Institutional Learning and Change Initiative

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Abstract:

In 1995 the Centers supported by the CGIAR recognized linkages with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) as imperative to a fully effective CGIAR system. A decade later, a survey of CGIAR Center collaboration found that although 17% of Centers' collaborators are CSOs, Centers rarely consider them ?highly relevant?. To shed light on the paradox revealed in the 2005 survey, and to better understand the organization, development and impact that Center-CSO partnerships have had in mobilizing science, the CGIAR Science Council commissioned a study that looked at six partnership projects between CSOs and CGIAR Centers. This report presents key insights and a lesson learned from the analysis, and attempts to show how partnerships of this nature might best be organized and supported in the future.The partnerships studied encompass many CGIAR Centers, environments, technologies and developmental needs. From Papa Andina's demand-led methodologies, to PETRRA's support and development of complex research partnerships, to ICRISAT's or IWMI's focus on community-level innovation, all the partnerships, to varying degrees, articulate need, deliver technologies, develop innovative methodologies and build capacities, trust and the networks that increasingly border CGIAR Centers. However, partnerships are also developing other, sometimes unforeseen outcomes, including giving insight into institutional innovation, building capacity in NARS and NGO partners, developing international public goods (IPGs) such as methodological insights into demand-led research, and gearing CGIAR Centers towards more 'innovation systems' thinking.