Participatory Innovation Research Articles

Broadening the Notion of Democratic Accountability: Participatory Innovation in Latin America

This article focuses on a set of democratic innovations that were introduced in recent years in Latin America that involve the participation of civil society as an active agent of accountability. Participatory innovations are redefining the traditional scenario in which the practice of democratic representation takes place, adding novel arenas and mechanisms to engage actors that traditionally were not actively involved in accountability politics. The proliferation of alternative means for holding governments accountable undermines the traditional view of democratic representation, which continues to view elections as the quintessential mechanism of citizen control. The conventional way of thinking about the role of citizens in the practice of democratic accountability—which was largely modeled around the act of electoral delegation—must be reconceptualized to make room for other mechanisms of citizen control beyond the sporadic act of voting.

From Joint Experimentation to Laissez-faire: Transdisciplinary Innovation Research for the Institutional Strengthening of a Water Users Association in Khorezm, Uzbekistan

Purpose: This article assesses a participatory action and innovation research experience, in which project researchers, farmers and staff members of a local water users association (WUA) came together to: (a) jointly test and adapt a social mobilization and institutional strengthening approach according to the local context, and by doing so, to (b) develop a locally embedded approach to the institutional strengthening of WUAs in Uzbekistan. Design/methodology/approach: The process of interaction and innovation development was one of joint experimentation, which over time and to avoid a disproportionate dependency on external social mobilizers increasingly adopted aspects of a laissez-faire approach, eventually relying fully on members of the local community. Findings: The findings show that the cooperation style is highly influenced by institutional and structural causes and effects in the specific context of rural Uzbekistan. Participatory approaches to the institutional strengthening of WUAs in Uzbekistan should consequently allow for a high degree of flexibility to adjust key activities and their timeframe. Practical implications: The research findings are relevant to the lowland irrigated areas of post-Soviet Central Asia where the strengthening of WUAs is still lacking, resulting in limited participation of water users and insufficient operation and maintenance of the slowly eroding infrastructure. Originality/value: The transdisciplinary innovation and action research experience pays special attention to the change in the style of cooperation, its institutional and structural causes and effects with regard to the ‘localizing’ of the innovation, namely a social mobilization and institutional development (SMID) approach for strengthening water users associations (WUAs) in Uzbekistan.

User-Led Design in the Urban/Domestic Environment

Urban spaces are pervaded by interpretive and reactive technologies that shape and are shaped by its inhabitants, with an increasingly active role for citizen technologists. Yet the role of domestic spaces in shaping lived experience within the urban environment, and subsequent technological interventions, is often overlooked. Homes are framed as closed-off environments which isolate their inhabitants from the city, despite being porous spaces that are also filled with ubiquitous computing. In this paper we draw on the participatory design and user innovation literatures to present the methodology for the “Homesense” research project that explored how users design and develop “smart” technologies within their own homes, based on the intersection of their concurrent urban/domestic lived experience. Kits of open-source hardware were used as cultural probes, and co-located “lead users” provided technical expertise. This methodology demonstrates the importance of physical space and location in user-led domestic activities, and of combinations of technical and “lived” expertise in developing these interventions.

Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America - Edited by Andrew Selee and E. Enrique Peruzzotti

Participatory Innovation and Representative Democracy in Latin America - Edited by Andrew Selee and E. Enrique Peruzzotti

The quality of conversations in participatory innovation

In co-design there seems to be a widespread understanding that innovation is a planned, goal-oriented activity that can be propelled forward through well-facilitated events in which company employees collaborate with external parties (users in particular) and the conversations aim at consensus about new product and service ideas. Conflict belonged to the ‘old days’ when participatory design played a part in the struggle between workers and management. Based on the theory of complex responsive processes of relating, we suggest a new way of understanding innovation as the emergence of new meaning in – often conflictual – conversations. We argue that the meeting of participants with different stakes is crucial precisely because crossing intentions can create new insight and movement of thought and action. We use improvised theatre to investigate what happens in industrial (and other) organisations that embark on participatory activities, and the barriers that prevent them. By analysing improvised scenes and the way the audience reacts, we characterise the quality of conversations that seems to allow new meaning to emerge and thus stimulates innovation. We suggest that we need to develop new formats of collaboration for large, complex contingents of stakeholders, where conflicting intentions are encouraged.

