Our search for effective research and innovation practice:the shift from effective models to effective learning

AGRICULTURE & GLOBAL CHANGE

Dr Andy Hall| Research Group Leader – Global Agriculture Innovation Dynamics

12 November 2015

Key messages

• International agricultural research has engaged in a decades long search

for ways to connect research to innovation and impact.

• This has been approached by both structural reforms and by

conceptually driven tools and models.

• Mixed success. But ever more urgent need respond to global

development challenges in new ways.

• Argues for a need for investments in the science of innovation and

impact where learning replaces the reliance on new universal models.

• The CGIAR: search for better impact and better science. The challenge

programs, reform, CRPs, alignment to the post 2015 SDG

• Donors: the search for new private sector delivery models and linking

domestic and aid agendas and delivery

• The private sector: The increasing engagement in global development

platforms; searching for new business innovation that extend social

license.

• CSIRO: shifting from a national research center of excellence to an

innovation catalyst with a global outreach for Australian development

We are all searching for effective research and innovation practice

• Mid 2000’s ILAC: Before its time.

• Now a greater degree of comfort with the idea that innovation is not just

the process of putting research into use but also about developing

innovative practice for innovation. (i.e. learning how to do innovation)

• The recognition of the importance of the systemic change agenda

associated with the SDG’s gives renewed emphasis to practice

innovation to cope with complexity.

Back to practice and learning again

• Recent study Dorai, Hall and Dijkman (in press) Good practice in

multi-stakeholder agricultural research for development and

innovation partnerships.

• What are the implications of alignment to SDGs for MSP practice

in the CGIAR?

• Reviewed AR4D partnerships and innovation platforms practice

and global MSP platforms

SDG’s renewal of interest in partnership practice

Discrete technical

challenges

Discrete agricultural

impact challenges

Complex agricultural impact

challenges

Complex global impact

challenges

Partnership mode Mode 1

Research consortia

Mode 2

Partnerships, platforms

and alliances with the

private sector, NGO and

farmers groups creating

value for farmers and

companies

Mode 3

Inter-linked farm to policy multi-

stakeholder processes and

partnerships action changes in

food systems that create social

and economic value

Mode 4

Global architectures of MSP

platforms create coherence

between global and local agendas

and implementation strategies and

action that brings about systems

adaptation

Scale of impact Dependent on

linkages to other

delivery, innovation

and societal

change processes

Quick wins, but restricted

to scale of project, mission

or commercial opportunity

Long term, but enduring impacts

at value chain or national scales

Long term enduring impacts at

global scale

Science agenda - Science discovery

- Building scientific

capability

- Learning technology

delivery practice.

- Trouble shooting

application challenges

- Learning innovation practice.

- Identifying new research

priorities

- Communicating existing

knowledge and evidence.

- Reframing science enquiries and

practice

Role of the CGIAR - Leading science

discovery research

- Leading technology

delivery practice research

- Leading technical

capacity building

- Convening and brokering

delivery partnerships

- Leading innovation practice

research

- Research service provider and

or trusted advisor

- Catalyst in innovation capacity

development

- Convener of community of

practice

- Trusted advisor

- Service provider.

- Agriculture domain expert and

stakeholder

Findings

• Many nuts and bolt lessons.

• CGIAR underplaying two key comparative advantages in establishing the

scientific basis to link MSP practice with impact

• Role of the CGIAR in developing and spreading new research and innovation

practice: A continuous practice learning agenda.

• The role of the CGIAR in developing analytical frameworks and collecting

evidence and lessons about the way innovation and impact takes place and how

this reframes research practice.

Need a framework to better understand this and an evidence base of what works and how. The CGIAR has a core knowledge role (IPGs) in helping answer this

question. Contribution to impact should be grounded not only on understanding how this process works, but also on developing and adopting practices that enable

it to do so.

Key messages

Establishing the scientific basis to link MSP practice with impact:

• Strong theoretical case for an impact pathway premised on the more effective interplay between patterns of partnership, institutions and policy;

• Need a framework to better understand this and an evidence base of what works and how;

• The CGIAR has a core knowledge role (IPGs) in helping answer this question. Contribution to impact should be grounded not only on understanding how this process works, but also on developing and adopting practices that enable it to do so.

Contending coalitions and resistance to change

Presentation title | Presenter name9 |

Technology centric narratives of innovation

Success stories and myth making

The hidden hand of old M&E

The tyranny of tools

“Perfected yet rejected” communities of practice

Sloganeering, branding and false dichotomies

IBLI’s Institutional History

OBJECTIVE:

Collectively learn understand what worked, not worked and lessons principles to take forward into the future.

