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The
sustainability
and success of
Innovation
Platforms
» Continued on Pg. 34
Innovation platforms are fast becoming
part of the mantra of agricultural
research for development (AR4D)
projects and programs. They have become an
increasingly popular approach to enhancing
multi-stakeholder collaboration in AR4D.
Their basic tenet is that stakeholders
in the agricultural sector (farmers,
government, private sector) depend on
one another to solve their problems, and
hence need a space where they can learn,
negotiate, and coordinate to overcome
challenges and capture opportunities
through a facilitated innovation process.
It is however very important to look at
innovation platforms critically in dening
their features, key functions, and what
they can and, as importantly, cannot do.
By Marc Schut
Innovation platform testing and disseminating improved vegetable varieties and pro-duction
practices in Sagara village, Babati District, Manyara Region in Tanzania.
Photo: Hassan Mdinga, WorldVeg
changes in conventional wisdom and practices, that
lead to enhanced capacity within innovation systems.
How can innovation platforms be
embedded in dierent governance,
cultural, and political contexts?
Innovation platforms are by nature democratic
spaces for joint problem identication, analysis,
prioritization, and the collective design and
implementation of activities to overcome problems.
They are part of agricultural systems, and only a very
small number of the stakeholders will be represented
in the innovation platforms. Many value chains and
service providers are active in agricultural systems,
and innovation platforms often function around a
specic niche in the agricultural system in a specic
geographical location (e.g. production of vegetables
in Arusha for export).
These agricultural systems form part of broader
livelihood systems such as agriculture, healthcare,
education, industry and infrastructure. The socio-
political systems govern the rules of the game,
including not only formal policies, agreements and
standards, but also informal norms and values related
to the importance of agriculture in society.
The implication is that an initiative to set up an
innovation platform can draw unexpected responses
from stakeholders in the systems within which it
operates. The innovation platform may, for example,
attract support from high-powered stakeholders, such
as politicians. This could be positive, as it increases
the chances of success, but could it also put the
innovation platform at risk of being co-opted by one
particular interest? The establishment could consider
the innovation platform as a subversive activity that
threatens its power position. How does one decide to
proceed if the initiating group still considers it ‘the
right thing to do’? Generally, innovation platforms
with a broad stakeholder support base run a lower
risk of being co-opted, or of being seen as subversive.
A political economy analysis can help to elucidate
the power dynamics at play in specic agricultural,
livelihood, and socio-political systems.
In essence, innovation platforms facilitate interaction
and collaboration within and between networks of
farmers, governmental and non-governmental service
providers, policymakers, researchers, private sector
players, and other stakeholders in the agricultural
system. An important question for development
donors and funders of innovation platforms is the
extent to which innovation platforms and their
outcomes are sustainable. The sustainability issue
requires us to consider the following two questions:
• When can innovation platforms be considered
successful?
• How can innovation platforms be embedded
in dierent governance, cultural and political
contexts?
When can innovation platforms be
considered successful?
Successful innovation platforms should not
be sustained indenitely and are temporary
organizational structures. An innovation platform
may cease to exist when it has addressed the initially
identied challenge. It is thus no longer worth the
investment – its contribution to innovation ceases
to be signicant or there are no funding sources
available to support continuation. The three
dimensions of sustainability should be carefully
distinguished as follows:
• Sustainability of the changes that happened
through the platform (the innovations);
• Sustainability of the innovation platform itself
as a mechanism, niche, or entity for change and
collective action;
• Sustainability of stakeholders’ capacity to
innovate
Whereas, the rst relates to the outcomes desired
and attained by an innovation platform, the second is
a measure of organizational sustainability while the
third relates to institutionalization of the innovation
process, as tested by the platform, diused through
34
Members of the Maputo, Mozambique best practice hub: an area for joint learning,
experimentation and marketing of vegetables, using a value chain approach.
35
For the success and sustainability of innovation
platforms, there are critical questions that should be
asked and answered before deciding to embark on
implementing one. These questions should include
the following:
• What is the new innovation to be designed and
tested (e.g. growing high-quality vegetables by
unemployed youth in Arusha)?
