Unfolding the challenges of delegating research services for innovation and entrepreneurship in smallholder agriculture

Abstract

In recent decades competitive research grants are promoted in low-income countries to delegate public provisioning of research services, often considering this approach as an effective way to create knowledge, to generate innovation, to increase aid effectiveness and to enhance overall development impacts. However, as with any other mechanisms of funding, the effectiveness of competitive research funding varies in terms of the delegation of research execution along the continuum of researchers' total freedom to funding agencies' absolute direction. A case study of decade-long Nepalese experience shows that disbursing competitive research grants to promote multi-stakeholder collaboration, as often expected under the pluralist realm, is paradoxical with a focus on either curiosity-oriented or user-inspired research, particularly in low-income countries where stakeholders are becoming critically consciousness of lasting structural inequalities. The paper concludes that there is need first to reform the grant administration procedure for underrepresented communities of scholars, and, second, to develop the capacity of grant administrators as well as researchers, practitioners and entrepreneurs to collectively address the dialectics of delegating research and other innovation services. This can be done by simplifying fund allocation procedure and diversifying the funding mechanisms, to make funds available for the following purpose: (1) curiosity-oriented agricultural science research of strategic importance; (2) applied interdisciplinary research for development problem-solving; and (3) collaborative research for innovation generation and small enterprise development.

Acknowledgements

This research has been possible through authors' direct experience with NARDF. The authors highly appreciate cooperation of NARDF Secretariat in the research process. The authors acknowledge Howard Elliott, who has a long international experience in competitive grant systems, for his insightful comments on an earlier version of the paper. The authors sincerely acknowledge constructive comments from Laurens Klerkx and two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1.While drawing an analogy between funding agency and commercial banks, Braun identifies three main differences in terms of capital investment, returns on the investment, and investment decisions. While commercial banks have well defined aim of profit making, funding agencies struggle for, often conflicting, interests of multiple stakeholders creating dialectics of delegation of research and other innovation services.

2.As this paper focuses on various mechanisms of competitive fund allocation, to do justice to a discussion of diverse mechanisms of resource mobilization is beyond the scope of this paper. Readers are suggested to consult the literature as follows: joint venture (Sparling and Cook 2000), strategic alliance (Hamel and Prahalad 1989), endowment (Janssen 1998, Brinkerhoff 2000), levy and check-off (Janssen 1998, Brinkerhoff 2000, Klerkx and Leeuwis 2008a).

3.The US Government and the UK Government have been key bilateral donors in agricultural research and development along with multilateral donors, such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Asian Development Bank.

4.Although these centres were initially established to rehabilitate retired British Gurkha into rural agriculture in their birthplaces, their domain of service includes hill agriculture and livestock in general.

5.The seven-point criteria includes a set of guidelines for reviewers as follows: (1) multi-disciplinary and participatory – 25%; (2) client-oriented – 20%; (3) consideration for outscaling and upscaling – 20%; (4) prioritizes poverty reduction – 10%; (5) addresses gender issues – 10%; (6) addresses environmental issues – 10%; and (7) realistic in terms of the time frame – 5% (see www.nardf.org.np).

6.Braben's (2002) innovativeness index to assess a project proposal involves a set of criteria against a three-point scale (0 = least innovative to 2 = most innovative), which characterize innovative research proposal as follows: (1) proposals having overarching priorities; (2) least structured; (3) conceptually challenging the mainstream thinking and less likely to find a genuine peer to conduct peer review; (4) difficult to define a success and involves a great deal of intellectual rigour; (5) research results could lead to development of new field of studies; (6) timescale is intermediate; (7) research is unique and has little or no competition; (8) research results are not clear at the outset and potential avenue to publish the results is also not clear; (9) research might win a prize; and (10) new collaborators may or may not be involved but the research is of interest to all existing and emergent collaborators.

7.Other regional networks that have been facilitated by the IDRC are the Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics Programme (LACEEP), the South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE) and the Centre for Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA).