Project structure and scaling strategies 

The structure of agricultural innovation projects needs to be designed and have the capacity to adjust to constraints (time and resources) to maximize their performance and outcomes, this requires functional skillsets to ensure adaptability and embeddedness. 

Time and resources constraints – inherent to project – limit the possibility of reaching massive enough tipping points. These may include policy changes which often take time.  

Given these constraints, and with a view to maximize effects and possibly go to scale, projects develop strategies that seek to involve various stakeholders through different approaches or setups (Innovation Platforms, training, discussion, and dialogue (including policy)) to ensure optimal contribution to longer term innovation trajectories. 

Scaling strategies often combine scaling up and out and build on partnerships with various players. They include and sometimes blend : 

• Scaling innovations in value chains through professional bodies and public-private partnerships; 
• Scaling farming technologies through the public research-extension system; 
• Scaling through a disruptive Coalition of Actors; 
• Scaling through end-users (consumers). 

Key drivers for scaling 

Dissemination of information and knowledge allows for communities outside the project – and sometimes even in other countries – to understand what the innovations are and express their interests in replicating them or pushing them forward, thus providing opportunities for scaling out.  

The commercial potential of innovations, and the availability of business networks to ensure market access is a strong vector of scaling. 

Public organizations can support these networks to reinforce their capacities (including functional), to provide information and help then apprehend the results of Research. By doing so, not only do these public organizations act as translators or science results to businesspeople but they also contribute to building a conducive business environment.  

Governments are a key partner for scaling. This is particularly the case when action and results, stemming from implementing Research Action in DeSIRA projects, feed into agendas endorsed by governments, to meet their national or international commitments to addressing grand challenges such as Climate Change, the SDGs or the UN Food Systems Summit. 

As a direct example, policy makers have an enforcement effect on some transformative changes by setting by laws or adopting outcomes as standards. 

Donors have a similar effect. Their design and allocation of resources to initiatives such as DeSIRA asserts their own commitments to these broader challenges and agendas and legitimizes projects and outcomes. 

The recordings and presentations of the Webinar are available on the dedicated page.

• Projects often operate in isolation based on specific agendas and aggregate some “schools of thinking” along specific targeted topics and would benefit from enhanced coordination and mediation with actors dealing with related topics that can have an incidence on the objectives of the project.
• The transformative potential of projects builds on a trajectory of actions and outcomes that need to be constantly registered and shared as the narrative of the project. This narrative that builds the theory of change also serves the purpose of advocating about the project with policy makers, which is a lengthy and sometimes slow process, depending how close or far the project is from targeted policy makers.
• Closeness helps informal and almost to permanent feeding of information to policy makers. Some of them may become involved in the project. Where policy makers are more distant from the project, for instance at regional or continental levels, a structured strategy has to be put in place.
• Policy outcomes are often broader than thought and can encompass, inter alia, renewed policies including the signature or adherence to international commitments, the creation of intermediary bodies, changes in processes and management of governmental agencies.
• Policy outcomes often happen based on policy windows where substantial change can be decided or implemented. These policy windows appear at their own pace onto which projects have very limited control. At the level of projects this requires to always be ready to engage and provide substantial information for policy makers to make decisions. This information should consist of robust data and sometimes capacity building and involvement of policy makers into projects, to ensure their best assessment and ownership of outcomes.
• Projects constantly seek this connection and coordination with policy makers and their agendas are most often designed to be aligned with those of the countries. However, some countries loosely enforce the agendas to which they are committed therefore putting projects in the complex situation of being custodians of those – often international – commitments for which they have limited resources. Donor funding and vigilance however brings support to projects as funding is provided to meet certain objectives agreed upon with the countries.
• Continued funding also ensures continuity in the generation of outcomes with projects building on results of previous ones and maintaining their trajectory. This length of time helps policy decision making processes maturing and provides repeated opportunities for policy windows to appear, even in situations where initial limited policy interest has narrowed projects to data collection.
• Trade-offs sometimes mean to let go of planned approaches to ensure that projects stick to an environment which is by nature changing. Projects that ensure from the onset that their activities are chosen based on converging points between national and international agendas, co-designed with beneficiaries, and where policy or decision makers are embedded in the project, are in a better position to seize policy windows when they appear while having less difficulties and needs to adjust.

Discussion

• How much does the situation of your project resounds with these takeaways?
• Have some sort of tensions or misalignment occurred between the innovation agendas supported by your project in the context where they are implemented and broader innovation agendas ? What were the circumstances ?
• How have you managed to plan and develop strategies to help synchronize agendas, using project activities as drivers for collective action ?

The recordings and presentations of the Webinar are available on the dedicated page.