A supportive environment does matter when it comes to stimulating innovation. This has been amply demonstrated by the findings of AgriSpin: Structural measures lower the threshold so that actors can do what is needed to support the innovation process.

AgriSpin shows that when support agencies use methods, approaches and also language to reflect on what matters, it is experienced as helpful by the farmers. Supportive exchanges, with different levels of intensity, include updating, networking, mutual coaching, co-creation, lobbying, and supporting an attitude conducive to innovation. Each level requires different structural provisions.

Updating

Partners in a community share new successes and discoveries with each other. If others wish to know more, these partners can easily be found as long as the partners maintain a channel to update each other about new developments.

The experience in AgriSpin shows, that without a stimulating moderator who has time and resources, this type of exchange will not be sustained for a long time.

Networking

Partners in the community of innovation supporters know whom to involve when opportunities appear. They form a pool of experts they can rely on because they have seen each other at work.

A community has already emerged among the AgriSpin partners. Several partners have formed consortia for new calls for projects. Other experts are forming a train-the-trainers group for trainings in innovation management courses. Partners who have not been part of the AgriSpin project are joining in as well. This type of community will continue no matter what is being organised specifically for the continuation of the AgriSpin experience. Experts can meet each other regularly in several networks that already exist.

Mutual Coaching

The partners in the community of innovation supporters consult each other on challenges they are facing. They search for relevant experiences amongst colleagues they know and trust. They actively assist each other in finding appropriate solutions.

The joint reflections during the AgriSpin Cross Visits appeared to be useful, and it would be worthwhile to find a way to continue this stimulus and to have colleagues from outside act as coaches or evaluators. Teagasc (Ireland) has done so twice already. Parts of the Cross Visit methodology that emerged from the AgriSpin project can be used for this purpose.

Partners can always do this with their own resources but if it is to be a continuous learning process with the AgriSpin partners and possibly with other organisations joining in, then it requires coordination, moderation, and project funds. There should also be an effort to share the learning experiences in the community.

Co-creation

The partners in the community of innovation supporters engage in joint activities to create new solutions for the similar challenges that each of them encounter.

Some challenges are common for many partners in the professional community of innovation supporters. They could join forces to find new solutions together, which might be more effective than each partner trying to solve them on their own.

Such efforts require coordination, time, and resources for agenda setting and carrying out joint activities. This calls for a program with flexibility which allows for action upon issues as needed.

Lobbying

The partners in the community of innovation supporters organise themselves as a network with a strong voice, to be heard by the enabling community that sets the conditions for the work of innovation support agencies.

Supporting innovation is not just a matter of bringing new knowledge to farmers, and it is also more than connecting initiators to sources of knowledge. The AgriSpin project has revealed that it is about guiding innovation processes, in which usually different actors at various levels are to be mobilised. This includes the enabling community of managers and policy makers who set the conditions in which innovation processes can take place.

Keeping an Open Mind

For supporting the biotope and the innovations themselves, the people are important. Seminars in every level (leadership-level, multipliers and farmers …) can support the attitude conducive to giving time and space for reflection, awareness, new ideas, updating, networking, coaching, co-creation, lobbying etc.

It is not always obvious that key actors in the enabling community are aware of what it takes to create conditions that are conducive to innovation. For the important stages of inspiration, in which initiators have to find the right partners to form an operational group, and the planning stage, in which this group needs to get organised and to claim space for experimenting, there is too little attention.

The European Innovation Partnership (EIP) programme offers new opportunities for filling this gap. But as long as the decision makers in their role as Managing Authorities do not make the mind shift themselves from the Transfer-of-Technology model (ToT) towards the interactive innovation model, on which EIP is based, they will not select the most promising project proposals and probably set criteria that do not allow for the necessary space for innovations. For example, strict requirements for funding project proposals, such as targets to be reached and steps to follow, leave little room for finding new and unexpected solutions.

The AgriSpin partners are using the leverage of the AgriSpin community to put issues like this on the agenda of the managing authorities in their regions. It would be useful to find ways for continuing this lobbying work after the AgriSpin project has ended.

Read more

Have a look at the entire report on how to create a community conducive to innovation and learn more about existing networks that are useful for channelling innovation activities of the professional community.