Transdisciplinary innovation research in Uzbekistan – one year of ‘Follow-the-Innovation’

Transdisciplinary innovation research inUzbekistan – one year of ‘following theinnovation’

Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Mehmood Ul Hassan,and Peter P. Mollinga

In 2008, a German-funded interdisciplinary research project in Khorezm province, Uzbekistan

initiated a participatory approach to innovation development and diffusion with local stake-

holders. Selected agricultural innovations, developed by the project and identified as ‘plausible

promises’, have since then been tested and modified accordingly by teams of researchers, local

farmers and water users. This paper discusses the challenges faced in this process of joint

experimentation and learning between researchers and local stakeholders whose behaviours,

attitudes and actions are heavily shaped by the local context, academic discipline and hierarch-

ical culture of knowledge governance.

KEY WORDS: Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS; Technology; Environment

Introduction

Research is good at developing component technologies, such as fertilizers and Bt-cotton.

But farmers have designed systems within which these component technologies must

provide a benefit. And all too often they do not because research has not bothered to

analyse the systems into which the component technologies must fit. (Roling 2009: 18)

The ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land and Water Resources Management in Uzbeki-

stan’ aims to devise restructuring concepts to ease environmental and socio-economic problems

in Khorezm province, Uzbekistan. The project intends to increase the economic efficiency of

agriculture, while improving the natural ecosystem and its services. To ensure the embedded-

ness of the developed innovation packages into the local agricultural and knowledge system,

five years into the project a transdisciplinary research component was added to, jointly with

local stakeholders, test, adapt and finalise institutional and technical innovations.

This paper seeks to elaborate and discuss the experiences collected so far in nurturing this

transdisciplinary process of joint experimentation and learning between researchers and local

stakeholders.1 The project is located in the Uzbek setting, shaped by strong hierarchical

structures, remnants of Soviet Russia, as well as traditional Muslim culture and the

effects of rapid agrarian processes of transformation leading to and allowing for change.

CDIP582085 Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, U.K. 5/31/2011

ISSN 0961-4524 Print/ISSN 1364-9213 Online 060825-14 # 2011 Taylor & Francis 825

Routledge Publishing DOI: 10.1080/09614524.2011.582085

Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40095013_Conceptual_and_Methodological_Developments_in_Innovation?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-9bc24ffc-ce08-4a90-9776-116254bc0597&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjg5ODk4ODtBUzoxMTk5MzkzMzU3MjUwNTZAMTQwNTYwNzE3NDM3Mg==

The process design, its strengths and weaknesses are outlined and recommendations for

improvement discussed.

The ‘Follow the Innovation’ approach

Uzbekistan’s central government is strongly involved in agricultural decisions at farm, district,

regional and national scales Q1. State quota on cotton and wheat regulate farming practices, inputs

and outputs. Consequently the space within which farmers can innovate is relatively small and

the need for research ideas and innovations to be tested and refined jointly with farmers (and

other stakeholders) especially pressing. Within this relatively small ‘window of opportunity’

(Roling 2009 Q2) and despite the state plan with its impediments to innovation, farmers in

Khorezm have shown to be active experimenters, developing local knowledge to improve

their cotton and wheat yields. Wall (2008) states that ‘within these conditions there is a surpris-

ing level of innovation and experimentation’ Q3. This knowledge creation and implementation

takes place within the space for manoeuvring granted by the politically restrictive system. Inno-

vations that oppose agricultural state norms (for example large scale crop rotation) do not occur

(Wall 2008, pp. 122–3).

