Technology in Society 31 (2009) 399405

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Technology in Society
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techsoc

The art and science of innovation systems inquiry: Applications to Sub-Saharan African agriculture
David J. Spielman a, Javier Ekboir b, Kristin Davis a, *
a b

International Food Policy Research Institute, PO Box 5689, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia International Food Policy Research Institute, IICA, P.O. Box 55-2200, San Jose, Costa Rica

a b s t r a c t
Keywords: Africa Agriculture Game-theory modeling Innovation systems Methodology Modeling Poverty Rural development Social network analysis Sub-Saharan Africa

Agricultural education, research, and extension can contribute substantially to reducing rural poverty in the developing world. However, evidence suggests that their contributions are falling short in Sub-Saharan Africa. The entry of new actors, technologies, and market forces, when combined with new economic and demographic pressures, suggests the need for more innovative and less linear approaches to promoting a technological transformation of smallholder agriculture. This paper explores methodologies that can help improve the study of agricultural innovation processes and their role in transforming agriculture. We examine methods that address three key issues: (a) how agents interact in the production, exchange, and use of knowledge and information; (b) how agents respond individually and collectively to technological, institutional, or organizational opportunities and constraints; and (c) how policy changes can enhance the welfare effects of these interactions and responses. Methods include social network analysis, innovation histories, cross-country comparisons, and game-theory modeling. 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Agricultural education, research, and extension can contribute substantially to enhancing agricultural production and reducing rural poverty in the many parts of the developing world. However, evidence suggests that their contributions are falling short of expectations when it comes to Sub-Saharan Africa, where agriculture continues as the regions primary source of livelihood. The entry of new actors, technologies, and market forces, when combined with new economic and demographic pressures, suggests the need for more innovative and less linear approaches to exploiting new opportunities and overcoming constraints. Recent attention given to these issues has focused on innovation systems, an increasingly popular concept in the study of how societies generate, exchange, and use knowledge. An innovation system is broadly dened as the set of agents involved in an innovation process, their actions and interactions, and the socioeconomic institutions that condition their practices and behaviors [1,2]. The framework embeds technological change within a larger, more complex system of interactions among diverse actors, organizational cultures and practices, learning behaviors and cycles, and rules and norms. More important, an innovation system framework shifts the analytical emphasis from a conventional linear model of knowledge and technology transfers (from researcher to extension agent to farmer) to a more complex, process-based systems approach. This shift is appropriate for the study of agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa given that the sectors growth

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 251 11 617 2506/1 650 833 6696; fax: 251 11 646 2927. E-mail address: k.davis@cgiar.org (K. Davis). 0160-791X/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2009.10.004

