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Learning INnovation Knowledge
Policy-relevant Resources on Innovation for a New Rural Economy

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About LINK

January 2007

LINK (Learning INnovation, Knowledge) is an initiative of United Nations University – Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). Its goal is to advance the understanding of innovation for a New Rural Economy in developing countries through concepts, lessons and guidelines and by facilitating discussions amongst scholars, policymakers, development investors and practitioners dealing with rural development.

Coordinated out of offices in Hyderabad , India and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the LINK network regional hubs bring together local clusters of researchers, policymakers, and development organisations. The hubs are linked through UNU-MERIT to the international community of scholars and policy experts working on innovation policy studies in developing countries.

Regional Highlights

South Asia

Study of Innovation in high value and subsistence agriculture in India and Nepal
A PhD candidate from University of Guelph, Canada, Laxmi Prasad Pant, has joined the LINK South Asia hub for part of his PhD fieldwork. Laxmi’s thesis is titled “Partnerships Beyond Research and Development: Systems of Agricultural Innovation in South Asia.” The research aims to investigate systems of innovation associated with both high value and subsistence agriculture in India and Nepal. Laxmi’s work in India will focus on the mango export sector. more

Policies for Bio-innovation in Agriculture and Health
LINK associate Rajeswari Raina from the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi made a presentation on pro-poor bio-innovation at the Workshop on Integrated Policies for Bio-Innovation in Agriculture and Health in Asia, hosted by the IDRC in Bangkok 13- 14 November. Rajeswari argued that both scientists and NGO’s need to find ways to work together more effectively if bio-innovation is to address the needs of society’s poorest.

download presentation

Sri Lankan National Science Foundation
LINK South Asia Director, Rasheed Sulaiman, and Andy Hall, LINK co-ordinator, visited the Sri Lankan National Science Council (NSF) in November to discuss future collaboration. It is hoped that NSF will work with LINK on its Regional Rural Innovation Reports initiative. Some of the NSF researchers had attended the Design and Evaluation of Innovation Policy (DEIP) training programme held by UNU-MERIT in Maastricht and were keen to jointly organise a Sri Lanka DEIP on rural innovation (www.nsf.ac.lk).

Managing tacit knowledge for innovation in livestock research and development organisations
LINK’s South Asia partner, the Centre for Research and Science Policy (CRISP) has received FAO funding to explore how better use can be made of tacit knowledge in the livestock sector in India. The research will explore the nature and distribution of this knowledge; the potential for codification of some of this knowledge; and the sorts of mechanisms and processes that could be used to make more of this tacit knowledge accessible as a way of strengthening livestock sector related innovation capacity. For more information contact Laxmi Thummuru.

Financing rural Innovation
LINK PhD researcher Lina Sonne has sucessfully defended her PhD proposal at UNU-MERIT. Her research is titled Towards an Understanding of Financing of Rural Innovation: Evidence from India. She is currently putting the final touches to her conceptual framework before starting her field studies in February 2007.

From agricultural extension to agricultural innovation
LINK South Asia Director Rasheed Sulaiman attended the SAARC Agricutural Information Centre (SAIC) Regional Workshop for 20-22nd November in Hyderabad, India on the transition agricultural extension in South Asia. He presented a paper titled “From disseminating technologies to promoting innovation: implications for agricultural extension” and argued that agricultural extension has to change substantially if it is to support the process of innovation in the agricultural and rural sector.

download paper

East Africa

LINK associate Mona Dhamankar, is currently in Ethiopia on an assignment with the African Development Bank, providing technical assistance on livelihood issues on the Integrated Weveda Development Programme.

Innovation Response Capacity in Kenya
LINK researchers Mirjam Steglich and Ekin Keskin completed the first part of their study on innovation response capacity in Kenya. They focused on two case studies, Home Grown – a horticultural products export company; and Farmer’s Choice a meat processing company focusing on mainly pork products for the local and international market. This study is seeking to understand the networks, habits and practices that allow companies and sectors to innovate in response to changing market conditions. The study of Farmer’s Choice is part of Ekin’s PhD which is on the topic of understanding response capacity development.
more

Innovation Africa Symposium
LINK associate Norman Clark and LINK PhD researcher Ekin Keskin both gave papers at the Innovation Africa Symposium held

in Kampala, Uganda in November 2006. Norman presented a paper on the role of education in building innovation capacity, whilst Ekin presented her recent work on innovation response capacity for the Ethiopian livestock sector.

