s behaviour and performance. Innovation systems help to create knowledge, provide access to knowledge, share knowledge and foster learning. The innovation systems concept embraces not only the science suppliers but the totality and interaction of actors involved in innovation”.

The authors recognize the dominance of a diagnostic use of the innovation systems concept. To go beyond the diagnostics they categorize broad phases of development for innovation systems. On this basis ‘intervention principles and options’ are being suggested that the authors deem appropriate to consider when intervening to stimulate the development of a ‘dynamic system of innovation’. In doing so, they have taken an important step in linking innovation system analysis to agricultural development planning. They have shown how innovation system analysis could be a first step towards targeted intervention to improve agricultural innovation system functioning. As such they have demystified the, till then fairly abstract, notion of innovation system improvement, and have specifically provoked professionals in the field of agricultural development to go beyond high level policy recommendations to a more pragmatic intervention. Through this the innovation system concept has become an important framework for intervention in agricultural systems in developing countries (and was as such given a new interpretation to its meaning in the original context: policy making for industrial development in advanced economies) (Worldbank, 2007).

Rajalathi et al. (2008) identify the establishment of networks and partnerships as important activities to improve innovation system functioning. The need to apply innovation system thinking in agricultural development practice has been acknowledged widely in the community of international development experts in a reaction to the above mentioned World bank publication (Rajalahti et al., 2008). In agricultural innovation systems important system actors are producers, service providers as research and extension workers, traders and transporters, the agro-industry and retailers. Actors are often referred to in a fairly abstract way, like firms’, ‘government’ and ‘intermediary bodies’, which gives the discussion on improving innovation systems a rather abstract character. Furthermore the strong focus on the role of ‘institutions’ (Edquist and Johnson, 1997), although justified, adds to the abstract nature of the discussion.
What would be required in addition to concise and accurate diagnosis of innovation system failures, are effective instruments for shaping the collaboration and interaction between innovation system actors. In agricultural development many different approaches and methods can actually be identified that focus on facilitating multi-stakeholder action. These approaches and methods hold important entry points for thinking about opportunities to facilitate stakeholder interaction with a specific focus to stimulate agricultural innovation, e.g., multi-stakeholder interaction, value chain facilitation (VCA), enabling rural innovation (ERI), participatory market chain approach (PMCA), free actors in network (FAN), client-oriented research management approach of which explanations can be found under the glossary section of this dossier.

An enabling environment for continuous innovation
The stimulation of innovation in rural areas is an important vehicle for rural development and reduction of poverty in Sub-Sahara Africa. Through the facilitation of innovation new marketing opportunities can arise, new technology gets developed and into use and new arrangements for effective collaboration between stakeholders evolve. Increasingly, the development community is coming to realize that rural development cannot be imposed through simple project interventions or one-off infrastructure support. Instead, the entire innovation system needs to change to a more enabling environment allowing for continuous innovation. This is instigated through network building and assuring that relevant stakeholders have the clout and organization to articulate their own interests and perspectives. Targeting and coordinating financial and knowledge based services to the innovation systems can also be improved in this process. Furthermore, a better coordinated innovation system allows for more effective lobbying of the relevant decision makers.

The Participatory Market Chain Approach (Bernet et al., 2006) does stimulate the interaction between the private sector and producers with the objective of product innovation. Value chain approaches also focus predominantly on market innovation, and the relationship between value chain actors. The FAN approach does focus specifically on facilitating innovation, but does not do so through multi-stakeholder interaction, and has a technical innovation focus. The CORMA approach (Heemskerk et al., 2003) focuses on organizational and institutional change to improve research performance. The ERI approach is different in the sense that it does focus simultaneously on market and technical innovation (Sanginga et al., 2004). The authors describing the ERI approach conclude that the key to successful enterprise development is the combination of building and sustaining quality partnerships between agricultural sector stakeholders, while building human and social capital required to assure effective collaboration.

Building on the identified need for interaction between stakeholders, and the notion that this interaction will not take place easily and effectively without brokering by an intermediary, it can be surmised that providing these services could greatly contribute to the ‘propensity to innovate’ or the development of a ‘dynamic system of innovation’. This idea is based on the notion that a large part of the true bottlenecks for innovation are in the interactions between stakeholders in a value chain or commodity based innovation system, rather than in a lack of opportunities, financial resources, infrastructure or incentives.

