POWERPLUSWATERMARKOBJECT1 HOW TO FINALIZE THE INVENTORY OF INNOVATION CASES

The purpose of this internal technical note is two-fold. First (Part 1), it gives specific suggestions about how to finalize the on-going inventory of innovation cases, by applying, clarifying and adjusting when necessary the existing inventory guidelines v2 (which remain our basis for structuring and implementing the inventory), by adjusting what can be done to the resources available in each team, and by making use of the lessons learned and suggestions made during the NX-1 meetings between November and December 2010 (see corresponding 3 NX-1 and coordination report). Secondly Part 2), it gives generic guidelines for developing the inventory products and for solving the related IPR issues.

Readers may also want to refer to the (upcoming) “Concept”, “Joint learning” and “cross-analysis” technical notes for further clarifications about the corresponding issues which interact and overlap with the inventory.

Background: where are we with the inventory, what’s next?

Up to now (early March 2011), the three national teams have used specific strategies to identify and document cases and are at varying degrees of progress in identifying and documenting cases (see coordination and Steering Committee reports). Despite the cross-participation of national team members to NX-1 meetings, only a few exchanges have taken place until now among national teams about their respective inventories^¹. Such exchanges could take the form of sharing the respective list of cases, problems faced by one team, solutions devised by another and so forth all of which could promote synergies and learning across teams.

On the other hand, for the sake of providing each team with « enough » time to finalize their inventory properly, the JOLISAA Steering Committee decided on February 8th to extend the deadline for the inventory to end of May 2011 (instead of the initial date of end of March). This new deadline means teams have about 11 weeks from now on to finish all inventory-related activities and deliver the corresponding series of products, i.e. a filled Excel file listing and characterizing in a semi-quantitative manner the cases, and the series of qualitative narratives related to the same cases. In doing so, it is useful to have in mind the types of products that will come out of the inventory.

What lies however beyond the scope of the inventory itself, and hence beyond the scope of this note is to propose an approach for cross-analyzing the cases at the national and international level, and to develop the agreed-upon inventory products such as posters. A specific technical note will be developed about this in the coming weeks, while the corresponding activity will take place mostly over the June-September 2011 period, starting with the preparations and holding of G2 continuing with organizing the series of NX-2 meetings, and finalizing with producing the formal inventory products.

Part 1: Finalizing the inventory

Identifying and selecting inventory cases

Several inter-related issues are addressed, from differentiating between cases and sub-cases within a case, to ensuring diversity of cases, selecting cases more strictly, identifying additional cases, and determining how many cases need to be documented.

Differentiating between cases and sub-cases within a case

Situation: Several examples come to mind which clarify the situation we are facing in the inventory: the cases of raiboos and wool farmers’ association (South Africa), the ginger concentrate and grasscutter raising cases (Benin), the ATIRI experience (Kenya). In each one of these examples, several possible “sub-cases” can be identified within a given overall case. For the raiboos case, one such sub-case could be about the development of fair trade norms and market for wild raiboos, another one about the management of wild raiboos. Identifying sub-cases is especially relevant for innovation experiences with relatively long time lines and rich ramifications / mix of innovation types and domains. What matters in the end is that each sub-case may have enough merits to be a stand-alone, coherent case within the JOLISAA inventory, because it provides an interesting story-line and can be assessed with our guidelines, using the broader case as context. Identifying and documenting sub-cases is resource efficient, as the various sub-cases share the same context information, and hence a given amount of work invested in the case can serve simultaneously for the various sub-cases. Conversely, trying to assess as a single case experiences actually made of various sub-cases may be a rather impossible task, as it might not be possible to choose an accurate answer or modality for a number of variables included in the Excel template, because a different answer would be needed for each sub-case, as was evident from the preliminary graphical analysis of cases performed during the NX-1 meetings in South Africa and Benin.

Recommendations: All national teams need to scrutinize the various innovation experiences they have identified so far, and decide if it is useful or perhaps necessary to split them up into one or several sub-cases. If sub-cases are indeed identified, priority for documentation should be given to those sub-cases that deal with relatively exciting and novel developments from the viewpoint of JOLISAA (see guidelines v2) but also from the view point of the case holders, so that they feel motivated to engage with JOLISAA in learning something they don’t already know about their own experience. Conversely, JOLISAA teams should avoid simply restating or paraphrasing relatively well-known and fairly complex “old” stories already well-documented and whose lessons have already been extracted and learned a while ago.

