 Module 5 deals with coordination and facilitation of innovation platforms. So once we've initiated them, the next thing that we want to do is to make sure that they are properly coordinated and facilitated. So our main objective here is to provide the overview of how we do that. How do we facilitate and coordinate? And we talked before about an innovation broker and I was scrambling through the slides to find it. It was in this module. So we'll talk a lot about the innovation broker in this module. The specific roles of an innovation broker. So facilitation is a flexible and adaptive process. So we need to manage the dialogues and stimulate the collective problems by multiple stakeholders to overcome the challenges. And each issue may involve a different set of stakeholders which need to be facilitated. So it's necessary to influence not only the way farmers think and make decisions but also how you, government officials think, researchers think, how the private sector thinks of an issue and so on and so forth. Naturally, they don't want to share information or cooperate. It sounds a little bit crazy, no? But it actually works that way. When you go to a company, if you walked over to the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia and you said, you know, your Coke formula seems to be quite successful. Many people like drinking your beverage. Maybe you want to share that information with me. Trade secret. We even have specific words for it. Trade mark, trade secret and so on. So our natural inclination as organizations is often not to share information. Maybe there's a competitive advantage here. If I tell you that secret, you know, I might be out of a job tomorrow. So when we bring stakeholders around the table, we need to have that in the back of our minds. We need to find ways to enable them to open up, to collaborate, to share information. And in order to do that, we need skillful facilitation. So innovation brokers can be individuals or they can be organizations and they should be seen relatively impartial. So a trusted third party. So if my neighbor and I have a dispute about where the boundary of our wall is, I'm not going to feel too comfortable if my neighbor proposes that his brother will be the arbitrator. I'm going to say, no, no, no, no, he's impartial. He's not impartial. He's your brother. So in a similar way, when we bring multiple stakeholders together to facilitate or to discuss about a certain concept, and then we pick someone with a very, very strong interest in that. So take the example of this morning's role play. We talked about the forest and the four options. Live it as it is, converted into houses and industry, converted into agriculture for food source, for eating, or converted into agriculture for monetary gain. Now, if I bring over the largest private house builder in the region to facilitate the discussion, would you feel comfortable about this if you were opting for any one option except build more houses? Probably not. So it's very important to bring someone who is seen to be a neutral and impartial party. It's also important to have someone who can connect the various levels. So we talked about three levels, right? The local, subnational, and national, or the micro, meso, macro. We need someone who can connect those, yeah? So we want to have someone who also has the respectability to travel up and down through those different layers, who can be an ambassador for this system. We need innovation brokers because fostering, creating and fostering effective coalition is normally a very difficult thing. And it's normally hindered by incomplete information and what different partners can bring to the party. And a skilled facilitator can help tease that out and put that on the table and change the dynamics of the conversation. And those facilitators need to then follow through throughout the innovation process. It's not just about doing it for one part of the system. We need to be able to have good facilitators who can take the group through all the different phases. Remember the seven phases we talked about from initiating, deciding on the focus, testing the technologies, taking them, developing capacity, taking them to scale and so on. We need someone who can facilitate all of that process. Often it can be as simple as facilitating proper discussions. So having improved communications between the actors. Often just having a new perspective can act as a mirror for self-reflection. And helps people look beyond the situation of where they are at this very moment. And that can help them break beyond their shell. So some of the functions of innovation brokering. One is to always analyze the contact and to articulate the demand. So especially in a participatory problem, the assessment of problems and opportunity can be greatly enhanced if we can have a quick system diagnosis. Someone who can come in, she looks at the situation and she says okay, here's the analysis of what's going on. You know, here are options in the forest. Remember you were given today the four options of what can happen with the forest. But in real life, you're not given any options. You're just saying, well, you know, we have this forest, what do we do with it? The other thing is composing the network. So bringing the linkages from the relevant sector. And finally, it's the facilitation of the interactions. Innovation broker is also the leader. It's the person or organization that will help launch it. So it's very important if you're an organization and you want to launch that, you want to take on that role, that you actually select an individual who has the interpersonal skills to facilitate these things. I've seen many cases where an organization wanted to help support and set up an innovation platform for all the right reasons. But the individual that was designated to go and do that didn't have the interpersonal skills to be able to facilitate. And then they're really very hard to get them off the ground. The other thing is that a innovation broker or a facilitator or a connector is very different from a champion or a specialist. So it's important to remember that distinction, identify your champions early on, and let them do the things that they can advocate for better. While the brokers remain in their initial role of connecting people and remaining an impartial, respected third party. They should not then become the spokespersons for that platform and lose that impartiality. Ideally, he or she should be transparently elected. It can be democratically or by consensus, but it should remain a person who was elected by the group to take on that role and remain a neutral party throughout. The minute that person is no longer viewed as a neutral person, that can change the power dynamics again. And he or she should ensure that the clarity of the different roles of the actors, their different responsibilities and also the different benefits. The benefits is also a main reason why your actors have come together. So if you came