Using Innovation Indicators and Benchmarks to Strengthen National Agricultural Innovation Systems

By: David J. Spielman, Regina Birner Agriculture & Rural Development Department World Bank

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Agricultural science, technology, and innovation are vital to promoting rural development and poverty reduction. To this end, many studies on agricultural research, extension, and education have highlighted the importance of public investment and policies in these areas. However, as agricultural innovation becomes increasingly viewed as a complex process that defies simple solutions, it has become more and more difficult to identify the types of investment and policy interventions needed to make developing-country agriculture more responsive, dynamic, and competitive. 

The “national system of innovation” framework offers an interesting perspective for guiding investment and policy interventions in this area. The framework draws attention to the wide range of actors and organizations from the public, private, and civil society sectors that are involved in bringing new products, processes, and forms of organization into economic use. The framework also emphasizes the role of the institutional and policy environment that affects their performance and behavior. Applying this innovation systems framework is particularly promising for agricultural development because it can help identify where the most binding constraints to agricultural innovation are located and how better to target interventions to remove such constraints. 

©2007 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank

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Investments in knowledge—especially in the form of science and technology— have featured prominently and consistently in most strategies to promote sustainable and equitable agricultural development at the national level. Although many of these investments have been successful, the context for agriculture is changing rapidly, sometimes radically.

Six changes in the context for agricultural development heighten the need to examine how innovation occurs in the agricultural sector:

1. Markets, not production, increasingly drive agricultural development.

2. The production, trade, and consumption environment for agriculture and agricultural products is growing more dynamic and evolving in unpredictable ways.

3. Knowledge, information, and technology increasingly are generated, diffused, and applied through the private sector.

4. Exponential growth in information and communications technology has transformed the ability to take advantage of knowledge developed in other places or for other purposes.

5. The knowledge structure of the agricultural sector in many countries is changing markedly.

6. Agricultural development increasingly takes place in a globalized setting.

Can new perspectives on the sources of agricultural innovation yield practical approaches to agricultural development that may be more suited to this changing context? That is the central question explored here.

© 2008 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank

By: Riikka Rajalahti, Willem Janssen, Eija Pehu

Executive Summary
Agricultural development depends to a great extent on how successfully knowledge is generated and applied, and indeed knowledge intensiveness has featured prominently in most strategies to promote agricultural development. Yet the changing context for agricultural development has highlighted a strong need to understand and adopt innovation systems thinking.
An innovation system can be defined as a network of organizations, enterprises, and individuals that focuses on bringing new products, new processes, and new forms of organization into economic use, together with the institutions and policies that affect their behavior and performance. The innovation systems concept extends beyond the creation of knowledge to encompass the factors affecting demand for and use of knowledge in novel and useful ways. Innovation systems not only help to create knowledge; they provide access to knowledge, share knowledge, and foster learning. Given the diversity and context-specificity of innovation systems approaches, in March 2007 the World Bank organized a workshop in which about 80 experts (representing donor agencies, development and related agencies, academia, and the World Bank) took stock of recent experiences with innovation systems in agriculture and reconsidered strategies for their future development. This paper summarizes the workshop findings and uses them to develop and discuss key issues in applying the innovation systems concept. The workshop’s recommendations, including next steps for the wider innovation systems community, are also presented.

AJ Hall, B Yoganand, Rasheed Sulaiman V, Rajeswari S Raina, C.Shambu Prasad, Guru C Naik and NG Clark(2004)

This book explores the nature of innovation processes associated with socio-economic change in rural areas of developing countries. It brings together a collection of empirical and conceptual papers that discuss contemporary experiences and perspectives. Most of the papers explore these issues with a view to providing lessons for the agricultural research community and in particular lessons on ways of more effectively deploying agricultural science and technology as part of the socio-economic development process.
This emphasis responds to the growing sense that, while agricultural science continues to be an important policy instrument in rural development and poverty reduction, research efforts need to be less isolated and more closely linked to social, economic, and policy domains in which they seek to bring about change. This mirrors other shifts in development practice where processes are becoming more inclusive, consultative, and participatory and where the roles of the State and other players in the development process are being revisited. While these developments offer great opportunities for progress, they also bring challenges. Not least of these challenges is the need for agricultural research to respond reactively to a wide range of interest groups and agendas. And, given the rapid pace of change of modern economic systems, new arrangements need to be nimble and responsive as agendas, priorities, and opportunities are likely to evolve very quickly indeed.

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