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and development is increasingly inuenced by complex interactions among public, private, and civil society actors, and by rapidly changing market and policy regimes that affect knowledge ows, technological opportunities, and innovation processes. But early applications of the innovation system framework to developing-country agriculture suggest that opportunities exist for more intensive and extensive analysis. There is scope for empirical studies to utilize more diverse methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, than are being used at present. These will help to improve the relevance of empirical innovation studies to an analysis of poverty reduction and economic growth. In this paper we explore concepts and methods that can help improve the study of agricultural innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa. We examine methods that address three specic issues: (a) how agents interact in the production, exchange, and use of knowledge and information within a system; (b) how agents respond individually and collectively to technological, institutional, or organizational opportunities and constraints; and (c) how policy changes can enhance the welfare effects of these interactions and responses. The paper proceeds as follows. Section 2 sets forth a conceptual framework based on theories of complex adaptive systems and innovation within these systems. Section 3 discusses methodological challenges for innovation systems studies, followed by a discussion of alternative methodologies in Section 4. Conclusions are given in Section 5. 2. Conceptual background 2.1. Complex systems The basis for any type of development is the ability of individuals, organizations, and societies to improve on what they are currently doing, that is, to improve their individual and collective capabilities. But such improvements are contingent on the environment within which innovation occurs. Individuals and their environments form complex systems characterized by a large number of actors, diverse interactions and relationships, and constantly changing inuences emerging from technological, market, policy, cultural, and other socioeconomic factors. Recognizing development as a complex process can have major consequences for the design and implementation of public policy, but such recognition remains relatively uncommon. Public policies still draw on conventional analyses based on modernist metaphors of hydraulics, machinery, and factory productiondmetaphors that exert a profound inuence on the design of organizations, institutions, and policies. As a result, scientists and policymakers still emphasize control and predictability, and still design interventions that are built from the top down and expected to be implemented through passive, subordinated structures [3]. Complexity theories, on the other hand, emphasize the importance of self-organization, which results from the diversity of agents and the decentralized nature of complex systems. Even though some agents have more inuence than others, no agent or group of agents can totally control a system. Thus, policies in a complex system do not seek to manage the system but to operate on the probability of events, to increase the odds of desired outcomes, and to reduce the chances of undesired results [4]. We dene a complex system as one whose properties cannot be analyzed by studying its components separately. While there are several types of complex systems, the most relevant for the study of innovation processes are termed complex adaptive systems (CAS), or systems formed by many agents of different types, where each denes his/her strategy, reacts to the actions of other agents and to changes in the environment, and tries to modify the environment in ways that t his/her goals [5]. Behavior patterns in this type of system often emerge from independent, spontaneous, or unintended processes that render conventional, mechanistic modes of analysis quite useless. CAS evolve through the combination of initial conditions, multiple interactions, trends, and random variations in agents and their interactions. The strength of the trends and of the random effects changes along an evolutionary path. When the trends are strong, the CAS is more or less predictable, and the probability that a random variation results in a minor event is high. When variations occur close to unstable congurations, the probability of catastrophic events is high. As the system evolves and new actors and interactions emerge, the CAS becomes less stable. Eventually, the random component may become more important than the trends, and at a certain bifurcation point, the system may become random and unpredictable [6]. Systems do not necessarily tend toward chaos, but to a situation that is inherently unstable and unpredictable. At any given moment, random variations occur with varying consequences and varying degrees of predictability. 2.2. Variation, selection, and innovation An important evolutionary force in CAS is the interaction between variation and selection, concepts borrowed from the evolutionary biology literature and characterized as follows. First, while new actors and strategies constantly emerge in a system, not all of them are adapted to the environment; selection enables survival of the ttest. Second, changes in efciency within these systems are discrete, interrupted by long periods of relative stability. Third, such changes do not stop in periods of stability but continue at least at the same rate as in the periods of adaptive innovations [7]. This leads to the notion of innovation. We dene an innovation as anything new successfully introduced into an economic or social process. In other words, an innovation is not just trying something new but successfully integrating a new idea or product into a process that includes technical, economic, and social components.

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This denition stresses three important features. First, innovation is the creative use of different types of knowledge in response to social or economic needs and opportunities [8]. Second, a trial only becomes an innovation when it is adopted as part of a process; many agents try new things, but few of these trials yield practices or products that improve what is already in use. Third, innovations are accepted as such in specic social and economic environments [9]. In the terminology of complexity theory, innovation results not just from variation (trying something new), but also from selection (nding things better than what is currently used) and incorporation into long, complex processes [10]. Innovation can have an important socioeconomic impact only when it is part of sustained processes involving many actors with different capabilities and resources. The reason is that if an innovation improves substantively, say, production, it must be accompanied by new managerial and marketing innovations to handle and sell the extra output.