together to increase productivity and you came up with a new way to process a crop or to market it and there are increased profits from that, who captures those profits? In what way? How is that discussed? How is that agreed upon? These are all key roles that the facilitator, innovation broker should play. And there are five guiding principles that can help when you do that. The first one is when possible, build on existing structures and activities. Two is use a participatory approach and local ownership wherever possible and to the extent possible. Three, try as much as possible to develop capacities for facilitation, whether it's the IP formation or the functioning. Four, have proper monitoring and evaluation of the innovation platform from the very beginning, from the start of what you do. And five, focus heavily on communication between the platform members. So what are some of the characteristics and skills of a good facilitator? He or she should be able to ask the right questions. It's critical to get the group discussing the right issues, the right question based on the right analysis. He or she should provoke participants to think critically, to go outside the box and to motivate them towards action. Too often people talk, complain together, but this is not meant to be a group therapy session. It means to lead to results. So he or she needs to have the ability to spur people into action. To listen and to get feedback. To understand the audience and the group dynamics. Be a patient listener and to be confident without being arrogant. We also want people to be respectful of the opinion of others, not to just impose their own ideas. To have the ability to create an atmosphere of confidence among the participants. To be positive and to have good writing and drawing skills. Especially at the lower level platforms, but not exclusively the ability to draw out concepts and get them on the wall and so on, can really help a group move forward. So some key questions, again to have with you. When you talk about coordination and facilitation, should it be an insider or an outsider who becomes the facilitator? In some cases you might say, we absolutely need an insider. No outsider can fit in here. You know, our farmers won't go for it. In other cases, you prefer an outsider because you want someone who's completely neutral. And you say no insider can be neutral on this topic. So there are various pros and cons. If it's a researcher or a research organization, they should think hard of can they or should they be the facilitators. We also want to ask ourselves what participatory methods are going to be used to get the information. We also want to know how we're going to deal with failure. You know, we all like to launch into projects thinking they're going to succeed. But in reality, many projects fail. So how is the platform going to deal with failure? We set out to increase productivity, and productivity did not increase in the first year. How do we deal with that? Obviously, one option could be to close down the platform, but is that the only option or the desired option? And again, you have more information and resources you can draw up once you get into these stages. So which of the following people would you elect as an innovation broker for a new platform? Would you select the stakeholder with the most to gain if the platform succeeds? Would you select the most dominant person? Would you select the head of the farmer cooperative? Or would you select a neutral person with skills in networking and building consensus? Yes, pretty clear this one, right? There are four skills. Three of them are good to have, and one of them is not. Which one is the undesirable skill, the one you don't want to have? The ability to convince others to follow his or her ideas? Patience and good listening skills? Ability to provoke others to think critically or an understanding of group dynamics? Yes, absolutely. So the ability to convince people should not be undesirable because we don't want the facilitator to dominate. I think I made these ones a bit too easy for you, right? Which of the following is not a task that the facilitator would likely do? Manage communications, monitor, document and report, invite members to the group, or decide on the research agenda. Which means that the other three things are really things that we want our facilitator to be doing. Do you think a researcher can perform the role of an innovation broker? If yes, click true, if not, click false. Okay, yes, a researcher can be. Doesn't have to be, but can be. Okay. Any open-ended questions about module 5 or all of the speed-dating modules 2, 3, 4 and 5 which we just did in this session? I don't know how it was for you, but I felt like I was ramming it. Yes, aside from the traits, as you mentioned, for example, being neutral, have networking skills, what other essential traits does an innovation broker possess? Okay. Because you said innovation broker is different from a facilitator, right? Or are they the same? They're very similar. So an innovation broker would take on the role of a facilitator. But if we look at some of the questions that we answered, so managing communications, doing the monitoring documentation and reporting, being able to invite the members to the group. We also talked before about the ability to understand the group dynamics and to get people to go beyond their comfort zone. We talked here about the characteristics of the facilitators, the innovation plan. So the innovation brokers can go beyond just facilitation in the sense of analyzing the context. So they need to have good analytical skills to be able to come in and identify the problems. So for example, we could be sitting around this table and we could all be saying that the issue with the forest is only about having sufficient shade for people to lie in on the weekends. And a good facilitator would get the opinions from all of the group. But if that's all what the group is saying, then that particular group might not go as far compared to an innovation broker who can actually say, well, you know, I looked at this issue, I have analyzed, I've did a cost benefit and actually the shade issue is only a minor part. And if we look at the cost, if we look at the environmental issues and so on, there may be other issues. There should be some basic knowledge or skills that this broker should possess. For example, he's facilitating many stakeholders, multi-stakeholders. At least he should have an understanding of the domain, the knowledge domain of these different stakeholders. For example, I'd rather call the broker a hybrid actor because probably he has developed a certain degree of cultural literacy in relation to a particular discipline, for example, science and then the farming community So I think a broker should possess certain levels of literacy about different knowledge emanating from the different stakeholders. At least some basic understanding. Yes, absolutely. In many cases it can help