From Actors to Authors

From 2007 to 2009 Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, one of the major public research hospitals in Italy, has invested on a participatory action to promote a good practice of informed consent. The project focused on the improvement and innovation of informed consent considered as a participated act through the involvement of all the actors at stake. The main purpose was to improve the informative practices through the participatory innovation of institutional and organizational elements as conditions of possibility. Therefore the project has pursued the involvement of managers, healthcare professionals, patients and their associations in the institutional governance of informed consent. The involvement of citizens and patients within the whole process meant to put them in charge not just as actors or final evaluators of a good practice, but as co-authors in defining standards, tools and conditions for a good practice. Several actions were taken, including a phase of analysis which involved 20 patients from 8 Associations, a phase of innovation and education where 113 patients and citizens worked together with clinicians from 53 Units in deliberative laboratories, the institution of a multidisciplinary committee inclusive of representatives from 6 associations of patients.The project has produced different outcomes: new institutional guidelines adopted by the hospital; the renewal of consent forms and procedures as part of an explicit shared informative process; an increased implementation of institutional standards of good informative practice; the measure and communication of the outcomes of care and their bench-marking; bottom-up building of paths of validation; the creation of participatory electronic tools; an innovative education on the field for patients and clinicians.

Participatory innovation through user-designed knowledge sharing and Web 2.0 in the Danish seed industry

For many years the Danish seed industry has been at the forefront with high quality seed production, but in a rapidly changing global market innovation is a key factor for the future of Danish seed production - one important element to innovation is transfer of knowledge. In a new Ph.D. project seed scientists from Aarhus University will work together with seed growers and seed company consultants in designing a collaborative knowledge platform to optimise the diffusion of innovation between them. The aim of the Ph.D. project is to look at the processes within the three communities of practice in their participatory efforts to design and select technologies that will improve their knowledge dissemination through a shared understanding of learning and innovation within the Danish seed industry. The research questions are: What boundary objects emerge between and within the collaborating communities of practice, and in what way do they promote the negotiation of a shared understanding? Which commonalities can be derived from the participatory design of a "third space" community among communities of practice through participation in the Danish seed industry? The work will be based on preliminary field research including qualitative semi-structured interviews staging the local concept to knowledge and innovation quantified by large-scale questionnaires. A random target group will work with imaging, tagging and categorising their personal experience and thoughts of knowledge and innovation through advanced online photo diaries. The outcomes will be presented in a 3-step workshop series with representatives from the involved communities of practice. A "future workshop" will focus on commonalities and contradictions between the involved domains and how they redefine shared knowledge from their previous experience. A second workshop will focus on hands-on user experience based on a prototype predesigned from the preliminary research findings. The final workshop will build up a common knowledge discourse among its participants, and work towards an overall requirement specification for a preferred future knowledge innovation method in the Danish seed industry. The three workshops will be recorded by video and subsequently hermeneutically analysed to determine relevant boundary objects and commonalities between the participating communities of practice.

Understanding how participatory approaches foster innovation

Adapting through innovation is one way for rural communities to sustain and improve their livelihoods and environments. Since the 1980s research and development organizations have developed participatory approaches to foster rural innovation. This paper develops a model, called the Learning-to-Innovate (LTI) model, of four basic processes linked to decision making and learning which regulate rate and quality of innovation. The processes are: creating awareness of new opportunities; deciding to adopt; adapting and changing practice; and learning and selecting. The model is then used to analyse four participatory approaches and the model is evaluated through the quality of insights generated. It shows that, while outwardly very different, the four approaches are built from combinations of 11 strategies. Most of these strategies are aimed at providing information about new opportunities and deciding whether to adopt, and give less support to the other two processes, thus suggesting one way the four participatory approaches can be strengthened. Beyond analysing participatory approaches, the model could be used as a framework for diagnosing the health of local innovation systems and designing tailor-made approaches to strengthen them.

Sociological Theory, Discourse and the Cognitive Construction of Participation

AbstractThis essay examines the theoretical value of two pragmatic theories for the study of public participation, those of Habermas and of Boltanski and Thevenot, and then places these findings into the context of the systems sociology of Luhmann. The theoretical structure that emerges can be applied in analyzing social actors' constructions of public participation. Such constructions, along with their interactions and alignments, are taken to be pivotal, though neglected, components of participatory innovation. The essay offers a cognitive sociological methodology for analyzing these constructions and briefly considers its value for comparative research.

PARTICIPATORY INNOVATION

An increasing number of corporations engage with users in co-innovation of products and services. But there are a number of competing perspectives on how best to integrate these understandings into existing corporate innovation development processes. This paper maps out three of the dominant approaches, compares them in terms of goals, methods and basic philosophy, and shows how they may beneficially enrich one another. We will present an industrial innovation case that has been instrumental to the development of what we have termed "Participatory Innovation". Based on this, we will list the challenges such an approach sets to innovation management, and discuss research directions of what we see as fundamental to the development of the field of user-driven innovation.

