Deepening the functioning of innovation support

Topic description

ExpectedOutcome:

In support of the Green Deal, common agricultural policy and farm to fork objectives and targets, the successful proposal will focus on how to discover innovative ideas and how to enable the relevant actors to work out these ideas in a co-creative way as from the very start of the making of the proposal. The expected outcome of this topic is to develop sound, coherent and well-prepared innovation generation and support methods, which enable individual grassroots innovative ideas to come to fruition. It should help project coordinators to find methods to use the complementary knowledge of partners to develop ready-to-use solutions. Member States’ authorities and actors of the agricultural knowledge and innovation system (AKIS) need insights and tools to improve the interaction, connections and drafting skills for preparation of innovation project proposals. This will eventually lead to useable and practice-oriented innovative project results, better informed practitioners motivated to implement those results and, as a consequence, increased impact of funding for multi-actor research and innovation and European innovation partnership (EIP) Operational Groups.

Member States AKISs need to be equipped to advance knowledge, build capacities and co-create innovative solutions to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and circular management and use of natural resources. To this end, the CAP post-2020 introduced for all Member States an obligation to have innovation support services in place^[1], to speed up innovation by helping to develop individual innovative grassroots ideas into interactive innovation projects^[2]. Such services can serve as one stop shops for innovation and should help future users of project results to prepare multi-actor innovative projects with a view to testing the potential innovation they have in mind. Member States need to find new ways to organise innovation support which fuels the generation of solutions for the transition process towards more sustainable farming and forestry. This can be done in particular in the form of a one-stop-shop for innovation, which can provide practical information on the subject of the potential project, existing scientific knowledge and project management as well as tips and tricks on how to develop such projects into a coherent project proposal. Being able to connect the most relevant actors with complementary knowledge is also an essential element, and will help to attain the objectives of the potential project. Deepening innovation support will need to take into account institutional barriers and lock-ins, political inertia and tackle power imbalances between potential actors involved in co-creative innovation processes.

Project results are expected to contribute to the following outcomes:

1. Helping innovation support services to tackle innovative ideas related to the policy objectives linked to Cluster 6, such as farm viability, agro-ecology, climate issues, pesticide reduction, reduction of water use and pollution, short supply chains, generational renewal, etc, as well as the European Green Deal, the Farm to Fork Strategy and the CAP, the Biodiversity Strategy and the wider bioeconomy research and policies.

2. Contribute to the CAP cross-cutting objective of modernising the sector by fostering and sharing knowledge, innovation and digitalisation in agriculture and rural areas, and encouraging their uptake^[3] . Projects shall provide overall support to generate practical approaches ultimately leading to better capturing of emerging needs and/or innovative opportunities, knowledge co-creation, in relation to the new obligation for Member States under the CAP post-2020^[4] to have innovation support services in place, taking into account national and regional contexts.

3. The outcomes shall connect actors, policies, projects and instruments to speed up creation of innovative solutions, in particular by:

(a) creating added value by better linking research, education, advisors and farming practice and encouraging the wider use of available knowledge which can serve the innovative idea;

(b) connecting innovation actors and projects; resulting in faster co-creation of ready-to-use innovative solutions, spreading them into practice and communicating the research needs of practice to the scientific community.

Proposals should address the following activities:

• Develop approaches to set up and improve the functioning of innovation brokers, which have the capacities to find individual innovative grassroots ideas at an early stage as well as practice needs or innovative opportunities. These innovative ideas should then be developed with the support of the owner of the idea and a number of relevant actors with complementary knowledge into an EIP-AGRI interactive innovation project⁵¹⁰, using methods ensuring co-ownership of the initiators and partners in the project. Seed funding as used for EIP-AGRI Operational Group projects is often a good solution to accompany this process, but also other approaches such as “innovation advice” or “innovation coaching” are an option to investigate^[5].
• Explore how such innovation support approaches could be embedded in the national/regional AKIS, in particular through useful connections with advisors, and how they can be linked to other broader innovation support mechanisms, including research, advisors and CAP networks at Member State or regional level^[6].
• Investigate and compare among Member States how the governance of such innovation support could be organised at the level of the managing authorities (single “one-stop-shop” service or mixed model with several smaller and/or bigger innovation support services, or…) taking into account the great variety of contexts in Member States and regions.
• Cover all 27 EU Member States in the project to ensure learning from diversity. Make use in all those countries of experts who understand and are able to make an accurate interpretation of the national/regional contexts and its impact to help develop the ideal solution for that Member State.
• Projects should have a minimum duration of 6 years, investing most in the very first years, and use the support from the knowledge and innovation experts of the SCAR-AKIS Strategic Working Group to discuss project strategy and progress in the various stages of the project. They must implement the multi-actor approach, including existing experienced innovation support services as partners which can share their methods and help develop solutions in other contexts.
• As foreseen in the Multi-Actor Approach requirements^[7], provide all outcomes and materials to the European Innovation Partnership 'Agricultural Productivity and Sustainability' (EIP-AGRI), including in the common 'practice abstract' format for EU wide dissemination, including as well as to national/regional/local AKIS channels and to the EU-wide interactive knowledge reservoir (HORIZON-CL6-2021-GOVERNANCE-01-24) in the requested formats.

[1]Art 13(4) of the post 2020 CAP proposal

[2]Such as Horizon Multi-actor projects or EIP-AGRI Operational Groups

[3]Art 5 CAP post 2020 proposal

[4]Art 13(4) CAP post 2020 proposal

[5]See EIP-AGRI seminar on AKIS : https://ec.europa.eu/eip/agriculture/en/event/eip-agri-seminar-cap-strategic-plans-key-role-akis

[6]Art 102 of the CAP post 2020 proposal

[7]See introduction of the Work Programme