Verena Bitzer

The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation

Innovative responses are necessary to address persistent and intertwined problems such as poverty, resource degradation, or food insecurity. There is a growing expectation for business to play a proactive role in this, but there are still remarkable gaps in our understanding of how exactly business can generate social and environmental innovation. This book focuses on the business of social and environmental innovation in the African context, where these issues are particularly relevant but even less well understood. The following chapter sets the scene by introducing the key concepts and issues at stake. We argue that the emergence of social and environmental innovation is often associated with individual efforts of social entrepreneurs, organizational transformation in incumbent businesses, and/or cross-sector partnerships as collective efforts. This is reflected in the sequence of the chapters in this volume. We identify four cross-cutting themes which are addressed in some way or other by each of the contributing chapters: (1) social innovation as a process or outcome; (2) mapping and scaling up innovations; (3) tension between social purpose and profit generation; and (4) socio-economic and institutional context.

From innovation to co-innovation? An exploration of African agrifood chains

Purpose – Building on recent advances in innovation research on developing country agriculture, this paper explores the concept of co-innovation, i.e. innovations that combine technological, organisational and institutional changes and that encompass different actors in and around the value chain. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a further conceptualisation of co-innovation and show its usefulness for analysing innovation initiatives in agrifood chains. Design/methodology/approach – The paper combines two streams of literature (innovation systems and value chains) and is based on a review of the experiences with innovation in three different value chains in three African countries: potato in Ethiopia, pineapple in Benin and citrus in South Africa. Findings – Co-innovation is the combination of collaborative, complementary and coordinated innovation. “Collaborative” refers to the multi-actor character of the innovation process, where each actor brings in specific knowledge and resources. “Comp...

Old Oranges in New Boxes? Strategic Partnerships between Emerging Farmers and Agribusinesses in South Africa

Partnerships have recently gained increasing popularity in the development community and are thought to play a key role in facilitating market access for smallholder farmers. This is particularly evident in South Africa, where strategic partnerships between emerging farmers and agribusinesses have become important instruments by which the government may promote the transition of ‘emerging farmers’ into independent commercial farmers able to participate in global markets. This article studies six partnerships in the South African citrus sector to analyse to what extent they enhance the ‘commercialisation’ of emerging farmers. An ‘innovation system’ perspective is applied to understand how far partnerships actually challenge and change the status of emerging farmers. Our results indicate that partnerships succeed in increasing market access. A closer look at the partnership processes, however, reveals the conditions under which success is achieved and that partnerships may be less instrumental in helping emerging farmers become independent entrepreneurs. Thus, a partnership model characterised by export orientation and knowledge transfer from agribusinesses to emerging farmers is limited in its transformative potential, calling for policy-makers to move beyond a pragmatic approach to partnerships.

Quality and innovation in food chains : lessons and insights from Africa

Quality improvement in food value chains offers both opportunities and challenges for farmers in Africa. This chapter introduces the key concepts that are used in the studies presented in this book. It also provides a short description of each of the chapters. Quality is an elusive concept. It has a different meaning for each of the different value chain actors involved in producing, processing, trading and consuming food products. Some of these quality preferences can easily be measured, others are much more difficult to detect. This has implications for monitoring and control, such as in quality assurance systems, but also for providing proper economic incentives for each of the value chain actors. Finally, it has implications for the alignment of quality preferences throughout the value chain. The latter is important because the opportunities for quality improvement can only be understood by analysing the chain as a whole and assessing the motives and capabilities of all chain actors. In this chapter we also explain the interdisciplinary perspective we take on studying quality improvement and innovation. As quality improvement is a type of innovation process, the literature on innovation processes and innovation systems can be used for better understanding the options and constraints for quality upgrading in food chains in developing countries. Based on the recognition that innovation processes involve multiple actors, at multiple levels and engaged in multiple activities, at the end of the chapter we present the co-innovation.