Capturing Social Innovations in Agricultural Transformation from the Field: Outcomes of a Write-Shop

• Main Authors: Bram Peters, Marion Herens, Jan Brouwers
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-12-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: social innovation; agricultural commercialization; nutrition sensitive transformation; Myanmar
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/12/4727

The aim of this project was to explore the theme of social innovation for nutrition-sensitive and sustainable agriculture, resulting in examples of improved production and consumption of nutritious food. Social innovation refers to the generation and implementation of new ideas about how people organize interpersonal activities, or social interactions, to meet one or more common goals and in the process change basic routines, resources, and decision-making processes. In the country context of Myanmar, this research aimed to capture a variety of social innovation cases related to processes of agricultural transformation. Through the method of a collaborative case study write-shop, Myanmar-specific social innovations were identified, illustrating various forms of social innovation across the cases with citizen engagement processes. The write-shop method, in combination with the embedded expertise of development practitioners, proved to be a promising approach to identify niche innovations, distil insights, reframe actions, and promote critical thinking among different actors.