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ARISA: Innovation systems research design
What enables inclusive innovation at the business–research interface? An innovation
capacity building perspective
Andy Hall and Liana Williams
2015
1.Introduction
This note presents an outline of the main
strands of the innovation systems research
associated with the ARISA project. It begins by
locating this in the current discourse on
concepts and policy perspectives on innovation
and capacity building before setting out key
areas of research inquiry and research activities.
2. Reframing innovation as a systems
capacity building agenda
Harnessing scientific capability in ways that
effectively contribute to social well-being,
economic growth and environmental
sustainability is a global policy challenge. This is
particularly so in emerging economies. Often
there has been underinvestment in core
scientific capabilities. Historical patterns of
institutional development mean that research is
often unresponsive to the needs of society.
Markets, policies and infrastructure needed to
make use of research output are either weak or
absent.
In the past, science and technology policy has
been preoccupied with efforts to build scientific
infrastructure and human resources and secure
adequate funding for research. This has been
valuable. However, there has been a global
realisation that policy attention needs to expand
from a narrow focus on science and research
capability to a broader focus on innovation and
innovation capacity. Here innovation is
understood as a process that encompasses both
the production of knowledge through research
and other means, as well as the use of that
knowledge in socially and economically relevant
ways.
A key policy and analytical perspective that
tackles this wider view is the concept of an
innovation system. This argues that innovation
does not emerge from research alone, but from
the dense network of interactions between
research and social and economic agents
involved in the adaptation and use of ideas.
Institutional and policy settings are central in
shaping the way these systems of interaction
and innovation proceed and respond to an ever
evolving set of challenges and opportunities.
Emerging from this is a policy agenda refocused
on capacity building that emphasises
strengthening the capacity of the innovation
systems in which research and other knowledge
and entrepreneurial elements are embedded.
There are some familiar capacity building
aspects: upgrading technical and
entrepreneurial skills and strengthening
research and market infrastructure. There are
also some less familiar capacity building aspects:
strengthening linkages and partnerships;
introducing new practices that equip
CSIRO AGRICULTURE AND FOOD
organisations to work more effectively in multi-
agency arrangements; developing incentives and
other institutional innovations in organisations
and value chains that encourage collaboration
and risk taking; and strengthening the wider
policy environment that enables innovation
(financing, education, regulation, etc.).
An overarching concern in this policy agenda is
not to arrive at an ideal and static system
organogram. Instead innovation capacity is
largely a function of the ability to flexibly and
continuously adapt innovation practices to
challenges and opportunities that arise.
These perspectives on building innovation
capacity emerge from implicitly or explicitly
understanding development as generalised
economic growth. A more challenging
dimension of this policy perspective has been
the notion of 'inclusive innovation'. While there
are many views on the precise meaning of this
term, Cozzens and Sutz (2012) capture the
essence of inclusive innovation, saying that
“innovation needs to be ‘inclusive’ in at least
two ways: inclusive in terms of the process by
which it is achieved and inclusive in terms of the
problems and the solutions it is related to”.
Inclusive innovation therefore explicitly
conceives development in terms of active
inclusion of those who are excluded from the
mainstream in development (Foster and Heeks,
2013). This leads to a widely cited definition of
inclusive innovation as the means by which new
goods and services are developed for and/or by
those who have been excluded from the
development mainstream.
What this provides is a way of thinking about
the different dimensions of inclusive innovation
that can guide capacity building. This dimension
can be thought of as concentric and
representing an aspirational ladder to
progressing the inclusiveness of the innovation
process as follows:
i. Inclusive outcome innovation. New goods
and services meet the needs of excluded
groups.
ii. Inclusive process innovation. Excluded
groups are involved in the development
and design of products, services or
organisational changes to ensure that they
meet their needs.
iii. Inclusive organisational innovation.
Research and business organisations have
inclusiveness as part of their core
operating principles or business models,
and apply inclusive processes in all their
activities, including innovation,
organisational change and performance
assessment.
iv. Inclusive policy enabling environment
innovation. Formal support arrangements
for innovation (research, advisory and
education services, regulations and other
policy incentives) are explicitly designed to
involve excluded groups in capacity
development activities and other
innovation support activities of
companies. Policy and market incentives
encourage inclusiveness.
This way of conceptualising the depth of
inclusiveness of the innovation process also
provides a different lens to explore scaling. At
level #1 scaling implies encouraging the spread
of inclusive goods and services. This has limits
due to the nature of markets and the
appropriateness of goods and services in
different contexts. However, at levels #2-5
scaling implies the emergence of new and
pervasive organisational practices and the
regime of institutional arrangements and
policies needed to support them. While the
process of progressing from #2 to #5 is poorly
understood and aspirational, it does,
nevertheless, open up new capacity building
avenues to scaling innovation support
investments.
In summary there are two major questions that
emerge from the inclusive innovation systems
policy perspective on capacity building:
•How to design and adaptively implement a
suite of interventions that can effectively
progress the ambitious scope of an
innovation capacity building agenda?