Building on this, in its sixth year the project initiated a participatory approach to innovation

development and diffusion, hoping to, together with the local stakeholders, be able to (a) ident-

ify stakeholders interested in experimenting with the project’s ideas in order to together, (b)

modify selected innovation packages according to the local ‘window of opportunity’, and (c)

strengthen the project’s transdisciplinary nature by developing locality specific methods and

concepts to innovation. Additionally this was thought to be supported by a work package

looking at the national, regional and local governance structures, decision and policy-making

procedures in order to offer models not only for innovations within the existing windows of

opportunity of farmers as well as models and research-based recommendations on the policy

and institutional levels in order to stretch these windows Q4. Yet, due to the sensitivity of conduct-

ing governance research in an authoritarian system such as Uzbekistan, there is a clear

mismatch of the levels of governance research needed and research conducted.

In the design of this transdisciplinary component the project explicitly rejected linear

approaches to innovation diffusion such as the ‘Transfer of Technology’ approach (Chambers

and Jiggins 1986) or ‘Diffusion of Innovations’ (Rogers 2003). Instead, the ‘Follow the

Technology’ framework developed by Douthwaite et al. (2001) was chosen as starting point.

A participatory approach to technology development and innovation, it is composed of a set

of steps assuming that once there is a technology with a ‘plausible promise’ that it may work

and raise interest in users, innovators engage in a process in which the technology is experimen-

ted with in real situations by a group of users (‘product champions’ and ‘partners’). The process

itself is one of trial and selection, leading finally to a point where the technology is sufficiently

robust to be released more widely or abandoned because it has proven to be unsuitable for the

region. The methodology ‘follows the technology, using this intervention as the entry point into

a complex situation, and then allowing what is discovered to determine what is important’

(Douthwaite et al. 2001 Q3; Hall and Nahdy 1999). Douthwaite’s idea to ‘follow the technology’

was adapted as per the design of the research component to ‘follow the innovation’, including

technical and institutional innovation packages.

As main steps, (a) basic supportive research, (b) early adoption by innovators or champions,

(c) adaptation through additional research, and (d) promulgation/out-scaling of successful

innovations, were planned (Mollinga et al. 2006). Q5

826 Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011

Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Mehmood Ul Hassan, and Peter P. Mollinga

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271847737_Diffusion_Of_Innovations?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-9bc24ffc-ce08-4a90-9776-116254bc0597&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMjg5ODk4ODtBUzoxMTk5MzkzMzU3MjUwNTZAMTQwNTYwNzE3NDM3Mg==

‘Follow the Innovation’ – a stepwise realisation

The ‘follow the innovation’ component aims to develop a participatory, locally embedded

approach to innovation diffusion for Khorezm province, and to strengthen the transdisciplinary

research of the project. The process is facilitated and documented by a full-time senior staff

member. Additionally, an external consultant was hired for five training seminars on participa-

tory research methods, skills for stakeholder involvement, communication and facilitation tools.

This professional expertise adds legitimacy to the process and helps to underline the importance

of jointly testing and adapting innovations with local stakeholders within the project coordi-

nation, team and research institute.

The overall process started in February 2008 with the first training seminar. The FTI-facili-

tator nevertheless only joined the project, due to hiring difficulties, in April 2008, the beginning

of the field research period. Altogether, three training seminars were held in 2008. During the

third, local stakeholders participated for the first time..

After a number of intensive discussions on the project’s conceptualisation of ‘innovation’,

the researchers agreed that innovation is ‘the use of new ideas, new technologies, or new

ways of doing things in a place or by people where they have not been used before’ (Hall

2004 Q3 Q7), and therefore considered that all ‘plausible promises’ developed by the project were

merely ‘inventions’ until successful testing, adaptation and acceptance by stakeholders

would qualify them as ‘innovations’ (Wettasinha and Bayer 2008: 8).

A series of meetings followed to discuss key literature related to participatory technology

development and innovation systems. They generally seemed to be of interest to project staff.

