Researcher’s role and tools in innovation process

Katrien, Pablo, Santiago, Lieven, Bernard, Pablo, Bruno, Catherine, Laurence, Yigezu

Roles:

Researcher being part of the research system

Where does the researcher position himself (facilitating vs observing)

Research in development vs research for development

Institutional arrangements are the framework of how you see research and development – researcher too central in innovation process

Are researchers flexible enough to address problems that come up? You are locked in yourlog(lock)frame / can researchers still come with their own ideas or demand-driven?

Actors can use researchers to get to their goal – pass their message

Impact pathways -> a lot of trade-offs / equity neutral interventions/ gender neutral interventions -> can be a tool for theory of change

Tools:

Translating tools in practical things that people can use otherwise same people getting better

Tool is a means to achieve sth, but need to be trained, what do we want to achieve?

Theory of change in industry, but what about agriculture? There is commercial agriculture at one end but an enormous group at the other end.

Trade-off analysis is a process, you learn a lot during the process. Careful not to reflect too much. Trial and error, engage with actors

Knowledge without access to the tools you need can be very frustrating

People are adopting but their livelihoods are not improving

Communication:

How do you communicate to people that are not receptive, are not interested in the intellectual process

You need to know what is driving their behavior

Trade-offs -> conflicting objectives at different scales

We need to make knowledge transparent, formalize knowledge

Innovation processes: you have to start all over again in a new location

Engage actors in the process if you want to communicate

Long time process -> 10 years (GATES) other donors dependent on politics / reforms og CGIAR

Communication tools

Material that is useful for farmers – shamba shake-ups

Our role is not training the farmers but training the trainers

Communicating with people that are responsible for implementing the policy not only the policy makers

Work with people that are interested in making the change (ex. Rwanda, decisions makers are often scientists)

Complex is cool vs. Getting lost in complexity: for communication, simplify but not simplistic

Blue sky

Changing the scale of research and experimentation – experimental economy – randomized control trials

Mapping innovation processes

Study the research process – learning from what we are doing – impact pathways

Analyse if trade-off analysis is doing something for people