Innovation platforms are widely used in agricultural research to connect different stakeholders to achieve common goals. To help document recent experiences and insights, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently published a series of short innovation platform ‘practice briefs’ to help guide the design and implementation of innovation platforms in agricultural research for development.

This third brief focuses on interactions between research and innovation platforms – how researchers can engage with innovation platforms and how platforms can support research processes.

Three ways that research can contribute to innovation platforms.

An innovation platform is defined as ‘a space for learning and change. It is a group of individuals (who often represent organizations) with different backgrounds and interests: farmers, traders, food processors, researchers, government officials etc. The members come together to diagnose problems, identify opportunities and find ways to achieve their goals. They may design and implement activities as a platform, or coordinate activities by individual members.’

As social, economic and environmental problems grow ever more complex, researchers need to engage more actively with stakeholders such as farmers, development practitioners and policymakers to explore, design and implement solutions. Innovation platforms offer them an opportunity to do so.

Researchers are not necessarily part of innovation platforms. Platforms can work well without any research inputs, or with only peripheral involvement by researchers. But in recent years, interest in how innovation platforms can benefit, and benefit from, research has increased considerably.

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More on innovation platforms

Related ILRI materials on innovation systems