Working Paper #2009-019
Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Capacity: Are Innovation Brokers the Answer?
This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating
innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and
illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example.
Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers
in developing countries’ agriculture. It concludes that innovation
brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and
that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to
overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such
players in the innovation system. The Dutch experience suggests that
innovation brokers need to be contextually embedded, and are unlikely to
become effective through a centrally-imposed design. Hence, we conclude
that stimulating their emergence requires a policy that supports
institutional learning and experimentation. In the evaluation of such
experiments, it is important to note that innovation brokers tend to
play intangible roles that are not easily captured through conventional
indicators.
- Keywords
-
- Agriculture
- Developing Countries
- the Netherlands
- Innovation Broker
- Neutrality
- Institutional Learning
- Context-Specific
- Innovation Systems
- Capacity Strengthening
- Agricultural Extension Journal Codes: N54
- 013
- 031
- Q13
- Q16
- Q18 UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Klerkx, L., Hall, A., & Leeuwis, C. (2009). Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Capacity: Are Innovation Brokers the Answer? (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2009-019). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=3705