2.3. Networks Since individuals and organizations do not typically possess all the requisite capabilities and resources, they integrate into networks with other actors who can contribute resources and expertise they lack [11,12]. Thus, a successful innovation process is determined by the extent to which networks gather sufcient variation in capabilities and resources from diverse agents. Integration into these networks is difcult, however, because of problems with implementing collective action: the difculties of agreeing on rules, implementing common procedures, creating trust, and monitoring opportunistic behavior. Thus, networks form on the basis of relationships that evolve among agents and the institutional context within which they form. Network structure and dynamics depend on the complexity and maturity of their innovations. In the case of simple or mature innovations, networks are loose. Because the economic and technical features of the innovations are relatively well known, members can relate to each other through formal contracts or markets. For complex or new innovations, actors have to interact often and informally to resolve unexpected problems and the technical and market uncertainties derived from the innovation [11,12]. Network effectiveness depends on the collective capacity to facilitate exchanges of information and resources. In the terminology of network analysis, this capacity is known as the networks navigability, and depends on the existence of central actors (i.e., well-connected actors) interacting among themselves [13] and on the environment (i.e., laws or markets) in which the networks operate. Network effectiveness also depends on the ability of networks to search for and use existing information and, and when it is not available, to generate it. This is in turn inuenced by the networks ability to develop their organizational capabilities, or the individuals, technologies, shared norms, and organizational routines needed to communicate information and coordinate resources [9,14,15,16]. In the context of developing-country agriculture, CAS can be used to describe a system of public extension agents, public researchers, market traders, and farmers as well as public policies on science, technology, agriculture, education, and investment. One of the main hurdles that diminish small farmers innovative capabilities is their inability to integrate into navigable networks comprised of such agents, thereby gaining access to technical and commercial information, markets, and nancing. Often, small farmers do not have adequate human and social resources to integrate into these networks, or they do not operate in an institutional environment where such networks easily form. 3. Innovation systems and agricultural development 3.1. The contribution of systems-based approaches Systems-based approaches such as those described above are not new in the agricultural development literature. The study of technological change in agriculture has always been concerned with systems, as illustrated by applications of the national agricultural research system (NARS) and the agricultural knowledge and information system (AKIS) approaches. However, the innovation systems literature, with its foundations in complexity theory, is a major epistemological departure from the traditional, neoclassical studies of technological change that are often used in NARS- and AKIS-driven research. The NARS and AKIS approaches, for example, emphasize the role of public-sector research, extension, and educational organizations in generating and disseminating new technologies. Interventions based on these approaches traditionally focused on investing in public organizations to improve the supply of new technologies. A shortcoming of this approach is that the main restriction to the use of technical information is not just supply or availability but also the limited ability of innovative agents to absorb it [17]. Even though technical information may be free and freely accessible, innovating agents have to invest heavily to develop the ability to use the information [18]. While both the NARS and AKIS frameworks made critical contributions to the study of technological change in agriculture, they are now challenged by the changing and increasingly globalized context in which Sub-Saharan African agriculture is evolving [19,20]. This includes trends, such as the rapid growth of markets, as the main drivers of technological change; new demographic and agro-ecological pressures; new economic regimes such as trade liberalization and regional trade integration; the growth of private investment in and ownership of knowledge, information, and technology; and expansion of information and communications technology as a means of rapidly exchanging knowledge and information. There is need for a more exible framework to study innovation processes in developing-country agricultureda framework that highlights the

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complex relationships between old and new actors, the nature of organizational learning processes, and the socioeconomic institutions that inuence these relationships and processes. This brings us to the agricultural innovation system (AIS) framework. The AIS framework makes use of individual and collective absorptive capabilities to translate information and knowledge into a useful social or economic activity in agriculture. The framework requires an understanding of how individual and collective capabilities are strengthened, and how these capabilities are applied to agriculture. This suggests the need to focus far less on the supply of information (e.g., brickand-mortar research organizations, universities) and more on systemic practices and behaviors that affect organizational learning and change. The approach essentially unpacks systemic structures into processes as a means of strengthening their development and evolution.

3.2. Applications of the AIS approach The innovation systems approach is still nascent in the study of developing-country agriculture. Biggs and Clay [21] and Biggs [22] offer an early foray into the approach by introducing several key conceptsdinstitutional learning and change, and the relationship between innovation and the institutional milieu in which innovation occursdthat become central to later innovation systems studies on developing-country agriculture. Later studies by Hall and Clark [23], Hall et al. [24,28,29], Johnson and Segura-Bonilla [25], Clark [26], and Arocena and Sutz [27] introduce the innovation systems approach to the study of developing-country agriculture and agricultural research systems. Regional and national applications of the innovation systems approach include Sumberg [30], Roseboom [31], Chema, Gilbert, and Roseboom [32], Peterson, Gijsbers, and Wilks [33], and Hall and Yoganand [34] for Sub-Saharan Africa; Vieira and Hartwich [35] for Latin America; and Hall et al. [24] for India. Several studies focus on the institutional arrangements in research and innovation, for example, Hall et al. [28] on publicprivate interactions in agricultural research in India; Porter and Phillips-Howard [36] on contract farming in South Africa; or Hall et al. [24], Allegri [37], and Kangasniemi [38] on producers associations in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Other studies focus on technological opportunities, such as Ekboir and Parellada [39] on zero-tillage cultivation. A recent study by the World Bank [19] contributes further to the development of the AIS approach with both conceptual and empirical evidence. These studies are distinguished from many other works on agricultural research and development because they embed analyses of innovation within the wider context of organizational and institutional change processes. Further, they offer some answers to certain research questions that the conventional literature is often unable to address. For example, Ekboir and Parellada [39] offer a detailed look into the social and economic changes that encouraged the diffusion of zero-tillage cultivation in Argentina, a process that resulted from a complex series of events and interactions among farmers, farmers organizations, public researchers, and private rms. Hall et al. [28] provide an in-depth study of the institutional and organizational learning processes that stimulated the diversication of agricultural research nancing in India to include new actors (e.g., medium-sized rms and producer cooperatives) and new modalities (e.g., contract research, public-private partnerships). Clark et al. [40] unlock the mysteries of a successful donor-funded project in post-harvest packaging for small farmers in Himachal Pradesh, India, by studying the institutional learning and change processes that were incorporated into the project design.

