Public-private partnerships as systemic agricultural innovation policy instruments – Assessing their contribution to innovation system function dynamics

Frans Hermans,Floor Geerling-Eiff,Jorieke Potters,Laurens Klerkx

doi:10.1016/j.njas.2018.10.001

Abstract

This paper addresses the question how public-private partnerships function as systemic innovation policy instruments within agricultural innovation systems. Public-private partnerships are a popular government tool to promote innovations. However, the wide ranging nature of PPPs make it difficult to assess their effects beyond the direct impacts they generate for the partners. This paper broadens the discussion on the evaluation of PPPs beyond the organisational and financial benefits of the actors involved, and assesses their contribution to the functioning of the innovation system itself. In this paper, we utilise an innovation system perspective that focusses on how PPPs influence the dynamic interplay of innovation system functions and how these functions form a set of feedback loops that constitute an ‘innovation motor’. We compare the innovation history of four cases that differ in their strategic policy goals, either working on agricultural sustainability, or on the international competitiveness in the Dutch agricultural sector. The results show the strengths and weaknesses of different types of public-private partnerships as systemic instruments and their capability to orchestrate other types of innovation policy instruments.

Highlights

It has become more and more recognised that solving the persistent and complex problems facing the agricultural sector is beyond the reach of a single actor alone
For the sake of brevity we will only give a short description of the most important events in the timeline and we will focus on the combination of the different private partnerships (PPPs) that we identified and the question of how the innovation system functions have constituted different feedback loops in the different phases
This paper dealt with the question how different types of PPPs act as systemic policy instruments and influence the different innovation system functions the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS)

Summary

Introduction

It has become more and more recognised that solving the persistent and complex problems facing the agricultural sector is beyond the reach of a single actor alone. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are prominent examples of such collaborative endeavours in which private actors pool their resources with public sector organisations, such as government agencies and universities, in a long-term collaborative engagement, with the aim of providing added value for all parties involved (Bovaird, 2004; Osborne, 2000; Van der Meer, 2002). Despite their general popularity PPPs have their problems and not all PPPs realise their full potential (Klijn and Teisman, 2003). PPPs have become increasingly popular within the mix of policy instruments aimed at promoting innovation, and they have been mentioned as a solution to counteract interaction problems between actors (Lamprinopoulou et al, 2014; Turner et al, 2016)

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