Specifically, what mix of skill development,
incentives, stakeholder engagement and
financing models can be catalytic in bringing
about sustainable changes in innovation
practice and the networks and policies that
underpin this?
•How to ensure that innovation capacities
developed are inclusive? Specifically, what
modes of practice, governance and other
institutional and policy incentives and/or
regulations are needed to ensure an
inclusive process of innovation?
3. The role of innovation systems
research in ARISA research
ARISA is underpinned by the innovation systems
perspective discussed above. The primary focus
of the project is to combine a small grants
scheme and skill development program in order
to pilot public-private sector partnerships that
enable innovation and impact poor households.
A linked focus of the project is to use its lessons
and experiences to engage stakeholders at
organisational and policy levels in a dialogue
about how innovation capacity can be built and
the types of institutional and policy changes
needed to bring this about in an enduring way.
These two elements of the project represent
two linked but distinctive impact pathways. The
first concerns the direct impacts on poor people
during the lifetime of the project as a result of
the pilot partnerships’ innovation processes. The
second concerns the systemic change effects of
the project; i.e., the way the project contributes
to restructuring the relationships between
public research and the private sector through
institutional and policy change that helps spread
new research and business practices that deliver
goods and services to the poor. This will deliver
impact beyond the lifetime of the project and is
contingent on many factors beyond its control,
but has a wider impact reach/ scale.
The project has modest systemic change
ambitions and recognises this is a long-term
agenda requiring sustained attention over many
years with a variety of policy and capacity
building instruments and investments. However,
one of the value additions of this project is that
it includes a research component that seeks to
understand how inclusive innovation capacity
can be built at the public research-business
interface and to draw lessons.
The role of the research is therefore two-fold:
Firstly, to support learning and capacity building
in the pilot projects through analysis of contexts
and processes and their effectiveness; and
secondly, to draw lessons about required
institutional and policy responses needed to
build innovation capacity. In this way the
research helps link the short-term impact
pathways of the pilots with the longer-term
systemic change impact pathway. It does this by
strengthening the catalytic value of the pilots in
triggering wider changes in the arrangements
that structure relationships between public
research and business and their practices to
deliver goods and services that benefit the poor.
Understanding the role of research in this way
also has implications for how it is conducted and
organised. Specifically, the research must
contain an analytical approach to explore the
nature of the inclusive innovation capacity
building process. However, it also needs to
include wider research, business and policy
stakeholder engagement and dialogue to ensure
that lessons influence practice and policy at
scales beyond the pilots.
4. Research propositions
As stated above, the intent here is not to
provide standardised answers or guidelines, but
rather to tease out the multitude of forms that
problem spaces, actors, practices, settings and
partnerships can take within innovation
systems/ interventions, and highlight the
comparative advantages of different approaches
across varied environments. Such an approach
seeks to support flexibility and continuous
adaptation within innovation systems that
builds on the emerging body of empirical
research in this area. The research therefore
sets out to test a number of propositions
derived from existing understandings of
innovation processes and attendant capacity
building perspectives. Testing these propositions
will give broad direction to future capacity
building efforts.
(i) Patterns of partnership in different
contexts. Various types of partnership
(contractual, informal, enduring, mission-
bound) are critical in facilitating the
interaction, knowledge and resource
sharing that enables innovation. The types
of organisations that come together in a
partnership are largely determined by the
nature of the challenge or opportunity
being addressed and the historical and
contextual setting. The focus in this area
of inquiry will be on understanding various
modes of partnership and their
comparative advantages in different
contexts/ problem settings.
(ii) Roles of organisations during the
innovation process. The role of research,
enterprises and other partners changes
during the innovation process, depending
on whether the key bottleneck being
addressed is knowledge discovery,
application of technical expertise,
reorganisation of production and
marketing, or policy change. Sometimes
new roles such as brokering or
intermediation need to be introduced. The
focus in this inquiry will be on
understanding the different roles of
organisations in different contextual
settings and how these unfold as the
innovation process proceeds.
(iii) Institutional innovations enable
innovation. Institutions (routines, habits,
practices and norms) condition the
effectiveness of partnerships and other
processes that enable innovation by
moderating and guiding decisions and
shaping routine practices. Institutional
innovation is therefore an embedded part
of the wider innovation process. The focus
of inquiry will be to understand the critical
institutions shaping the innovation process
in specific contexts and exploring capacity
development approaches (training,
facilitated adaptive learning, financing)
that can be used to adapt institutional
settings.
(iv) Policy and policy processes. Policies at
both the organisational and systems level
condition the behaviour of innovation
systems and their constituent parts and
are a key dimension of the sustainability of
innovation capacities developed. This
inquiry will explore how participatory
engagement of organisational (research
and business) and policy stakeholders in
pilot innovation processes can stimulate
changes in the policy environment that
enable innovation in a continuous and
sustainable way.
