 So one of the first things one needs to do once you've decided you're going to have an innovation platform You're going to go back to your organizations the first thing you do on Friday when you're back in the office or on Monday when you're back in the office It's called an emergency meeting and say how do we implement innovation platforms? You will get immediate buy-in from from all your colleagues and your management and And then you walk back very happy to your to your desk Then you scratch your head and you say actually what do I do now? Yeah, where do I start? so a Typical place to start is to think about how you initiate the platforms and what's the composition of a platform? So what we aim to do in this session is looking at the process of Of both implementing an innovation platform as well as stakeholder analysis and to look a little bit about equity and power dynamics so as We said several times It can be formed at multiple level can somebody give me the three levels at what level can an innovation platform function? Yes, please use the microphones if you want to speak Okay I'm hearing a lot of mumbling going on so local intermediary and national or International national and local or micro messo macro You can call them the three levels in many different ways, but they all mean to say the same thing It's very different working with a farmer and a farmer group level Then it is to work with you know a Paranational system, then it is to work at an international level You're going to need different actors. You're going to need different processes Etc etc and it's important to remember that so the first thing you'll want to ask yourself is at what level Are we going to be working? It is going to be purely at a local level. Is this going to be at a sub national? Is this going to be a national or an international? the second is Looking at what sector Is it a livestock issue that you want to focus on? As a member of Illria would highly recommend Looking at the livestock sector many good things will follow But you might decide that you want to look into a particular crop You might want to look into natural resource management Etc etc. You'd want to clarify that because you don't want something that's too broad That you can't actually lean in But all of them will deal with a common problem in a specific sector or sub-sector that depend on more than one actor Yeah If the problem can be solved effectively by one actor You should not attempt an innovation platform But it can be set up in various different ways But regardless of which ways you want to make sure that you have cohesion in the group You want to focus and unite the stakeholders around a particular issue And you want to make sure that you have the potential to actually meet their interests Yeah, you don't want to carry people along with you Only to then find out that you've led them for no tangible benefits Typically in the stage of formation we have three main phases One is the engagement phase So you're engaging with the stakeholders. This will also includes Initiation and visioning. Where are we coming together? What are we going to call our group? What is going what success is going to look like, you know one year from now for three months from now The second is the planning phase So that includes the establishment and the management. So who's gonna do what? Yeah, who's gonna play what role? Who's gonna facilitate? Do we need a treasurer? Who's gonna play that role? Do we need you know a program manager who's gonna play that role and so on and so forth and The third area is ensuring the sustainability So a lot of these are project funded What happens when the project comes to an end? I will want to ensure that it goes on or is it not important that it goes on so at each Phase we want to move actors from their individual interest into working on the collective Issues so collaboration Ownership leadership. I think that we're going to have to cultivate time and again and Please don't underestimate. I'm sure you've all had experience working in many contexts These things don't happen by themselves and they don't happen easily So you need to have a strategy in place and keep going to create these We need trust as a prerequisite for making these things happen The role of research organizations and development organization often changes So often these platforms would be started by or promoted by Research organization or development organization or donor organization But we want to see the process evolving to finally having more Local ownership over the process and the initiator steps back to a more of a backstopping role If and when required That's also an important thing to keep in mind and to to be sensitive to knowing when to step back Going back to it. Another thing that's very important is Don't Be tempted to use quote-unquote the process to validate your own agenda as a researcher Whereas donor was a project or as a government. Yeah, there's something inherently Contradictive when we say we want to empower people but then when they Get empowered and their decision is to they want to work on something which isn't in The originators work plan They completely derail that process Yeah So for example, I work for ill read We set up a platform and then they don't want to work on livestock issue. Well, we can't have that You know, we have to change that So these are the things that we need to be very careful about when we talk about true empowerment and true participation That means what it means. It doesn't mean true empowerment and participation within the boundaries of what I decided before I engage with you Yeah, so the initiation is usually done by an innovation broker Who is usually also referred to as a leader or initiator and why is an innovation broker important? the innovation brokers are important because They pull together a lot of these principles Of working with multi stakeholders