Desired Outcomes of our Partnerships

To carry out our mission, we have organised our strategy around 6 interrelated "desired outcomes". These are described under the headings below, together with some of the main indicators of progress towards these outcomes.

1 - National partners develop a vision for ARD

A group of national partners representing diverse institutions and agencies involved in rural innovation promotes a collective vision of ARD.
ARD is recognised by senior managers and staff as a “new way of doing business”. Opportunities for joint learning programmes are identified, and activities incorporated within annual work plans.
Funds are mobilised to support capacity building activities.

2 - A core group of facilitators offer learning programmes

A critical mass of ARD facilitators, drawn from different institutions, designs, implements and evaluates in-service and tertiary learning programmes.
Learning programmes are integrated within the context of specific development challenges in which participants have a collective stake.
Facilitators are recognised and rewarded through promotion and/or hiring of their services.

3 - Professional development of rural agencies

ARD learning programmes integrate knowledge acquisition workshops with practical work on specific development challenges (problems or opportunities).
Teams participating in ARD learning programmes develop the ability to analyse innovation processes from an overall systems perspective, and to evaluate potential improvements from economic, social and natural resource perspectives within the context of a changing environment.
Teams participating in ARD learning programmes develop the ability to facilitate processes of interaction and learning between stakeholders, through joint analysis and planning, negotiation, conflict resolution, and implementation of joint action plans.
Participants in ARD learning programmes take responsibility for their own learning, identify their own learning needs and evaluate their own achievements.

4 - ARD is used in practice by stakeholders

Stakeholders at local, national and international level interact to integrate different perspectives, negotiate common interests and take coordinated action to address complex development challenges.
Development moves from a “research-driven, technology supply” process to one of innovation engaging multiple stakeholders that make active demands on research, technical, financial and business services.
Funding mechanisms for public research and advisory services encourage stakeholder interaction and the formation of platforms to address particular development challenges.
Evaluation procedures and incentive structures in publicly funded research and advisory services reflect changes in innovation systems and stakeholder practice, rather than knowledge generation per se.

5 - Universities teach ARD

Universities produce alumni who are well equipped to work in teams and partnerships formed to deal with complex issues in rural innovation.
University curricula integrate knowledge acquisition with relevant practical work on specific development challenges (problems or opportunities) in collaboration with stakeholders.
Management and incentive structures in universities encourage inter-departmental and interdisciplinary teamwork in collaboration with stakeholders.
Staff and students develop the ability to facilitate processes of interaction and learning between diverse stakeholders.

6 - National and regional sharing

Partnerships learn from the positive and negative experiences of other partnerships involved in similar ARD initiatives elsewhere.
Partners involved in ARD capacity building initiatives individually and collectively record their lessons learned and make them available nationally and internationally.
Partners establish websites to promote ARD within their own institutes and countries, and make available lessons learned.

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