Abstract
The triple helix model (THM) studies the interactions between academia, industry, and government designed to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in a knowledge-based society. This paper shows how agricultural extension works through the THM for inclusive innovation to evaluate its effects on farmers. For this purpose, we analyze the case of Cultiva UChile, a technology transfer center led by the University of Chile that operated from 2016 to 2020 and that was financed by and in cooperation with public sector organizations. Cultiva UChile offered extension services to vegetable growers from the Chilean Central Valley. As our main sources of information, we used internal reports and surveys of 91 farmers who received Cultiva UChile extension services from 2019–2020. A qualitative study of this organization, the actors involved, and the operation and governance of the center and a quantitative analysis of the center’s direct effects adopting descriptive techniques and binary logistic regression were used. The results show strong interactions between actors as the basis of Cultiva UChile and its positive short-term direct effects regardless of farmers’ paths in terms of innovation, cooperation, and investment. These results lead us to conclude that extension services adopted under the THM can be appropriate means to promote inclusive innovation in agriculture.
Highlights
Universities have been reimagined since the 1990s as institutions that can generate industryrelevant knowledge and contribute to economic development
The objective of this article is to show how agricultural extension works when it is based on the triple helix model (THM) for inclusive innovation; to evaluate its effects on farmers and to determine whether a farmer’s prior recent experience with cooperation, innovation, and investment in physical capital affects the direct effects of extension services under the THM
This paper proposes that Cultiva UChile replicated a THM that involved and articulated different actors to generate inclusive innovation through specialized extension services with generally positive results for farmers
Summary
Universities have been reimagined since the 1990s as institutions that can generate industryrelevant knowledge and contribute to economic development. Researchers and policy-makers have focused on how universities can make direct and measurable contributions, especially to their lo-. Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995) identified the New England regional innovation system of the beginning of the twentieth century based on “strategic research” directed toward local industry development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as the earliest example of the THM. Reddy (2011) points out that at the beginning of the twentieth century, the first agricultural universities forged close relationships with farmers to help increase their productivity through specialized research and technology sharing extension services. The THM is an approach that analyzes agricultural innovation from the perspective of agricultural innovation systems (AISs) along with other proposals such as regional innovation systems, clusters, innovative ecosystems, or smart specialization (Klerkx et al, 2012)
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