Researchers, etc. Which are not used to coming together So it often needs for the first time someone to facilitate that process Some of the guiding principles include respect for the different sources of knowledge So different stakeholders will hold different kinds of knowledge Different does not imply better or worse Yeah, and it should not be a case that there's a clear hierarchy of needs. Yeah, so Just because someone comes from a larger organization does not imply that the ideas that they promote are necessarily better and in fact a lot of the Agricultural innovation system approach as opposed to the technology transfers about hearing the voice of the farmers and getting Local knowledge going up the chain. So it's very important to Ensure that when the groups actually meet that happens Because the natural propensity of the researcher will be to speak Yeah, and the natural propensity of the farmer will be to listen I'll tell another story With your permission Somewhat of a joke. So there's this sheep farmer Minding to its flock And an international researcher works by and unsolicited come up to the farmer and says if I tell you How many sheep you have here? Will you give me a sheep? The farmer looks at him. It's okay. Go on The guy takes out a laptop connects a satellite connection starts plugging away with geographical information system cranks numbers works for 40 minutes and then says you have 237 sheep Farmer looks at him entirely unimpressed, but the researcher continues. So can I take one of your sheep? It's okay So it takes one animal The farmer then tells him if I guess your profession Do I get my animal back? He says yes go on says you're an international researcher. How did you guess? He said well, it's very simple You asked me a question that I already knew You use completely unnecessary and expensive methods to get to the solution And you got it wrong now give me back my dog So it's very important that we remember our biases We all know every profession has its biases So it's very important that we are aware of them so that we don't fall into these traps and that we really have a participatory process Now a big part of the process is that identifying the stakeholders or stakeholder analysis And there are various ways that we can go around doing that One is focus group discussions Hands up if you've ever been involved in a focus group discussion Really only three people Okay Semi-structured interviews and snowball sampling. So let's look at all of them I was going to go very quickly through the FGD so focus group discussion or an FGD is taking an homogenous group of 6 to 15 people and being led through a skilled moderator It uses discussion guys usually using open-ended questions and Get information from the entire group to get a sense of what are the priorities They usually last until all the ideas seem to come up and start getting repeated And that process usually takes between 45 and 90 minutes. Yeah They can take place in any setting Yeah Private sector companies would have them when they're planning to introduce a new product They'll put a focus group of consumers to see how they feel about that product But you often find them behind a tree in a village Sitting farmers together and discussing an approach. So the principle can be applied at multiple layers again A semi-structured interview is an interview one-on-one. So a focus group discussion The keyword is group The semi-structured interview is a one-on-one interview, but it follows a similar Format in the sense that it has open-ended questions So there will be some questions, but they're open-ended. They're not a strict Answer this answer this answer this and it depends a little bit of where the interview Is taking the discussion It's usually recorded So that one can then quote verbatim The person said this this and this exactly the way the person said it and a snowball sampling is a sampling technique used when It's hard to find the people that we want to interview. It's hard to find them. We don't know where they are so Usually once we find a person who say, oh, that's great. You know, you're just the right person for this Do you have a friend who's like you who I can also talk to? Yeah, and that way we get Because the probability of the person the type of target audience that you're looking for if you find one Normally, they would know another one. Yeah, so that's snowball You get to the first and second and from there you get to the further participants So for example, if you're looking to set up Analysis and you really want active farmers, you'll find a farmer representative chances are they know of other active farmer representatives if you find a good private sector representative who Is concerned about corporate social responsibility and wants to be involved chances are she might know another one and so on When we do a stakeholder analysis, we have to remember the functions So we want to identify existing conflicts to ensure that they are not perpetuated We also want to understand the power dynamics Yeah, so that we have more transparency and equity in the process Now the keyword here is understand What are the expectations? Why are you here? So what what was the first thing that sell did this morning? Before we started What are your expectations from the workshop? Yeah, and they're hanging there What are the benefits? for the stakeholders what resources Which would people be willing or unwilling to commit? Sometimes it's as important to understand what you have no chance of expecting from the members and How do people see each other? It's also very important So the next step is differentiating between the different actors, so you might look at Top-down analysis like an interest influence matrix or a radical transactiveness Or you can do bottom-up methodologies sort of stakeholder led for a consultation and so on But whether you do them bottom-up or top-down, it's