This paper sets out an analytical framework for doing research on the question of how to use agricultural research for innovation and impact. Its focus is the Research Into Use (RIU) Programme sponsored by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). This is one example of a new type of international development programme that seeks to find better ways of using research for developmental purposes. The main analytical approach draws on contemporary innovation perspectives and focuses on understanding the ways in which the process of research is used, rather than only on how research products are transferred and adopted. It argues that there is a diversity of ways of organising innovation appropriate to different market, social, technological, institutional and policy niches. The framework developed in the paper is used to frame questions that will help RIU in its quest to provide practical policy with selection guidance in choosing the right sort of innovation support strategies for particular requirements of different niches at different points in the innovation trajectory.
What can we learn from ongoing initiatives? There has been a lot of interest during the last two decades in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for achieving development. While many of these initiatives have benefited rural women by way...
This paper, part of the Social Sciences Working Paper Series, presents studies undertaken by nine community-based, natural resource management (CBNRM)-oriented organizations in China, Viet Nam, the Philippines and Mongolia. The partner organizations, representing three broad types: academic, regional network, and...
This paper reflects on the experience of the Research Into Use (RIU) projects in Asia. It reconfirms much of what has been known for many years about the way innovation takes place and finds that many of the shortcomings of...
Capacity development is regarded by CGIAR as an effective vehicle for sustainable development, when embedded within broader CGIAR Research Programs (CRP). This document offers guidelines on how CGIAR and boundary partners (or those partners who take up and adapt research...
This report is concerned with the ‘who?’ ‘what?’ and ‘how?’ of pro-poor extension. It builds on the
analytical framework proposed in the Inception Report of the same study (Christoplos, Farrington
and Kidd, 2001), taking it forward by fleshing...