Identifying additional cases and covering a wide diversity of cases

Situation: With perhaps the exception of Benin, the other 2 countries had a relatively modest number of cases identified by the time the NX-1 meetings were held (less than 15), and then not all cases are valid ones anyway (see above). Hence it is vital that more effort is invested in identifying and selecting additional cases for completing the inventory. Furthermore, according to our inventory guidelines (see inventory guidelines section 5, page 9-10), the collection of cases assembled for a given country should cover a wide diversity of innovation types and processes, lead stakeholders as well as success and less successful experiences. The cases identified and documented so far in each country do not necessarily seem to cover such desired diversity. For example, there are not enough problematic cases (cases where innovation didn’t go to scale, or for which several constraints interfered strongly with the innovation process!), or there are too many cases in which research has been the lead stakeholder (this is especially true in Kenya), or on the contrary: too many cases about emerging local innovations eg ), etc. If care is not taken, the inventory may be acutely biased towards only certain types of cases, which will influence the lessons which can be learned owing to inadequate diversity.

Recommendations: Immediate and urgent work is needed to identify additional cases and complete the existing listings. Focus should be on adding cases that are complementary to the ones already identified, or cases that are not yet or not adequately represented in the on-going inventory. Before adding cases, national teams need to assess rapidly, but explicitly, perhaps with the help of members of their national learning circles, the current diversity of cases included in their respective inventory, so that they may actually know what types of additional cases to look for. Criteria and categories to assess the current and desirable diversity of innovation cases may be borrowed from the tentative typology of innovation cases (see inventory guidelines section 5, page 10), They may also include contrasts in farming context (varying degrees of integration to the market, diverse agroecological conditions), diversity and types of stakeholders involved, multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms, intensity of involvement of research and other formal ARD institutions, relative maturity of the innovation process, type and relative mix / complexity of innovations (technical and organizational), potential impact on natural resources, role of local knowledge and practices, among others. Once this assessment has been completed, several avenues may need to be explored to actually identify additional cases, with a preference for avenues with the best a priori chance of leading to collecting missing types of cases (see inventory guidelines section 5, page 11-13).

Selecting cases more strictly

Situation: Some of the cases presented during the various market places seem hardly to fit with JOLISAA criteria and purposes, or would make fitting them with JOLISAA Excel template a next-to-impossible task. For example, the story of the national wool association (South Africa) as presented during NX-1 South Africa^² is not per se an innovation story, but the story of how an institution has evolved over time, with some of its activities and decisions clearly linked to innovation stories, and others not. Including such cases in the inventory creates confusion about what the inventory is all about, and will make its analysis very difficult, as it will be a case of mixing apples and oranges in the same bag.

Recommendations: JOLISAA national teams need to be very strict with the inclusion of cases in the inventory, to make sure they follow the inventory guidelines and criteria about what constitutes an innovation case, and they fit in with the Excel and Word templates. Teams also need to improve markedly on the current level of documentation and analysis of existing cases, so that salient features of the corresponding innovation processes do come out clearly, foremost among them the innovation story line (see later).

Adjusting down the number of cases

Situation: Since G1, it has been proposed that the number of cases should include anywhere between 30 and 45 cases per country. No proper consideration was given at the time to the actual amount of work and resources that goes into developing a case. Eight months later, it has however become clear that collecting the information necessary for filling up our inventory templates (Word and Excel) can be resource-intensive. Furthermore, the amount and quality of documentation available for a given case is on average lower than we anticipated. This implies that some teams might decide to adjust down the total number of cases they will be able to include in the inventory, provided the objective about diversity of cases is still met.

Recommendations: Each national team should assess if need be the total number of cases it will document and adjust it to the actual capacity and resources the team knows it can effectively mobilize to document each case with the required rigour and quality. Final number cannot be less than about 25 “valid” cases.

The content of a case

Formulating the story line

Situation: During the NX-1 workshop, one difficulty arose in many of the posters, which is that the story line about the innovation was not always very visible/clear. This means the documentation didn’t convey properly the essential elements of the dynamics of the unfolding of the innovation process over time, its main phases and turning points, etc. Conversely, in several cases, too much detail was provided on the technical nature of the innovation or on the outcomes, rather than on the innovation process per se.

