Opportunity 1: Agricultural Innovation Systems

According to Hall (2006), an innovation systems per-spective recognizes that the determinants of innovation, as a process of generating, accessing and putting knowl-edge into use, are the interactions of different people and their ideas, and the social setting of these interactions. is is different to earlier linear thinking that saw re-search institutes as the creators of knowledge and tech-nology, extension as the diffusers of advice, and farmers as the adopters of new practices. Innovation systems rec-ognize that the relations among people and organizations are the key to knowledge sharing and application. “Inno-vation processes can be enhanced by creating more possi-bilities for actors to interact ” (Waters-Bayer et al., 2006). e ‘collective ’ aspect of this thinking is emphasized in a report promoted by the FORAGRO Technical Sec-retariat at IICA IICA (Salles-Filho, 2007): “Overcoming the linear view of the innovation process has led to an understanding that innovation is an entirely collective process, because: (i) it involves different actors with dif-ferent perspectives; (ii) it looks at a common objective with different concepts, tools and perspectives; (iii) it re-quires a division of work; (iv) it requires the distribution of property rights; v) it has economies of scale and scope; (vi) it requires coordination.” Kristjanson and colleagues (2009) applied such an in-novation framework to livestock research projects in Africa and Asia. ey concluded that ‘linking knowledge to action ’ can be improved by attending to 7 principles, including: “combining different kinds of knowledge