3.3. Methodological limitations of the AIS approach However, the AIS framework does have several methodological limitations in its application to developing-country agriculture [41,42].  First, while the conventional innovation systems approach relies on a diversity of rigorous qualitative and quantitative methods in studies of industrialized countries, the methodological toolkit employed in the study of developing-country agriculture remains fairly limited. Currently, the favored methodology is the descriptive case study, typically drawn from an action research or stakeholder analysis exercise [34]. More often than not, studies are simply ex post descriptions of the dynamics and complexities of some technological or institutional innovation. Powerful tools that are systematic, replicable, and consistent methods of analysis that could be used to enhance this descriptive work include in-depth social and economic histories; policy benchmarking, cross-country comparisons and best practices; statistical and econometric analysis; systems and network analysis; and empirical applications of game theory, to name a few [43]. This methodological diversity and rigor could bring greater credibility and strength to the study of innovation systems in developingcountry agriculture.  Second, the AIS approach has not yet matured to a point where it can generate policy in developing-country agriculture for specic interventions needed to enhance the potential for innovation and improve the distribution of gains from innovation [41,42]. Although exceptions exist, the link between empirical analysis and policy recommendations remains either nascent or weak in the application of the innovation systems framework to developing-country agriculture. With so many case studies conducted and so many lessons learned, researchers should be well positioned to advise governments on

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policy options and incentive structures that generate greater levels of innovation and improve the distribution of gains therefrom.  Third, few studies in the emerging AIS literature examine the poverty-related effects of innovation processes. This means asking whether an innovation increases efciency in the production or utilization of knowledge directly relevant to those goods and services used by the poor in consumption or production, or whether an innovation improves the distribution of social surplus in a manner benecial to the poor. Few studies make that leap from descriptive ex post analysis of an innovation system to an ex ante analysis of how an innovation system promotes institutional and technological changes that are explicitly pro-poor. There is still very little conceptual or methodological work within the wider literature on AIS to suggest a consistent focus on sustainability or equity. 4. New methodologies Given the complexity of innovation processes and systems, no single method can be used to analyze them. However, several methods could contribute signicantly to the existing innovation systems toolkit. This section examines four possible methods: social network analysis; innovation histories; cross-country comparisons; and game-theory modeling in the tradition of evolutionary economics. These methodologies may be grouped into three categories: relational analysis, comparative analysis, and policy process analysis. When combined, these methodologies provide not only a valid, rigorous, and replicable toolkit, but also possess the ability to inuence decision making on key issues in agriculture and rural development: enhancing productivity, increasing food security and nutrition, diversifying rural livelihoods, and reducing poverty. While several of these methods are dataintensive, others rely on combinations of qualitative and quantitative tools that make them viable even in light of data and/or access limitations that are common in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. 4.1. Social network analysis Social network analysis (SNA) allows researchers to study relationships among multiple actors by providing tools with which to visualize and analyze the relationships [44]. SNA was developed by sociologists and further enhanced as an analytical technique by the elds of mathematics and statistics. By combining relational data with mathematical tools and concepts from systems theory, graph theory, and complexity theory, SNA provides critical insight into the relationships between various people, groups, or other entities. In the context of innovation, SNA offers a means not only to characterize, measure, and map relationships between actors, but also to analyze the changes in those relationships and the knowledge ows contained therein [45]. The data used in social network analysis are unique because emphasis is placed on the relationships between actors rather than the attributes of the actors themselves. Conventional data analysis typically focuses on actors, their characteristics, and how they are similar or different. In SNA, the analysis focuses on patterns of relations across actors. Therefore, the unit of analysis is the dyadda pair of entities. Dyadic attributes of interest for innovation include social roles, interactions, or ows of information between actors. For the study of innovation, SNA provides tools that are unique and often absent in many of the cost-based tools. Given the focus on relational rather than attributional data, SNA provides holistic insight into the structure of a system and the interdependence between entities within that system: a molecular rather than atomistic view of the world [46]. For instance, Conley and Udry [47] used social network analysis to identify communication networks among villagers in Ghana. They found that geographic proximity did not determine how smallholders learned; rather, it was the social networks in oz et al. [48] mapped three networks in which Mexican commercial lemon producers which smallholders were involved. Mun participate: technical, commercial, and social. The study identied a few highly connected farmers that increased the networks navigability. 4.2. Innovation histories Another strand of the literature emphasizes the innovation-history approach as a method of recording and reecting on innovation processes as part of wider institutional learning and change [49,50]. The approach engaged researchers in a stepwise process of (a) identifying objectives and expectations of stakeholders, (b) dening the innovation, (c) constructing timelines and actor network maps, (d) writing up the learning history, and (e) using the write-up as a catalyst for change. The approach tends to be internal to organizations directly involved in the innovation process, but is a potentially useful means of documenting and disseminating analyses that can inuence decision makers in government and other sectors. 4.3. Comparisons across countries Comparisons of AIS across countries using benchmarks, scorecards, and indices suggest further methodological possibilities. The approach has proven to be a valuable and effective tool for guiding innovation policy in many industrialized countries and regions. However, its application to developing countries is fairly new. Such comparisons provide a more subtle understanding of technological change in Sub-Saharan African agriculture, and the key factors that help explain the potential

