Pilot INTECH/ILRI Workshop Applies Innovation Systems Concept to Livestock Research, contd …

At an inaugural training workshop in Ethiopia from 23-28 May, the two organizations piloted a specially developed training module with a group of 12 ILRI livestock scientists. The training module was developed by Dr. Andy Hall (UNU-INTECH), Dr Jeroen Dijkman (ILRI) and Professor Norman Clark.

By introducing them to the concept of innovation systems, the five day training workshop aimed to help livestock scientists adapt their approaches and practices to emerging development realities. This was presented as a framework to help participants visualize the way their research locates, articulates and interacts with the diverse set of players, practices, institutions and policies that operate in the particular contexts in which they seek to contribute to social and economic change. The approach piloted in this workshop will be rolled out - with appropriate modification - for different audiences of scientists, research managers, donors and policymakers.

Approach
The workshop approach relies on tutorial-based, facilitated discussion sessions and is iterative, introducing different exercises depending on the interests and needs of the participants. It is structured so as to help scientists arrive at an understanding of the principles of the innovation systems concept and then apply these in project design and implementation. The programme has three main elements. First, participants identify the main challenges they face in working as scientists in the evolving development environment and in particular the difficulties they face in devising and implementing new ways of working in their organization.

This provides the context for the rest of the workshop as it is these practical challenges that the innovation systems concept seeks to provide a framework to deal with. In this case practical issues included how to contribute to developmental outcomes in specific locations while still maintaining the generic contribution of science to other contexts; how to identify partners related to different research and development tasks; how to adapt to playing different roles in different consortia of partners; and how to legitimize these new ways of working in scientific organizations.

Next participants are guided through a process of developing their own principles to deal with the challenges they have identified. This is done through analysing and discussing several case studies. Some cases narrate the way different agricultural research and development projects have attempted to improve their relevance and build links with wider social and economic systems in which they are situated. Other cases detail institutional change processes in scientific organizations in response to changing research, development and policy environments.

In the third part of the programme participants are introduced to the innovations systems concept through selected readings. They are asked to present a critique of these in view of their own challenges and the experiences observed in the case study examples. In the final exercise participants either develop new projects or redesign old projects using the principles of the innovation systems concept that they have developed and internalized during the course of the week.

Moving from Old to New ways of working
At the end of this pilot course three projects were designed. The original objective of the first project was to address fodder shortages by transferring new fodder technologies to farmers using field testing and demonstration-based approaches. This was transformed into a learning project, seeking to understand how to create local network-based capacities to innovate and respond in equitable ways to changing livelihood, market, institutional and policy environments of livestock production systems. The project focus is on India and Nigeria .

The second project was based on the experience of a livestock scientist who had developed a novel and cost effective way of treating an animal health problem – the infection and treatment method (ITM) for the tick borne disease of cattle, East Coast Fever. This approach involves administering a live vaccine (actually the infective agent for East Coast Fever) to cattle and simultaneously treating the symptoms. This develops immunity that protects cattle from subsequent infection. Despite the efficacy of the treatment and its relevance to poor livestock keepers ITM had failed to be put into use. This is partially because of the need for policy changes to authorize the use of a live vaccine, and partially because of the need for the active involvement of agri-business companies to manufacture and distribute it. The project developed during the workshop proposed to use an action research approach to explore and facilitate the creation of the set of linkages between policy makers, livestock scientists and agri-business required to collectively develop ways to legalize, manufacture and distribute the live vaccine that the ITM approach relied on. The project will focus on Kenya , Uganda and Tanzania .

The third project discussed ways in which an existing project on conservation of animal genetic resources could expand its research and training activities so as to better identify, communicate, and facilitate negotiations to address different stakeholder needs. An additional question that came out of this exercise related to the nature of the policy process. Specifically, how to connect the experiences of community-based genetic conservation with the policy processes and actors dealing with both genetic conservation and issues relating to environment and livestock such trade and rural development.

Wider significance
The development and piloting of this training workshop is part of a larger programme of collaboration between UNU-INTECH and ILRI that seeks to establish innovation studies and capacity strengthening hubs in East Africa and South Asia. Using a process of research and joint learning with scientists and policymakers, the regional hubs will develop and promote lessons on how policy and scientific capabilities can be reconfigured in response to changing circumstances, and how innovative capacity in the rural sector can be developed.

The regional hubs will act as focal points to develop and exchange information on ways of innovating and creating novelty in the rural sector through the better integration of science and technology with a wider set of economic and policy actors found in the development arena. Training workshops of this kind will be one mechanism for taking concepts and principles developed through empirical research to assist scientific, policy and other actors to operationalize these in the way they plan and work.

The focus on project design in the workshops will contribute to the overall strategy of building on-going, long term relationships with scientists and policymakers as they attempt to apply innovation systems ideas. By facilitating and mentoring this process as these projects and other interventions proceed, the hubs will jointly learn lessons on how policy and practice can be reconfigured in response to changing circumstances. The hubs will then be in a position to exchange and diffuse these lessons more widely.