Unfolding the challenges of delegating research services for innovation and entrepreneurship in smallholder agriculture

Abstract

In recent decades competitive research grants are promoted in low-income countries to delegate public provisioning of research services, often considering this approach as an effective way to create knowledge, to generate innovation, to increase aid effectiveness and to enhance overall development impacts. However, as with any other mechanisms of funding, the effectiveness of competitive research funding varies in terms of the delegation of research execution along the continuum of researchers' total freedom to funding agencies' absolute direction. A case study of decade-long Nepalese experience shows that disbursing competitive research grants to promote multi-stakeholder collaboration, as often expected under the pluralist realm, is paradoxical with a focus on either curiosity-oriented or user-inspired research, particularly in low-income countries where stakeholders are becoming critically consciousness of lasting structural inequalities. The paper concludes that there is need first to reform the grant administration procedure for underrepresented communities of scholars, and, second, to develop the capacity of grant administrators as well as researchers, practitioners and entrepreneurs to collectively address the dialectics of delegating research and other innovation services. This can be done by simplifying fund allocation procedure and diversifying the funding mechanisms, to make funds available for the following purpose: (1) curiosity-oriented agricultural science research of strategic importance; (2) applied interdisciplinary research for development problem-solving; and (3) collaborative research for innovation generation and small enterprise development. IntroductionIn recent decades, donor agencies as well as recipient governments have emphasized competitive research funding to facilitate multi-stakeholder collaboration yet with an implicit assumption that the research is the main source of innovation and entrepreneurship, and this mechanism of public funding can serve as a panacea to enhance aid effectiveness, creating lasting development impacts. Although this narrow perspective on innovation have been challenged by the recent application of innovation systems thinking to address the inherent complexity of international development, research financing is one of the least explored areas (Hall et al. 2001, World Bank 2006, Hall et al. 2009). We agree that increasing aid effectiveness can have leverage in the international development in general and in the livelihoods of vulnerable people in particular, but separating funding and provisioning roles through delegation of research services that have been conventionally provided by the state is a dialectical process. The process of handing over research services without the voice of disadvantaged stakeholders can limit development impacts.

Critical Systems of Learning and Innovation Competence for Addressing Complexity in Transformations to Agricultural Sustainability

“…Until the late 1970s, Nepal used to export food grains but now it has become a net importer despite the available diversity of rice varieties, and substantial investments in rice research, technology development and extension ( Figure 2). Although promotion of high value agriculture is also attempted in Nepal, investments in research services for innovation and entrepreneurship have primarily focused on the starchy staples rice, wheat and maize, and to some extent on starchy tubers, potato in particular (Pant and Pant 2011).…”