PROCESS:

A series of facilitated discussions with team and key stakeholders about IBLIs evolution, key lessons, turning points and challenges (past, present, & potentially in the future).

What IBLI has triggered …

IBLI Institutional History Outcomes17 |

IBLIs decision to explore a technology that could be delivered by the private

sector triggered a number of new AR4D practices :

1. Selecting and managing partners from different backgrounds, e.g. Private

Sector

2. Identifying new research questions that support market embedded innovation

processes that lead to uptake of the technology

3. Developing non-traditional skill sets within the team

4. Creating a project structure that couples research, implementation, testing,

trouble shooting, market development and capacity development

What are the big lessons from IBLIs evolution

IBLI Institutional History Outcomes18 |

A project plan and structure that had built in flexibility to respond partners requests helped

advance product development and promotion, e.g.:

Delivering on adhoc research requests with rapid assessments

Informal feedback loops within the team and with partners

Nuts and bolts lessons about how to work effectively with partners, e.g.:

selecting partners with complementary accountabilities; not working with market leaders etc.

Research engagement with implementing partners opened new possibilities for research and

technologies application opportunities

Opportunities for research enquiries on the science of innovation and impact

Delivering better impact can help deliver better science

Incubating IBLI (as a product) provided the opportunity for incubating a new research and

impact model with generic application beyond IBLI

GOAL:

Technologies and services

by public and private

sectors help Pastoralists

have SRL

Companies crowd in and

adopt technology

and practice innovations(Private Sector)

Improved policy & public

investments targeting

pastoralists(National

Public Sector)

Incubation & refinement through experimentation / problem solving

Technical backstopping

Market & community intelligence

Improved development investments

targeting pastoralists(International public sector)

SYSTEM & BEHAVIOURAL CHANGESPROVING CONCEPT

Strengthened organisations for capacity, facilitation &

advisory services

Filling market gapCapacity building

Feedback Feedback

Feedback

Science Capability Platform :

Capability Networks- Science of innovation - International researchers- Economic and finance - ILRI researchers- Remote sensing programing - etc- Impact Assessments (ex-anti & ex-post)- Systems diagnosis- Tracking system changes

Implementation capability Platform :

Capability Networks- Practice of implementation innovation - Insurance co’s- Community consultations - Government - Capacity development - NGOs- Qualitative / Ad hoc studies - Donors- Quality Assurance / trusted advisor - etc- Partnership management & brokering

Feedback

Feedback

Panel data collection & impact

assessment

IBLIs Operating Model- Theory of Change

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Technology / Process #2

Technology / Process #3

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Technology

Institutionalised

Technology

Institutionalised

Technology

InstitutionalisedInnovation incubation model- Incubating innovation process that put technologies into use

- The team known as IBLI’s purpose is bigger than just incubating the IBLI technology … its goal is to establish a model that incubates innovation processes that facilitate technology adoption through systemic change for the benefit for pastoralists

What are the transferable parts of the “IBLI” experience?

• Not the wholesale transfer of the model. Its grown organically in

a regional and problem set context.

• A package of lessons and practices about how research can be

used to engage and strengthen the spread of livestock insurance

innovations through market and policy means.

• Lessons and evidence about how research can more effectively be

used to trigger and incubate inclusive innovation processes at the

public private sector interface.

Why should we invest in science agenda on understanding the practice of innovation and impact?

• For internal purposes to provide a strong foundation for

continuously improving practice for impact.

• For external purposes to share with others high performing

practices in both specific problem sets, but also generically.

• For donors and institutional reform: to move beyond conceptual

models and anecdotal evidence and provided the evidenced

argument of how research for innovation and impact needs to be

practiced organised and funded.

Presentation title | Presenter name22 |

This weeks light bulb moment

“Even as we sit here struggling with the new research

models you are teaching us, there is some professor

sitting in Europe coming up with new models that we

are going to have to learn. We want something for

and from Africa”

Participant from Research for Impact training course, Nairobi, Nov 2015.

Questions & Discussion

AGRICULTURE & GLOBAL CHANGE

Andy Hall, CSIROLevel 1 Ecosystem Science Building, Black Mountain Laboratories, Clunies Ross Rd, Acton, ACT, Australia 2602E: Andrew.Hall@csiro.au

Thank you