Recommendation: All teams must make sure that they identify and formulate a clear, convincing, and conveyable story-line focusing on the innovation process for each case included in the inventory possesses. This may require devising and using graphical tools and diagrams specifically tailored to represent major phases and events, and including the corresponding figure in the Word template.

Telling the whole story rather than the nice parts only

Situation: Perhaps spontaneously, or because innovations that emerge and survive, or are taken notice of are relatively successful, cases documented so far focus on the good (or successful) parts of the innovation experiences, i.e. what has worked well, what has had an impact. For example, in Benin, pineapple producers want to “go organic” to access tightly regulated European markets, but have difficulties in devising the corresponding technical and organizational innovations at a swift pace. Documenters tend to shy away from shedding light on such more problematic aspects, on difficulties and challenges, and how they were dealt with. Yet it is very often by focusing on such problematic aspects that useful lessons may be identified, discussed and learned collectively.

Recommendations: National teams need to make sure they go beyond the “official” or “nice” story and provide a critical outlook on each inventory case, and the related difficulties and challenges. To achieve this, they need to address specific “critical” questions during interviews with resource persons linked to the case, as well as make use of their interactions with relevant members of the national learning circles to identify potential problematic areas of the cases. The various topics and variables included in the Excel and Word templates provide useful pointers to areas which might be explored through questioning.

Ensuring quality control

Situation: Under the tight deadlines and constrained human resources JOLISAA is working under, one has a tendency to go (too) fast in identifying cases and filling the Word and Excel templates. Another common situation is that it is not those most knowledgeable about JOLISAA, its approach and guidelines who are necessarily in charge of documenting the cases, but hired staff, or partners who might only have had few opportunities so far to know about and interact with JOLISAA. Such people, be they case holders, hired assistants or KARI site members do not necessarily master the key JOLISAA concepts, nor are they in the best position to produce quality case reports, to fill out the Excel, Word or Access templates. More importantly, they might not be able on their own to pass a critical, well-informed judgment about key characteristics of the cases. Whatever the reason, this usually translates into ambiguities and approximations, small or big, about what they may say and report about a given case.

Recommendations: It is the responsibility of the national coordination to ensure that each case is properly documented to the fullest possible extent (given the existing constraints in terms of access to information about the case), that is: each line and cell in the Excel Template, each section in the Word template is as rigorous, accurate, precise as possible and allows to answer JOLISAA’s stated aim and objectives related to the inventory. National coordinators and their teams need to exert formal and systematic quality control before submitting information to JOLISAA.

Part 2: Products of the inventory and IPR-related issues

(this part has not yet been reviewed by the corresponding Task Force, made up of

Products of the inventory, their aim and audience

JOLISAA SC agreed that four types of products or deliverables would be developed based on the inventory results and outcomes:

Individual electronic posters
Papers about individual cases to be published in local journals, bulletins or newsletters for a national audience
The Meta-analysis and lessons at the national and cross-country levels
A booklet comprising a conceptual / methodological part, the collection of posters and the meta-analysis.

The aim and audience of the inventory products is as follows:

All inventory products mentioned above are aimed at sharing the inventory results and lessons as widely and openly as possible (as “public goods”) among researchers, practitioners within and outside JOLISAA, including all members of national learning circles, JILAC members and members of the networks and other communities of practices related to JOLISAA subject matter.
It is however recognized that some products might be geared more towards an international audience (e.g. “emblematic” cases and cross-analysis) while others might have more of a national audience in mind (e.g. single experiences).
All JOLISAA inventory products need to follow JOLISAA-defined and validated guidelines, categories, proposed framework and formats.
The actual content of a given product will need to have been shared internally within JOLISAA and validated collectively prior to external circulation and publication whether in electronic form or otherwise

Specific guidelines for posters / papers on individual cases

Only a strict sub-selection of the “best” inventory cases, as validated collectively by JOLISAA, will undergo formal development and publication as JOLISAA posters and papers. The aim of the selection is to ensure the highest possible quality and to limit the efforts to be invested by JOLISAA members in this activity.

A tentative poster format is presented in Appendix 2, which builds on the format used for posters presented during NX-1 meetings, and makes use of items, categories and variables included in the Excel and Word templates.

Members of national teams on their own initiative may develop articles about individual cases. Content for such articles will be directly adapted from the posters, and made to comply with the specific instructions to authors of the journals to which they will be submitted.