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for continuous agricultural innovations in individual countries. It offers a means with which to differentiate, rank, and benchmark countries while also providing tools with which to group countries, to demonstrate where interventions can be effective in several countries at once, and to illustrate the potential for cross-country spillovers. Most important, the exercise provides policymakers, researchers, and development practitioners with information and analyses that can guide investments and interventions into areas that contribute to the economic, social, and environmental goals of the region. However, there is considerable reservation about efforts to quantify innovation and develop cross-country comparisons from what are essentially local, context-specic processes that do not lend themselves to comparison (see, e.g., [51,43]). Nonetheless, examples from the OECD and other international organizations suggest that such methods can be effective tools in understanding innovation across countries [52]. 4.4. Game theory Game-theory modeling based on emerging work in evolutionary economics offers insight into the value of the innovation systems framework. Game-theory models illustrate the spontaneous processes of social self-organization and the ways in which public policy and organizational structures can affect these processes. This perspective differs signicantly from the neoclassical approaches to constitutional design and benevolent social planning. In a complex, evolutionary approach, aggregate social outcomes are not the summation of individual maximizing behavior; rather they are the result of individual behavior conditioned by the behavior of others, the interactions among agents, and by the institutional landscape that conditions these behavior patterns. For example, evolutionary models derived from biological population models described by Smith [53] are applied to describe the selection of socioeconomic behaviors, both idiosyncratic and intentional, over time. The approach is described in detail by Nelson and Winter [54] and pursued further by Andersen [55,56], who models an innovation system with Schumpeterian characteristics to describe the strategic decision-making processes of diverse agents who cooperate, compete, or otherwise interact over time. 5. Conclusion Innovation is a complex process. For this reason it cannot be characterized by simple models that relate quantities of inputs and outputs, or simple monitoring systems that accumulate data on a limiting set of results-based indicators. As the dynamics of innovation processes are better understood, there is a need for more informative methodsdboth quantitative and qualitativedto analyze and foster innovation. This paper provided some insight into methodologies that can help improve the study of agricultural innovation systems. Such methodologies include social network analysis, innovation histories, cross-country comparisons, and game-theory modeling. These methods address the issues of (a) how agents interact in the production, exchange, and use of knowledge and information within a system; (b) how agents respond individually and collectively to technological, institutional, or organizational opportunities and constraints; and (c) how policy changes can enhance the welfare effects of these interactions and responses. References
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1982. [54] Nelson RR, Winter SG. An evolutionary theory of economic change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1982. [55] Andersen ES. Schumpeterian games and innovation systems: combining pioneers, adaptionists, imitators, complementors, and mixers. Note for the IKE seminar, December 13 (revised April 1, 2003); 2000. [56] Andersen ES. Evolutionary economics: post-Schumpeterian contributions. London: Pinter; 2004. Kristin Davis is a research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Her research agenda includes agricultural extension, education, and the role of farmer groups in innovation systems. She received her Ph.D. in international agricultural extension from the University of Florida (2004) and a B.S. in biology from Messiah College (1992). Javier Ekboir is a private consultant based in Mexico. David J. Spielman is a research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute, and is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His research agenda covers a range of topics relating to agricultural science, technology and innovation policy, and community-driven rural development programs. Prior to this, he worked on agriculture and rural development issues for the World Bank (Washington, D.C.), the Aga Khan Development Network (Pakistan), and several other organizations. He received his Ph.D. in economics from American University (2003), M.Sc. in development studies from the London School of Economics (1993), and B.A. in international relations from Tufts University (1992).