(v) Learning and innovation take different
forms in different contexts. Learning and
innovation can take place through multiple
mechanisms: by doing and experience; by
search and research; by networking and
partnering; by training and accessing
technical advice. These are context-
specific. This inquiry will investigate the
mechanisms relevant in different contexts.
(vi) Inclusive innovation. Inclusive innovation
has both targeting dimensions (innovation
resolves issues relevant to poor people)
and process dimensions (processes that
lead to innovation are inclusive of poor
people). The process dimension of
inclusive innovation has further concentric
features that reflect the depth of
inclusiveness. (1) Inclusive project regime:
Poor people are involved in the
development of a particular good or
service (2) Inclusive organisational
regime: The policy or business model of
research organisations or companies
explicitly encourages inclusion in the
development of new goods and services
(3) Inclusive systems regime: Value chains
and/or national policies structure
incentives, support mechanisms or
regulations to encourage inclusiveness in
the development of goods or services. The
focus of this inquiry will be to understand
how inclusive innovation processes can be
enabled in different contexts and to
understand the challenges and
opportunities for deepening the quality of
inclusiveness against the scale described
above.
(vii) Arrangements for engaging the private
sector in development delivery. ARISA has
a specific and deliberate focus on business
participation in innovation but also on
inclusiveness. Market participation
exposes households and other actors to
risk as well as opportunity. There are
additional ethical questions and risks to be
considered when working within this
arena with the private sector, and with a
specific focus on poor households — how
do interventions exclude, include, pick
winners or exacerbate existing inequalities
across value chains? In this line of inquiry
we focus on what checks and balances are
required within the capacity building /
partnership processes to manage
unexpected impacts.
(viii) Achieving impact at scale. Scaling of
innovation support investments are
understood in different ways: as a process
to support dissemination and adoption of
goods and services beyond pilot sites; and
as systemic change within institutions or
policy arenas to enable research and
business practices that give rise to further
waves of innovation. This line of inquiry
seeks to tease out the different
mechanisms and pathways for scaling, and
the conditions or processes required to
support enduring change.
5. Research activities
To achieve this, the research will explore a
number of scene setting and intervention
process and outcome themes:
1. State of the art of inclusive innovation at the
research business interface. Review of
innovation practices at the research and
business interface. Collation of existing
models of research embedded in
development. This will situate ARISA within
the existing body of knowledge.
2. Establish an agricultural innovation systems
champions platform. The project will
collaborate with an Indonesian innovation
systems researcher/ organisation. In addition
to collaborating in the research, this
partnership will be used to connect to
champions active in policy level debates
about the organisation and development of
Indonesian agricultural innovation systems.
3. Diagnostic assessment and baseline of
innovation arrangements and capacities.
Mapping of the current patterns of
relationships in the agricultural innovation
system and its enabling context of capacities,
policies and institutions in Indonesia. Initially
as a baseline of the current context, and
repeated throughout ARISA as a way of both
tracking changes in the innovation
environment, and engaging wider research
and business stakeholders in a dialogue
about the nature and effectiveness of existing
innovation capacities and arrangements. This
dialogue process will be facilitated by the
champions platform mentioned above and
has direct relevance to advancing the
systemic change agenda of ARISA.
4. Adaptive learning from the small grants
scheme. Documentation of the processes
relating to ARISA's small grants scheme and
other implementation procedures. The focus
here will be on understanding the way the
project adapts its implementation approach
during the progressive phases of the call for
EOI.
5. Institutional histories of each pilot
partnership (innovation practice logs). These
will explore the series of challenges and
bottlenecks that need to be overcome; the
value of the type of capacity building support
provided, the effectiveness of this;
unexpected outcomes; key institutional
innovations taking place; impacts achieved;
policy constraints encountered and other
outstanding innovation capacity building
needs.
Research activities have significant overlap and
synergy with other dimensions of ARISA’s
implementation. Specific research task #1 will be
carried out in close collaboration with the
capacity building component (training). Tasks #3
and 4 will be carried out in close collaboration
with the monitoring, evaluation and learning
system developed for the pilots and the project
as a whole. This will involve the joint
development of an appropriate and pragmatic
MEL framework.
6. Deliverables
• An evidence-based account of innovation
capacity in different contextual settings and
an evidence-based account of suites of
intervention options that strengthen
capacity.
• Synthesis and practice/ policy notes for
different audiences for engagement and
communication purposes.
• Operational guidelines and principles for
building inclusive innovation at the public
research-business interface.
References
Cozzens, S. and Sutz, J. (2012). Innovation in Informal Settings: A Research Agenda, IDRC, Ottawa,
Canada.
Foster, C. and Heeks, R.B. (2013). Conceptualising inclusive innovation: modifying systems of
innovation frameworks to understand diffusion of new technology to low-income consumers,
European Journal of Development Research, 25(3), 333-355
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
CSIRO Agriculture and Food
Dr Andy Hall
t +61 2 6246 4771
e Andrew.hall@csiro.au
w www.csiro.au
CONTACT US
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1300 363 400
+61 3 9545 2176
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