Producing Actionable Knowledge for Crop Diversification

This policy brief addressed the following key messages:

• Actionable knowledge is context-specific knowledge that assists actors in their decision-making to be better positioned to achieve their goals. 
• Producing actionable knowledge with Multi-Actor Approaches requires more than gathering ‘multiple actors’ around the table; it requires attention for the settings and processes that stimulate social learning, empower actors, and build social capital leading to consensus for action. 
• Effective actionable knowledge production is based on mutual understanding, trust, and a common vision among researchers and societal actors; consortia should be enabled to stimulate social learning and build this social capital both before as well as over the course of a project.
• The inherent unpredictability of innovation processes requires funding schemes that foster adaptive, learning-oriented project governance approaches replacing the accountability-focused schemes currently in place
• More experimentation with innovation-sensitive funding instruments is needed to better understand how to effectively cross-pollinate scientific and practitioner knowledge and address pressing global issues.