During the second seminar, the participants listed and ranked the project’s prospective inno-

vations and chose four key innovations (out of a potential 17) with seemingly the highest plaus-

ible promise to first enter the ‘FTI-process’:

a) conservation agriculture (including precision levelling, minimum tillage, permanent beds,

residue and nutrient management)

b) advanced tools for rapid salinity assessment and improved irrigation scheduling

c) strengthening Water Users Associations (WUAs) through capacity building

d) afforestation on marginal/degraded lands (field and policy levels)

An interdisciplinary FTI-team was formed around each of the selected innovations, compris-

ing scientists from the appropriate disciplines. After identifying their respective local stake-

holders these interdisciplinary teams were later to develop into transdisciplinary working

groups (TWGs). A scientist from the core discipline of each innovation led the respective

group. Additionally some disciplinary gaps were filled by interested PhD students (Veldhuizen

2008a).

Additionally the separate steps of the FTI-approach were discussed, as illustrated below.

Once the interdisciplinary FTI teams have identified and engaged with their key stakeholders,

the precise steps of joint design, testing, adoption and adaptation of the innovations have to be

identified. Roles and responsibilities are distributed within the transdisciplinary working group.

Through a process of continuous involvement with the stakeholders while at the same time also

giving enough space (laissez faire) for experimentation, the innovation at hand is tested and

modified accordingly. The validation loop (middle right in Figure 1) is thought to ensure that

local knowledge and the concerns of partners are included into the modified design of the inno-

vations. Through a process of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME) it has to be

assessed whether the innovation in its revised form still holds as plausible promise, or needs

to be shelved. In the former case, further research will be required to understand the entire inno-

vation system and eventually form recommendations for the extension and technical assistance

Development in Practice, Volume 21, Number 6, August 2011 827

Transdisciplinary innovation research in Uzbekistan – one year of ‘following the innovation’

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135

Tab

le1:

Date

Loca

tion

Q6

Tit

leO

bje

ctiv

es

11-

14.0

2.0

8

Bonn

Conce

pts

of

Agri

cult

ura

l

Innovat

ion

and

Inte

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Tra

nsd

isci

pli

nar

y

Res

earc

h

.gai

nunder

stan

din

gof

dif

fere

nt

conce

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ns

of

innovat

ion

.dev

elop

under

stan

din

gof

conce

pts

of

tech

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gy

adopti

on

and

adap

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erge

use

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char

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modif

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es

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ne

mult

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nar

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sear

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1-

4.0

6.0

8

Urg

ench

(UZ

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onal

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the

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gof

dif

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esan

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acti

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par

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met

hods

and

tools

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17-

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(UZ

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her

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.



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170

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180

agencies for further out-scaling. If the innovation fails to yield the anticipated benefits, enabling

conditions that are precondition to the successful implementation of the respective innovation

shall be identified.

After the second training seminar, the FTI teams held several meetings to plan their activities,

identify, and involve stakeholders as well as design their roadmaps and time schedules. Parallel

to this, first meetings with stakeholders were planned. During this process the teams closely

interacted with the FTI facilitator. It became apparent that the vast majority of stakeholders

were male. Only the stakeholder groups of two teams (salinity assessment and afforestation)

incorporated one female each – a female farmer and a female salinity specialist from a local

research institute. The masculinity of agricultural organisation in Uzbekistan as well as the

nature of the selected innovation packages can be identified as reasons for this. The type of inno-

vation packages chosen for the FTI-process did not allow addressing the gender-specific labour

division in Uzbek agriculture. An innovation package addressing subsistence/peasant farmers

(dehqans) as a stakeholder group, for example, would automatically involve a far more gender-

diverse group of stakeholders.

The level and type of stakeholder-engaging activities Q9varied strongly Q10between the groups.

They ranged from individual meetings with key stakeholders and possible partners to participa-

tory situation analyses. Amongst some FTI teams a tendency for individual and face-to-face

discussions related to rather simple and more ‘technology oriented’ innovations (i.e. advanced

tools for salinity mapping). In contrast, for innovations that originated from social science

disciplines, the tendency was to carry out more complex, participatory processes situation

analyses.

