Abstract Modern agriculture requires an innovative capacity which goes far beyond the individual farmer, researcher, industrialist, trader or adviser, even beyond the abilities of any one of their organizations or institutions. To take on the challenges of today's societies and markets — natural resource management, environmental quality and sustainability, economic competitiveness, social justice, to name just a few — technical and administrative training is no longer enough. In order to flourish, agricultural sectors permanently need to learn from what they are doing and to innovate their practices accordingly. A joint capacity for innovation is one of the main factors sustaining successful performance in agriculture. To meet this challenge the rethinking of education and the formation of agricultural professionals is required. In this paper we briefly introduce a new perspective to explore such situations, the “knowledge and information systems perspective” and we analyze some of the fundamental causes behind the current shift in emphasis in agricultural innovation. The institutional response to these shifts are illustrated with a brief description of recent changes in agricultural education in the Netherlands. Then some conclusions are drawn as to the consequences for institutional management and training approaches. We conclude by suggesting that a number of “alternative systems of inquiry” could prove to be extremely useful. These methodologies, created and tested in rural and industrial development practice over the last two decades, might well be an important key to restructuring curricula and adapting training methodologies to the demands of the next century.