New paper on innovation policy
An exciting new paper from a project close to Food System Horizons explores why we need to celebrate the economic successes of Australia’s unique agricultural innovation system, and how we can build on it to address growing sustainability and social inclusion challenges.
‘Reframing the conversation on agricultural innovation in Australia’ is a joint initiative between ABARES Social Sciences Team and CSIRO’s Valuing Sustainability Future Science Platform.
It addresses calls for a deeper discussion on how Australian agricultural innovation policy can respond to an expanding and interconnected set of goals including sustainability and social inclusion.
The paper explains how the goals of innovation in Australia’s agricultural and food sectors have been changing over time to balance our economic success with demands to reprioritise sustainability and social inclusion goals. A key feature of these goals is their public good nature, which makes them difficult for the private sector to provide. Public sector leadership can provide the depth of insight necessary to reframe how we pursue innovation to match the unique characteristics of these emerging challenges.
Refreshing agricultural innovation policy is a task of connecting change-makers and ideas in a conversation about new innovation directions.
What should agricultural innovation conversations involve?
- Broadening the innovation conversation beyond R&D
- Opening up the conversation to different interests and perspectives
- Visualising the innovation system better
- Collecting and discussing evidence of how innovation takes place beyond the R&D system
- Drawing inspiration from global debates and experience in developing innovation policy
- Matching the scope of innovation systems thinking to the scope of the challenges being faced