• How can we tailor the innovation to specic
types of farmers or agro-ecological areas (e.g.
training and other needs specically for youth)?
• How can the existing innovation be scaled, either
through upscaling (e.g. have youth groups form
dedicated market linkages with supermarkets
or make them produce for export markets) or
outscaling (e.g. making youth trainer-of-trainers
In most countries, such as Tanzania, it is considered
positive that rural actors organize themselves, sit
down together around joint constraints, and self-
organize interventions to overcome these constraints.
In other countries, such processes may be viewed with
suspicion by governments or other dominant parties,
who may feel that these platforms are not needed,
or undermining their role, mandate and function.
The bottom line here is that project designers and
implementers need to think critically about how
to support innovation platforms in the governance
or socio-political context in which they are being
implemented.
Members of the Maputo, Mozambique best practice
hub: an area for joint learning, experimentation and
marketing of vegetables, using a value chain approach
(Photo: Hipolito Malia).
36
and entice them to share their knowledge and
expand their groups)?
Overall, innovation platforms can fulll an important
function in the pathway leading to the scaling
of agricultural innovations by bringing together
dierent groups of stakeholders that all contribute
to analyzing a complex problem or challenge. In that
sense, they all bring a piece of the puzzle needed to
overcome the problem. During the process of jointly
analyzing problems, stakeholders become aware of
how their problems are interrelated and how joint
action is needed to address them. This is an important
prerequisite for achieving impact at scale; realizing
the needs and interests of dierent stakeholder
groups and ensuring that the innovations developed
are not only technically sound, but also aordable for
farmers, and coherent with government policies and
objectives.
It is important for not only farmers, but also for
policymakers and the private sector to be a part
of the decision-making and innovation processes
- a precondition for supporting the wider use and
spread of validated technologies and other types
of innovations developed in innovation platforms.
The process and its participants provide legitimacy
to the outputs for key scaling actors in upper levels
of agricultural innovation systems, as these outputs
are developed in a familiar location known and
related to the key scaling actors. This goes to show
that innovation platforms – through their inclusive,
demand-driven, and participatory action research
methods – can provide an important basis for
impactful innovation processes.
For more information:
Schut, M., Andersson, J.A., Dror, I., Kamanda, J.,
Sartas, M., Mur, R., Kassam, S., Brouwer, H., Stoian,
D., Devaux, A., Velasco, C., Gramzow, A., Dubois,
T., Flor, R.J., Gummert, M., Buizer, D., McDougall,
C., Davis, K., Homann-Kee Tui, S., Lundy, M., 2017.
Guidelines for Innovation Platforms in Agricultural
Research for Development. Decision support for
research, development and funding agencies on
how to design, budget and implement impactful
Innovation Platforms. International Institute of
Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Wageningen University
(WUR) under the CGIAR Research Program on Roots
Tubers and Bananas (RTB), Kigali, Rwanda. Available
online: http://www.rtb.cgiar.org/blog/publication/
guidelines-innovation-platforms-agricultural-
research-development/.
‘Best practice hubs’: linking unemployed youth to
lucrative vegetable markets
Best practice hubs are designed to address knowledge gaps among unemployed youth along the
vegetable value chain and serve as centers for education, crop trials and experimentation. Training
targets specic pre-identied market opportunities and is both technical as business-oriented; during
3-month training sessions, covering an entire growing season, youth is drawn into communities of
practice, where they can learn, evaluate and adapt not only vegetable production technologies but
also eective value chain analysis skills to support income-generating activities and build strong
market relationships. BPHs are a model for bridging research practice by focusing interventions in
targeted geographical areas, embedded within vegetable farming communities. Technologies have to
be simple, aordable and available and include drip irrigation, cheap and locally available greenhouses
and knowledge about seeds, fertilizers and biopesticides that are readily available. Young farmers
were put in touch with markets, nance institutions and, most importantly, each other through an
innovation platform. Such an approach was highly successful in Arusha, Tanzania where ve youth
groups were trained at a best practice hub, and linked with local supermarkets, such as Nakumatt and
Soko Kuu Green Grocers Stalls Arusha, and export companies, such as HomeVeg and Serengeti Fresh.
Some groups were able to produce vegetable crops according to production certication standards.