very important that at the end of it You understand the different categories that are in your platform So we talked a lot about representation and composition and about the common objective One thing that often is asked when a platform is decided upon is whether you should use an Existing one or whether you should form a new one Yeah, and there are pros and cons for for each. It's not a it's not a clear cut And for those of you who are in the research sphere It's very important to Let people have safe spaces where they can express themselves. Otherwise you might get very wrong information Especially in the first meetings if they don't know you If they don't trust you, yeah, and especially if you're dealing with things that have to do with their livelihoods Yeah Most people do not like to be To be probed by people they don't know I'll tell another story so there was a study done by a Group of researchers that did financial diaries They went to Farmers households and they asked them questions about how much money they have how much they save how much they spend and They found and they went every two weeks and asked the same questions every two weeks for two years Every two weeks they went back and asked the same questions Then they plotted the results And they found out that in the first six meetings Yeah, so the first three months people were lying by 300 percent Yeah Why do you think that is? Any thoughts? 300 percent. That's a huge discrepancy So people told them I know I didn't know you I thought you might be from the tax office I'm not gonna tell you how much money I have The next day you're gonna say come up with a bill, you know So it's only once people got comfortable that okay, you know, you really are here to work with me And so on that they started giving accurate information similar Similar phenomena will exist in these group settings as well Yeah, people need to be comfortable people need to trust you people need to know what the objectives are Otherwise you might get completely irrelevant information and go on and set your research Hypothesis on something what you which is completely not the issue that people are facing or on data which isn't relevant and The research questions the interesting research questions are all often hidden in the negotiation process So once we start seeing the actors come together and their internal negotiations That's when a lot of the interesting questions might start to emerge Finally, there's a few distinct role the researchers can play In the composition and initiation of things They can support the mapping the stakeholder mapping They can help work on specific issues of power and equity and bring them more to the surface They can undertake specific capacity development issues around understanding what the platform is and isn't and Looking at the stakeholders supporting the stakeholders in terms of translating their expressed needs Into relevant research questions that can then be worked on to come up with Technological solutions So there's a list of questions I'm not going to go through all of them again. You'll have all of that which are useful questions to ask yourself Whenever you are initiating a platform Is it new is it old? Who selects the representatives? What is it going to work on? Etc. Etc. And you'll also have a list of resources That are available to you if you want to read more on this when you are forming your own platforms so We talked a lot about the tasks of The facilitator which of the following is not the task of a facilitator Analyzing stakeholder power dynamics Facilitating networks and linkages between actors Deciding on interventions for action research Or creating incentives to motivate stakeholder active participation Which one of these four is not or should not be the role of the facilitator? Yes So the facilitator should not Use his or her role to decide what the interventions should be. Yeah, it's about facilitating what the group is coming up with We talked about the snowballing sampling technique. Is it a good way to identify? stakeholders Outside of his or her professional network. Would you say this statement is true or false? True that it is a good way or false that it is not a good way Again pretty interesting split, but yes, the majority has it It is a good way because normally through the snowball technique We know that we can get to people who would we find hard to reach otherwise So it does increase Beyond our personal network Which of the following is not an incentive of an objective stakeholder analysis? a empowering marginal groups be identifying existing conflicts see understanding power dynamics be understanding hidden agendas Which one is not an objective it can happen, but it's not an objective This one is a bit trickier are only ten responses so far See I can't know who you are, but I can know how many of you replied Okay, now we have interesting understanding hidden agendas of members be the majority answer of the room is actually a role Yeah It is an objective. We said we need to understand people's agendas. We need to know where they're coming from and what makes them tick yeah Empowering marginal groups is something that would be great if we achieve But it might not be the objectives of the platform Yeah So when we do a stakeholder analysis the analysis does not have to end with empowerment of marginal groups Which of the following is not an input a Useful input for an organization involved in IP to make To conduct workshop to ensure a common understanding of how the platform is going to function to conduct capacity development to our specific groups To ensure that the platform objective is consistent with its own funding proposal or to support Stakeholder mapping Yes, so we talked about it It should not be that you bring a group together, but only to work on your issue Yeah any open questions about module for About the composition and initiation