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 RIU in Asia were precisely because lessons from previous research on...

Knowledge brokering has been explored in the innovation literature to understand how different innovation tasks are organised toward technological development. This paper reflects upon the role of different organisations as knowledge brokers in regulatory policy processes towards putting...

Over the last 10 years much has been written about the role of the private sector as part of a more widely-conceived notion of agricultural sector capacity for innovation and development. This paper discusses the emergence of a new class of private enterprise in East Africa that would seem to...

This paper is a synthesis of research undertaken as part of the Research Into Use programme (RIU) to explore the question of how agricultural research can be used more effectively to improve agricultural production and farmers' livelihoods in developing countries. Many of the challenges the...

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 programme sponsored by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). This is one example of a new type of...

The agricultural sector has played an important role in the provision of food, foreign exchange and sustainable energy to many developing countries. This sector, however, has not been considered as a driving force of innovation as compared to other productive sectors. However, recent economics...

This paper explores the use of complex adaptive systems theory in development policy analysis using a case study drawn from recent events in Uganda. It documents the changes that took place in the farming system in Soroti district during an outbreak of African cassava mosaic virus disease...

The question of how agricultural research can best be used for developmental purposes is a topic of some debate in developmental circles. The idea that this is simply a question of better transfer of ideas from research to farmers has been largely discredited. Agricultural innovation is a...

The nature of the catching-up process has changed substantially at both the global and local levels over the last decade. The catching up process can no longer be disentangled from the rapid internationalization of science and technology and the globalization of innovation, in which the...

This paper sets out to explore the nature of new organisational and institutional vehicles for managing innovation in order to put research into use for social gain. It has reviewed four classes of such vehicles found in South Asia. The first two - contract farming and organised retailing -...