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Webinar on February 16th: Innovating in unpredictable situations: constraints and opportunities for DeSIRA projects

When:

Thursday 16 February

09:00-10:30 CET English webinar for DeSIRA Projects in Asia, East and Southern Africa

16:00-17:30 CET French and Spanish webinar for DeSIRA projects in West Africa and Latin America simultaneous interpretation FR-ES will be available.

Why:

The aim of the webinar is to review the challenges faced by DeSIRA projects operating in unpredictable situations and/ or insecure environments, identify and discuss the adjustments in their innovation strategy as well as the opportunities for innovating that these constraints might generate.

For who:

Targeted audience: DeSIRA implementers and their partners

How come:

The EU-funded DeSIRA initiative (Development of Smart Innovation through Research in Agriculture, in short DeSIRA) was launched in 2018 with the aim of strengthening Research and Innovation, within an AIS perspective, in order to support the sustainable transformation of agri-food systems.

Lessons learned from previous EU-funded projects have made it possible to identify the managerial challenges faced by the projects. One of the challenges is how to adapt and respond to emerging innovation support needs in unpredictable contexts, driving projects to adjust their management strategies. Unpredictability and insecurity are two of the major management challenges that research and innovation DeSIRA projects face.

Some DeSIRA projects have reported, during the DeSIRA-LIFT first cycle of services’ offer, how much they are operating or have operated in contexts in which unpredictability and insecurity occurred, affecting the project’s environments in various ways: organizational, geopolitical, climatic, etc.

Unpredictability refers to situations to which a project may be exposed, or to a setting resulting from one or more unpredictable events or factors. The breakout of the COVID Pandemic has generated disruption across the world and changes, some still ongoing, to the environment in which research organizations operate. Long-lasting droughts, enduring extreme poverty, remote territories with less outreach from State actors, or lesser rule of law are examples of factors that may form such situations that affect project management and potentially jeopardize the possibilities of reaching desired impact.

Innovating in unexpected and unstable conditions also provides interesting opportunities.

Based on experience from DeSIRA projects, the webinar will allow identifying the different features of unpredictable situations and insecure environments into which projects operate, how projects mitigate these constraints, what additional challenges this poses and how much it affects their innovative and transformative strategies. We will also identify what benefits and opportunities adjusting to unpredictable situations and insecure environments have brought to their innovation pathways.

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