Concepts and practices in agricultural extension in developing ...

an important role. Variability in the production environment and among the farmers who use it hastremendous implications for the design and management of the AKIS.To sum up, an effective AKIS requires:• The input of information from external sources: If the system does not have the capacity togenerate and enhance appropriate roles for its constituent parts, it will not be in a position toabsorb such information. In the agricultural sectors of developing countries, the lack of socialorganization among small-scale farmers is therefore a considerable barrier to development.• Improving the linkage mechanism between various components: A linkage mechanism is theconcrete procedure, regular event, arrangement, device or channel which bridges the gapbetween components of a system and allows communication between them. The linkagemechanism is the device which operationalizes the interface.• A detailed understanding of the functions which are to be performed by the system: Ifagricultural development is to be enhanced, there is a need to nudge widely differinginstitutions, often under different administrative arrangements, both public and private, intocompatible roles.1.3.6 The Innovation Systems PerspectiveThe notion of innovation with regard to its definition, systems of innovation, innovation systemsperspectives and the different national innovation systems are discussed in this section.A number of definitions exist for innovation. The simplest definition is Drucker’s (1998) as ‘purposefulfocused change’. It can also be defined as anything new introduced in an economic or socialprocess (OECD 1999). Innovation is a process in which knowledge and technology are generated,disseminated and used by agents, whose interactions both condition and are conditioned by social andeconomic institutions. In its broadest sense innovation covers the activities and processes associatedwith the generation, production, distribution, adaptation and use of new technical, institutionaland organizational or managerial knowledge. It does not mean new technology alone, but also theinstitutional and organizational innovations, that emerge as new ways of developing, diffusing and usingtechnology. The capacity for innovation occurs in one or more of four trajectories: Product innovation,Process innovation, Management or Organizational innovation and Service delivery innovation. It isalso found that the two factors of importance in innovation are Knowledge and Networking, i.e. value ofknowledge increases with its use, and exchange can only be realized in a cooperative environment.The innovative performance of an economy depends not only on how individual institutions (firms,research institutes, extension services, universities etc.) perform in isolation, but on how they interactwith each other as elements of a collective system and how they interplay with social institutions—values, norms and legal frameworks. Innovation takes place throughout the whole economy, and notall innovations have their origin in formal science and technology nor are all innovations exclusivelytechnical. This new perspective places more emphasis on the role of farmers, input suppliers, transporters,processors and market in the innovation process. Institutional, organizational and managerial types ofinnovations in particular, more often have their origin in on-site learning processes rather than off-siteformal research. These forms of innovations are often far more complex and difficult because onecannot experiment and fine-tune them off-site.An innovation system is the set of organizations and individuals involved in the generation, diffusion,adaptation and use of new knowledge of socioeconomic significance and the institutional context15