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Post-Harvest Innovation Learning Alliance (PHILA) |
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Learning Alliances
The learning alliance approach is one such way. Key post-harvest stakeholders from all sectors - public, private and voluntary - were invited to form an alliance with the strategic aim of "better mobilisation of national innovation systems to sustain the uptake and adoption of post-harvest knowledge for the benefits of poor farmers", but set the specific challenge of exploring better ways of working and learning together to overcome institutional constraints. The main activities of the learning alliance - the Post-Harvest Innovation Learning Alliance, or PHILA for short - have been collaborative research, information-sharing (internal), and engaging with and influencing other (i.e. external) key players in the post-harvest system. The alliance moreover, provides an on-going means to ensure delivery and consolidation of the project purpose over time; something otherwise unlikely to have happened within the short time-frame (<12 months) of the project. Characteristics of Learning AlliancesLearning Alliances: Are groups of individuals or organisations with a mutual interest in solving an underlying problem and scaling-up solutions. Bring together a wide range of partners with capabilities in implementation, regulation, policy & legislation, research & learning, documentation & dissemination etc. Represent part of the bigger whole, and thus capture some of the organisational complexity that constitutes the day-to-day realities of the innovation system. Comprise partners who are typically clustered at different ‘administrative’ (e.g. national, regional, district) levels – stakeholder platforms – within the innovation system. Aim to identify and breakdown the barriers that constrain learning – both across platforms (i.e. horizontally) and between platforms (i.e. vertically). Promote flexible and adaptive working practices, share responsibilities, costs and benefits. Based on: Moriarty et al. (2005) |
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If
the challenge to technology transfer lies as much with bringing
about changes in how the innovation system works – doing things
differently – as with devising new technologies, then we need
an approach that will allow us to make these changes.