paper Norman Clark

paper Ekin Keskin

West African Region

Technical and institutional dimension scaling-up innovation: The case of NERICA rice
UNU-MERIT through its LINK initiative is collaborating with the UNU-Institute for Natural Resources for Africa (INRA) to find ways of combining contemporary thinking and policy research on innovation with bio-physical research on natural resources in Africa. To further this objective Daniel Dalhoun has been appointed as a researcher and will be stationed at UNU-INRA in Accra, Ghana. Daniel, who is from Benin, recently completed his PhD at UNU-MERIT and will be undertaking research on the institutional dimensions of up-scaling NERICA rice in West Africa.
more

Andean Region

Proposal development
The coordinator of the Consortium for Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion (CONDESAN), travelled from Lima, Peru to Maastricht in Decemeber to work with LINK cordinators Andy Hall and Jeroen Dijkman on a funding proposal. The working title of the proposal is Strengthening agro-enterprise and rural innovation capacity through action research and policy dialogue. For more information on CONDESAN: http://www.condesan.org (in Spanish only).

News

Two Post doctorate positions: Understanding innovation capacity in relation to livestock fodder in developing countries (m/f)
The International Livestock Research Institute and UNU-MERIT are jointly implementing a project to explore ways of strengthening innovation capacity in order to address the need to upgrade fodder use practices in different livestock production systems in India and Nigeria. This is being conducted within the overall goal of identifying ways of better using livestock related knowledge to achieve social and economic development goals in sustainable ways in the poorest developing countries. This is a three year project funded by the UK’s Department for International Development and it seeks to appoint 2 post-doctoral positions. The persons appointed will be required to have a Ph.D. in either natural or social sciences, but with some understanding of systems perspectives on innovation. Experience of agriculture, particularly livestock and developing countries would be an advantage. Candidates from the South Asian and West African regions are strongly encouraged to apply., but candidates from all regions are welcome to apply. The project offers the unique opportunity of exploring critical operational, policy and theoretical questions concerning ways of operationalising the innovation systems concept in agriculture and rural development interventions in developing countries. This is at the cutting edge of the emerging field of innovation studies in development. The project provides successful candidates with an excellent opportunity to conduct field based research and there will be ample opportunities to publish and present this work at international conferences.

Further details may be obtained from Dr Peter Bezkorowajnyj, ILRI c/o ICRISAT, Patancheru, Andhra Pradesh, India p.bezkorowajnyj@cgiar.org or Dr Andy Hall, UNU-MERIT, Hyderabad, India, hall@merit.unu.edu.

New publication: Enhancing Agricultural innovation: How to go beyond strengthening research system.
This study undertaken by Andy Hall in collaboration with the World Bank has now been published. The book is available from the Agriculture and Rural Development Department at the World Bank.

The Worldbank
ISBN: 0-8213-6741-2

Research into Use programme. LINK coordinators Andy Hall and Jeroen Dijkman attended the “innovation learning group” meeting of DFID’s Research Into Use (RIU) Programme. RIU is managed by UK based development management company NR International. This is a large programme that seeks to facilitate and understand how to put natural resource research findings into productive use. LINK has expressed interest in partnering on the intellectual agenda of this programme. For more information: www.researchintouse.com.

Tri-annual meeting of the GFAR (Global Forum for Agricultural Research). LINK coordinator Andy Hall was a plenary speaker at GFAR’s tri-annual conference held in New Delhi in November. The conference was titled ”Reorientating Agricultural Research to Meet the Millennium Development Goals”. Andy was asked to speak on the theme of Innovations in Institutional Arrangements. He stressed that agricultural researchers and planners should not get fixated on one particular institutional mode as a blueprint for innovation capacity development. Instead he recommended a focus on how to facilitate transition, rather than worrying about the final destination. His argument being that institutional change was always necessary in a rapidly evolving world, and that learning how to do that is the best way to strengthen capacity.

	Innovations in institutional arrangements: From new institutional models to enabling continuous transition.
	Innovations in institutional arrangements: towards enabling continuous transition

GLOBELICS (Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems) Conference on 4-7 October in Kerala, India. GLOBELICS is an international network of scholars dedicated to applying the concept of "learning, innovation, and competence building systems” as an analytical framework and promoting its use in developing countries. This year's theme was on innovation systems for competitiveness and shared prosperity in developing countries. LINK ran a session on “innovation systems for rural transformation”.
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For more information:
info@innovationstudies.org

Partners LINK works in collaboration with the following partner organisations: