New Organisational and Institutional Vehicles for Managing Innovation in South Asia: Opportunities for Using Research for Technical Change and Social Gain
T.S. Vamsidhar Reddy, Andy Hall & R. Sulaiman
#2010-054
This paper sets out to explore the nature of new organisational and
institutional vehicles for managing innovation in order to put research
into use for social gain. It has reviewed four classes of such vehicles
found in South Asia. The first two - contract farming and organised
retailing - represent what is becoming commonly-accepted in policy
circles: namely that the private corporate sector can play a more
prominent role in agricultural development, particularly in arrangements
that combine providing access to markets in combination with access to
technology needed to service those markets. The second two classes of
vehicles -hybrid enterprises and social venture capital - represent a
new, albeit fluid in definition, class of initiatives and organisations
that combine features referred to as bottom-of-the pyramid and
below-the-radar innovation. For each of these classes of innovation
management vehicles this review has mapped the diversity of emerging
examples and discussed their relevance for putting research into use for
social gain. The paper concludes by saying that it is these new and as
yet poorly-understood modes of innovation that have the greatest
potential to effect change, although developing ways of supporting them
is going to require some creative public policy instruments.
Key words: Agricultural Research, Innovation, Innovation Management
Vehicles, Development, Policy, Contract Farming, Organised Food Retail,
Social Business Enterprises, Social Venture Capital, Value Chain
Development, Hybrid Enterprises, South Asia, Networking
JEL Codes: F55, L26, L33, N5, N55, O13, O31, O33, O38, O53, Q13, Q16