Successful efforts to improve the enabling environment for innovation pivot on leadership. Having an objective ‘champion’ of the innovation system improvement process, who acts as an impartial broker, facilitator, initiator and coordinator of collaborative action could be a major catalyst for change. Often, this initiator or engine of collaboration is the major missing component for system change towards more dynamic collaboration between system actors such as public institutes, private sector, producers, consumers, policy makers and others.

As the provision of services such as initiation, organization and brokerage of interaction, as well as the guidance of a joint innovation trajectory between stakeholders are typically processes that require building the trust of and between the agricultural system stakeholders, this job could become the specific mandate of an individual, which we would like to baptise Agricultural Innovation coach, or AI-coach. Through the efforts of an ‘innovation coach’ the system functioning and dynamics could be improved by creating an environment in which innovation is more likely to occur. This role of ‘spider in the web’, spinning relations between stakeholders, will become ever more essential with the increasing privatization of agricultural research and extension services available to the agricultural system as Klerkx and Leeuwis (2008) showed in the context of the Netherlands. Clearly, there is a demand for intermediaries who are able to serve as ‘interim managers’ or coordinators to make innovation systems more dynamic and more robust.

Innovation process facilitators
Agricultural Innovation coaches are proposed to become the interim managers to practically initiate and guide the process of innovation through facilitating the interaction between agricultural system stakeholders. Not at an abstract level of organization managers, but at a basic level where new ideas can be implemented and tested by development practitioners, agricultural producers and private entrepreneurs. This is in line with what Leeuwis and Van den Ban (2004) consider the main role of agricultural service providers: contributing to innovation processes. Building a class of skilled innovation process facilitators who are able to perform this role under different circumstances would be an important asset, and can improve the contribution of other actors to the process of innovation. What is currently lacking, however, are development practitioners who can effectively play this role of innovation process facilitator. Most development professionals are formally educated and hold academic degrees based on training that focuses on internalization of ideas and the application of theory. In addition, development research and extension professionals are accustomed to a different mode of working that tends to focus on specialized technical problems. These professionals are therefore not equipped with the skills, experience and competencies required to manage multi-stakeholder processes, to lobby effectively with policy makers, or to lead in conflict resolution and system analysis; all of which are important for innovation system coordination. KIT has been working out ideas and concepts in an attempt to come with answers and practical tools to answer the focal question we started this in-depth section with: how to facilitate agricultural innovation processes. More about KIT’s activities herein are described in the next section of this dossier: KIT’s involvement.

• Bernet, T., Thiele, G., and Zschocke, T. 2006. Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) – User Guide. Lima, Peru: International Potato Center (CIP) – Papa Andina
• Edquist, C. and Johnson, B. 1997. Institutions and Organizations in Systems of Innovation. In: Systems of innovation; technologies, institutions and organizations 41-63. London; Washington: Pinter
• Heemskerk, W., Ninatubu, L., Guindo, D., Schouten, C., Semgalawe, Z., Verkuiyl, H., Steenhuijsen-Piters, B.d., and Penninkhof, P. 2003. A guide to demand-driven agricultural research; the Client Oriented Research Management Approach. Amsterdam: KIT.
• Klerkx, L. and Leeuwis, C. 2008. Matching demand and supply in the agricultural knowledge infrastructure: Experiences with innovation intermediaries. Food Policy 33(3): 260-276
• Leeuwis, C. and van den Ban, A. 2004. Communication for rural innovation : rethinking agricultural extension. Oxford [etc.]: Blackwell Science.
• Rajalahti, R., Janssen, W., and Pehu, E. 2008. Agricultural innovation systems: from diagnostics toward operational practice. Washington: World Bank.
• Sanginga, P., Best, R., Chitsike, C., Delve, R., Kaaria, S., and Kirkby, R. 2004. Enabling rural innovation in Africa: An approach fr integrating farmer participatory research and market orientation for building the assets of rural poor. Uganda journal of agricultural sciences 9(2004): 942-957
• Worldbank. 2007. Enhancing agricultural innovation; how to go beyond the strengthening of research systems. Washington: World Bank.