Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Pant, Laxmi P.
Author-Email: lpant@uwaterloo.ca
Author-Workplace-Name: School of Environmental Design and Rural Development,
	 University of Guelph, School of Environment, Enterprise and Development,
	 Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo
Title: Assessing Innovations in International Research and Development Practice
Abstract: Enhancing impacts of international development interventions has become 
	 a central issue of the twenty-first century. Conventional monitoring and 
	 evaluation (M&E) tools either focus on efficiency (output-to-input 
	 relationships) or strive to demonstrate a logical progression from 
	 specific actors and factors of an intervention to development impacts 
	 (inputs => activities => outputs => outcomes => impacts). However, in 
	 complex adaptive systems there is neither such a linear results chain 
	 nor can impacts be unambiguously attributed to an actor or a factor. 
	 Therefore, alternative ways of doing M&E focus on outcomes - the changes 
	 in behaviour and social relations - rather than on impacts, such as 
	 poverty reduction, environmental protection and social inclusion. 
	 Innovation systems thinking, particularly in renewable natural resource, 
	 agriculture and rural development, informs that the dominant paradigm of 
	 impact assessment should be complemented by social innovation 
	 assessment, providing research and development actors with critical 
	 learning lessons. This paper integrates two distant bodies of literature 
	 - the literature on impact assessment of research and development 
	 interventions, and the literature on social psychology of assessing 
	 learning and innovations. Based on case studies of a series of projects 
	 implemented in India and Nepal under DFID's 11-year Renewable Natural 
	 Resources Research Strategy (RNRRS) programme between 1995 and 2006, a 
	 social innovation assessment tool was developed and implemented. The 
	 tool includes questions about critical incidents and modes of 
	 stakeholder interactions to be ranked on a four-point scale depending on 
	 how often the statements apply to the respondents' work environments. 
	 The social innovation assessment provides critical learning lessons for 
	 social innovation generation and overall performance improvement in 
	 collaborative research and development interventions at the 
	 organisational, network and system levels. 
Classification-JEL: C4, C12, O13, O21, O31, Q2
Keywords: Agriculture, Systems of Innovation, Social Innovation, India, Nepal,
	 South Asia
Series: UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Creation-Date: 2010
Number: 2010-043
File-URL: https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2010/wp2010-043.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
File-Size: 275 Kb
Handle: RePEc:unm:unumer:2010043