tremendously. I don't know if I would go as far to say it's always a prerequisite. Sometimes if the group has decided that they want an outsider to come in and change the dynamics, it can help to have someone come and say, I don't know anything about your specific sub-sector, but I have 30 years of experience doing it across sectors. Now let's have a discussion. You tell me what you think and I bring in from my experience. Those type of dynamics can also sometimes work well. But by and large what you say is absolutely right. Having the innovation broker have some subject matter expertise is very, very common. That's usually when a researcher or a development organization who is already concerned about this particular sector, particular community is promoting this innovation platform approach, they do it in part because they have that specific knowledge and they want to bring the actors together. Another point. For example, there are many programs from the Philippine government in developing farmers as scientists. So in the process farmer scientists evolve. And I think a hybrid actor like a farmer scientist could be a very effective broker because he can talk to his fellow farmers, he can talk to those coming from the scientific community because he has developed this degree of understanding of both knowledge domains. Absolutely. So the important thing to remember is always what is the focus of the platform, at what level, all the questions that we discussed. So in your example, I will assume that you're talking about a level that is between the local level and the national level so that that particular farmer researcher would be an ideal person. They cross across the networks and so on. So in that example, 100% in agreement. But it's important to remember the principles rather than the examples. If I were to tell you that where the platform is an Asian level country representation to discuss national research policy, would you still recommend that person to represent the Philippines in that particular platform and facilitate it? I'm going to venture and say probably not. So it always depends on the context. So all of your examples are spot-on correct. But it's always very important to remember the principles because the principles should hold true in all contexts and what we should do, and by we I mean people who are likely to be in a managerial policy role, deciding on what type of composition is right or not ideal for a platform is to look at what's being proposed through this lens and then being able to say yes, this seems to follow the good practice and respects the principles and so on. Yeah. With all the qualifications required for a good facilitator or innovation broker, my worry is it would be very difficult to find a person. And maybe if there is one, maybe it's not also interested because of a very difficult function. Or maybe on the part of the stakeholders, they do not know the qualification of people that are going to elect. And election is a political exercise. Maybe they will just elect the person who is very influential but he doesn't possess all the necessary qualification. So that's going to be a very difficult situation, especially when we talk of a community-level innovation platform. Yes, you're absolutely right. Now, let's take these points one by one. On the first point that the person here or she might not have all the attributes that are mentioned here. Well, there is the desire and then there is the reality, right? And we all have to do with what's called the art of the possible. So we should aim for getting as much of that as we can. But it's always about realistically looking around the table and say, okay, so who comes closest to that? So that's the first part of the answer. The second part is we will often, as you correctly say, not find someone who has all the possible attributes that we may want. But having that checklist can help that person focus on the areas where he or she might be lacking, to make them more aware. Okay, so in order to do this particular role, I must keep it in my mind that I need to pay attention to areas A, B and C that might not be the most natural disposition for me to do. So it also helps the organization who is setting that up discuss that with the person in advance. Having a person, your second point, who might not want it, that's a different story because experience says that you can't force someone into that position and expect them to really do a great job. You know, there's the expression that says you can take the horse to the water but you can't make it drink. So you can assign someone and say I'm your boss. This is your responsibility because you are the best person for it but if he or she doesn't like it, they might, you know, go in to the meeting the first day like this. So tell me about your problems and that's not going to get us very far. And so we have to be very careful to make sure that the person who we assigned this important role of facilitation actually understands and wants to take up the role. I would say that that's far more critical than having someone who has all the skill sets because skill sets you can acquire, change of attitude is a much more difficult thing. Your third point was on... The process of selection. You were saying that it should be elected from among the group. Yes. So ideally it should be elected but often it is promoted by an organization. So often if it is promoted by an organization you pretty much have the facilitator already predestined. So normally in the case of researchers the innovation broker would be the researcher who really wanted to see that platform go forward. In the case of a development organization they would also have someone there. But as they step back, if they really don't intend on taking the facilitation role long term they just want to set it up then they can find the appropriate time to hand it over. By that time hopefully it should not be just a matter of who do we like or who is the influential person but people would have seen how a proper platform functions with the rules that the facilitator does. And then they can select from themselves. The advantage from the selection upon themselves is that there is greater transparency and understanding of the rules. Because otherwise there could be a lot of perceived conflict of interest. Like you say, oh this person wants to become the facilitator because he or she wants to take all the profits from this. So that's why it's recommended practice. It changes. There are certain countries where you say democratically elected and that's it. The meeting is over. There are other countries where it's culturally, if you don't do that the meeting is over. So you always have to know your own context and community and adjust accordingly for that. But the main thing is that we want to make sure that the group has a say in who's going to play that facilitation role because it's a major role for the platform. So if there are no other questions, I think you've earned your break.