Learning logs in introductory literature courses

This article explores the beneficial and sometimes unpredictable implications of a daily reflective writing exercise for introductory literature courses: the learning log. Pseudonymous samples of student writing, coupled with instructor commentary, gesture toward ways in which the learning log's continual implementation and modification foster a learning and teaching environment in which students and teachers can experience a greater degree of equality and engagement. The article draws upon in-class experiences, and student data collected between 2001 and 2006, in order to illustrate the learning log's potential to instill introductory literature courses with a sense of participatory innovation and creative democriticization.

The South African Education Agenda: Identifying Markers for Rewriting Agricultural Extension Curricula

Changes in education and agriculture in South Africa indicate that agricultural extension practitioners should facilitate continuous learning among farmers. This requires that extension practitioners acquire new skills. To provide these skills requires a critical examination of agricultural extension curricula in the light of South Africa's educational, agricultural and rural development policies with a view to rewriting extension curricula. An initial theoretical examination of extension education in the light of South African education policy yields seven learning outcome indicators encapsulating theory and practice in: 1) theory and practice in problem solving; 2) collect, analyse, organize and critically evaluate information relevant to his extension responsibilities; 3) theory and practice in Participatory Technology Development and innovation; 4) theory and practice in systems (systems thinking), including beyond farm systems; 5) theory and practice in learning facilitation; 6) theory and practice in participatory ‘curriculum’ (extension outcomes, content and process) development; and 7) theory and practice in learning and learning styles. Tertiary institutions and other stakeholders can use these indicators to examine and continuously adjust curricula to ensure extension practitioners are equipped to deliver relevant support to farmers as the agricultural landscape changes.

Fields of conflict and castles in the air. Some thoughts and observations on the role of communication in public sphere innovation processes

Building on the tradition of agricultural extension, this article discusses several changes in thinking regarding the relations between communication and innovation. Starting from the idea that network building, social learning and conflict management are key processes to be supported by communication professionals, the article makes critical observations regarding dominant forms of participatory practice, innovation policy and privatisation of research and extension. Subsequently, the paper discusses the implications of the proposed modes of thinking for the role of scientists in innovation processes. It is argued that a key role of scientists is to explicate implicit assumptions, claims and knowledge gaps in social learning processes, and to engage in collaborative research with societal stakeholders on a coherent set of natural and social science questions. The proposed conceptual models and observations eventually lead to the formulation of a research agenda for the field of Communication and Innovation Studies.

Requirements for biotechnology development: the necessity for an interactive and participatory innovation process

Biotechnology is often presented as a potentially crucial factor in contributing to sustainable development and poverty alleviation in developing countries. Looking at the innovations currently developed through biotechnology R&D, it can, however, be concluded that these innovations are usually inappropriate for this purpose. Scepticism therefore prevails in the development community about the usefulness of biotechnology as an instrument in poverty alleviation. In this article, we look at new approaches to the management of technological innovations in an attempt to design appropriate biotechnologies for the rural poor. We conclude that implementing an interactive and participatory approach to the innovation process involving farmers, scientists and other stakeholders, as well as enhancing a broader process of training of human resources and institutional change is the way to proceed in the field of biotechnology development for small-scale, resource-poor farmers.

Comprehensive cancer control initiative of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: an example of participatory innovation diffusion.

Site-specific and risk factor-specific cancer programs can point to impressive accomplishments, but coordination among them often is lacking. The Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is working with state health agency staff and other stakeholders to develop a comprehensive, integrated, nationwide approach to cancer control. The participatory innovation diffusion model may help this complex public health innovation be adopted. The participants in the process identified problematic aspects of the innovation and steps that the division can take to ameliorate these problems before the innovation is implemented.

Improving the output of agricultural extension and research through participatory innovation development and extension; experiences from Zimbabwe

Abstract This paper describes the rationale for a change from conventional extension towards participatory innovation development and extension. The “Conservation Tillage Project” and the “Food Security Project” developed such an approach and have embarked on institutionalisation of this approach into the agricultural extension service in Masvingo Province in Zimbabwe. Dialogue with farmers, farmer experimentation and the strengthening of self-organisational capacities of rural communities are the major elements to improve development and spreading of innovations, thus the efficiency of extension. The new approach requires a role change of agricultural extension workers from teacher to facilitator as well as appropriate methods and tools. Elements of “Training for Transformation” and Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) were tested and developed and were found to be effective tools. The strategy to institutionalise participatory extension is based on joining efforts and networking with other organisations, a campaign to familiarise institutional staff and a training and follow-up programme for staff in the framework of organisational development. The experiences show that the attitudinal change required to implement participatory approaches is highly depended on personalities. To have an impact on the change of attitudes a continuous mediumterm training process with a close follow-up is required. The paper concludes that institutionalisation of participatory approaches into hierarchically structured organisations is a highly complex intervention. In order to be successful, major changes in planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation procedures are required. Changes of that nature require a process of at least 5 to 10 years and high commitment on the side of institutional staff on all levels and donors as well.