Specific guidelines for the meta-analysis & the booklet

Tentatively, the booklet will include the following sections:

Executive summary
Introduction
Brief description of the inventory approach and key related concepts
Collection of individual posters (or narratives) from 3 countries
Meta-analysis of the collection, focusing on describing the diversity and the various dimensions, as well as on responding to over-arching questions
Preliminary lessons
Conclusions

(G2 inputs) : include the joint learning aspects

Booklet development process: The final detailed outline of the booklet will be developed and validated during G2 and NX-2 meetings, and lead authors nominated. The booklet will be developed iteratively, starting as soon as the inventory is being finalized, and building on materials and inputs provided gradually by national teams, including those achieved during the G2 and NX-2 meetings.

Language: English, with French translation afterwards, resource allowing.

Timeline: a complete draft “internal” electronic version of the booklet will be developed by end of 2011. Final “public” version will be made available by project’s end in Mid-2012.

Guidelines for addressing IPR issues

Note: This part has not yet been reviewed / validated by the corresponding Task Force, made up of Bernard, Rock Mongbo, Cerkia, and Violet.

The following eight overall principles and rules should guide decision-making about authorship for the various inventory products.

All « significant » contributors to the inventory have the inherent right to be recognized formally and with their explicit knowledge and prior agreement as co-authors of inventory products if they have contributed to the content of such products. Three categories of contributors need to be recognized:

Representatives of case (stake)holders and other resource persons (if and whenever they are interested in being associated with the publication),
Members (permanent, temporary) of national JOLISAA teams actually involved in case documentation and/or in product development,
Other members of WP1 and WP2 who have contributed “significantly” to the development of the inventory approach and/or in product development

Credit needs to be granted both to the individual authors, and to the JOLISAA partner institutions to which such individuals are formally attached in the context of JOLISAA.
Irrespective of who will be the nominal authors, the JOLISAA project needs to be systematically and formally acknowledged, for its technical contribution and financial support (a standard statement to this effect will be developed and circulated a.s.ap.)
There are no a priori limits to the number of authors, beside what is reasonable and fair and unless imposed externally by the targeted Journal or other academic standards. In such case, a specific agreement will need to be reached to select a « representative » group of authors.
The first (lead) author will always be a JOLISAA team member fully knowledgeable about the product and its content. S/he assumes leadership and responsibility for the product content, quality and finalization
1. (Posters and articles about individual cases) Lead author has contributed in a major way both to individual case documentation and to related product development.
2. (Meta-analysis and booklet) Lead author has contributed in a major way to the cross-analysis of cases and to the related product development.
The first (lead) author will invite other authors based on the principles outlined above, and will negotiate with his / her “author group” about the relative contributions and visibility of each to the product being aimed at.
All authors will be listed in the final products according to their relative contribution, from major to minor, with no author included in the least only for political, institutional or hierarchical reasons.
All authors have to be aware and knowledgeable about a product in which their name appears, and have a fair opportunity to give their formal feedback and agreement with the content of the publication within a reasonable deadline.

Appendix 1: How to select cases for the inventory and fill the template – the experience in Benin

Prepared by Anne Floquet, Saturday, 22 January 2011

A grid: Looking at major constraints and opportunities for different important production systems in a range of agro-ecological environments/ rural-urban contexts, we expect to find out at least one important innovation on-going per production system (the grid). Our own knowledge, key-informants and literature screening allowed for a first long list with a few missing elements concerning agro-ecological zones we are less familiar with. Please note that we did not focus on production but on the chain(s) fed by/feeding the production systems and had quite an impressive number of entries concerning processing (more than supply or trade).There are also a few transversal innovations not related with a specific production system (ie the reorganisation of the agronomic research cycle itself).

What is not an innovation: Looking at the S curve of an innovation process, we exclude the very early phase where the innovation only concerns researchers on station or a very small group of persons and also the phase of full internalisation of the innovation as current way of doing things. Therefore we made little use of pure agronomic research reports; they focus on early stages; but used reports or research on socioeconomic dynamics, technological change, and innovation adoption studies. For innovations coming from local knowledge, at the moment mainly domestication of wild species, we take into account those where the process gets acknowledged because of its diffusion scale and/or the interest of researchers for its systematisation and improvement.

Where to cut: Innovations defined in this main expansion path develop in breadth and complexity; they are all “mixed” and in evolution (you begin with a technical change inducing an economic and organisational change and a new technical change is necessary to keep things going – so that the process is undergoing several loops) and we used to speak about innovation bundle. It seems to make little sense to focus on only one thread of the bundle independently of the others. On the other end, we may have to make a clear cut somewhere in the process or at least to choose a focus (still to be formalised). For example, developing lowland rice is too broad; adoption of new rice varieties in lowland can induce a innovation in coordination of chain stakeholders through a platform or some contracting; at least in the inventory, both “sub innovations” are taken into account.

Template: We merged the quantitative excel table and the qualitative guidelines into one access data base. First the information on a topic is expressed in words and then it is processed into a variable with pre-coded modalities.

How to use the template: The template is not a guideline for the search of information but ultimately for its processing. So we went the way back, “in order to have that type of information how to proceed?” and developed a guideline for documentation analysis and key informant interview. In a few cases, the innovation has been assessed for a similar purpose as ours.

Documentation: a large range of documents have been compiled for each innovation case (research reports, socio-economic studies, students thesis, project appraisal, manuals “how to”, newspapers and radio articles, etc.). They are first read by the team member in charge of the case so that he/she asks intelligent questions to the key informant(s). Parts of the questions can be answered through this stage.

Interviews: Key informants familiar with the (hi)story were identified: researchers who have followed the process far enough, producer organisation leaders who engaged in promoting this change, the innovator (in case it is embodied in one entrepreneur), facilitators of change (platform “manager”), scientists having studied the innovation process itself.

Presentation of each case of the inventory: Each case can be presented in form of a poster to its constituencies for validation and further reflection. Not all the cases may be presented. We do not know how many cases will be used in poster sessions (in NX1 and NX2, within the national learning circle), on-line and in publications at national level. Right now, 15 innovations could be presented in the NX1 using the same procedure (

Readjustment of the list of innovations and final choice of the cases of the inventory: at the present stage, we intend to review our list, taking into account some of the outputs of the NX1 (missing types; proposed innovations in group works; expressed needs by groups ready to enter the learning circle and cases appropriate for joint learning by co assessing an innovation process). At this stage it would be really useful to share our lists/databases among the three countries in order to check whether we are using similar operational definitions of innovations.

Analysis: looking for patterns of processes; assessing the (expected/realised) outcomes and the factors of influence; comparing facilitated processes and more spontaneous ones; how local practical knowledge intertwine with other knowledge types, etc. At that stage a step back to innovation literature will be useful, and it will be even more useful to share our first emerging ad hoc typologies/hypothesis/emerging patterns and theories.

Selection of some of the inventory cases for the in depth case studies: how and why (for joint learning first; for grounded theories first)

Misc. The question of the representativeness of the inventory…should we address it at all? And what for?

Appendix 2: Proposed Poster format

(to be refined further later on, by adapting headings and categories from formats used for posters presented during NX-1, and to Excel and Word Inventory templates)

Length: Posters should not be exceed the equivalent of 2.5 to 3 A4 pages, with standard margins and font size.

Proposed headings:

Title, authors’ list and affiliation, logos (< ¼ p.),
Description (< ¼ p.)

Initial practice / situation
Problem or opportunity being addressed, and related triggers
Innovative practice(s) or arrangement(s)

Context (< ¼ p.)

Simplified basic data set about the « environment » in which the innovation experience is embedded, such as:

Agroecological factors and conditions
Types of farming systems,
Access to markets
Relevant policies and other strategic drivers
Key institutions (public / private)
others

Main Stakeholders involved and their roles (< ¼ p.)

Table or bulleted form

History / dynamics of the innovation process (< ½ p.)

Provide a synthesized graphical representation of the process dynamics

Describe in the text the corresponding figure and characterize briefly the key steps (phases) along with the key activities developed within the context of this innovation case

Results & Effects of the innovation process (adoption) (< ¼ p.)

Main outcomes, tangible or not, related directly to this innovation process so far in terms of specific innovations, capacities, learning and institutional arrangements

Current stage of development of the innovation, including scale at which diffusion is taking place (< ¼ p.)

See Excel Template and categories

Challenges and perspectives (< ¼ p.)

What are the challenges this innovation is facing (things that do not necessarily go well or smoothly), are there perspectives in terms of issues to be addressed, directions for the innovation process?

Key references (4-5 max., < ¼ p.)

1 See however Inventory note prepared by the Benin team in Appendix 1

2 it might have been documented / clarified further since then.

Finalizing the inventory and structuring the inventory products, Draft v1, March 8, 2011

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