For the third seminar selected stakeholders from a closely cooperating Water Users Associ-

ation (WUA) and the Forestry Research Institute in Tashkent were invited in order to open the

so far internal training process to stakeholders. During the seminar it became clear that the pro-

gress of most FTI teams during the summer period had been less than expected. Three out of

Figure 1: Evolving FTI approach

Source: Ul-Hassan 2008. Q8



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four transdisciplinary FTI teams had prepared road maps until Q11Training III. Of the four groups,

only one continuously involved the key stakeholders of the innovation at hand in jointly design-

ing the road map. Two of the remaining three FTI teams had – at the time of the training – only

just begun to involve stakeholders; one was still in the planning process (Veldhuizen 2008b).

Some participants perceived this process of taking the developed ideas and critically review-

ing them together with the stakeholders as an extra task, separate to their main research, and it

did not receive their full attention. Furthermore, the rather late introduction of stakeholder

involvement in relation to the overall time span of the project left little time for the unconvinced

to familiarise themselves with it. This put ongoing stress on the process.

Nevertheless, initial interaction with stakeholders at various levels led to a number of prac-

tical results. It resulted, for example, in the strategy to unbundle certain innovations such as

flexible water management and conservation agriculture, to allow stakeholders to experiment

with (combinations of) selected components. Furthermore, it was encouraging to note that

after some initial hesitations participatory interaction seemed to be appreciated by some stake-

holders and project members, and related Q12methods (e.g. focus group discussions, visualisation

of group analysis) started to be adopted.

By the end of 2008, all four FTI teams had prepared their roadmaps for 2009. As outlined

above, the degrees of stakeholder involvement varied, with one group acting as strong front

runner, two groups slowly taking their first steps, and one group remaining in the planning

phase, hoping that a recently assigned PhD student would accelerate the process. The concepts,

methods and tools learned during the three workshops had entered all four road maps.

Key challenges

The first year of the process of ‘following the innovation’, to introduce project innovations to

local stakeholders, experimenting with them, rejoining the stakeholders and jointly evaluating

the outcomes, adapting and finalising the innovation, calls for a critical review Q13. The challenges

faced can be assessed by differentiating between (a) knowledge creation and dissemination in

rural Uzbekistan, (b) administrative challenges, (c) scientists’ versus farmers’ knowledge, (d)

team composition and organisation, and (e) contested transdisciplinary cooperation.

Knowledge creation and dissemination in rural Uzbekistan

The process design of jointly with stakeholders testing, adapting and finalising innovation

packages Q14is an immensely different approach to knowledge diffusion to that commonly used

and known in Uzbekistan. It therefore poses a challenge and offers new opportunities. Uzbek

policy thinking about the diffusion of innovations is heavily dominated by the linear model

of technology supply push. This can be explained by the authoritarian political system and

an amalgamation of Post-Soviet and reviving Uzbek, male dominated culture, resulting in a

hierarchically organised society used to receiving rather than critically questioning and adapt-

ing knowledge provided by the state. The authoritarian system of state control over knowledge

production that can be assessed in the realm of high-level research commissioned by the

government (Selim 2009, pp. 80ff; Wall 2008, pp. 141ff Q15), leads also in the realm of local, agri-

cultural knowledge production to a high level of self-censorship. Wall (2008, pp. 85ff Q15) ident-

ifies five characteristics of the local knowledge system of Khorezm. First, local ‘masters’ (‘wise

men’) with specialised knowledge, embedded in the patriarchal and hierarchical Khorezmi

culture, are central to the system and often hold positions of political and economic power.

Second, in terms of knowledge dissemination, family based modes of knowledge reproduction

and transfer are common. Access to external knowledge and its reproduction in the local knowl-



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edge system exists, but to a lesser extent. Third, in sectors of immediate importance to the state

agricultural production system indigenous, local knowledge lies at the interface with formal,

university-taught knowledge. Wall here assesses a linear, top-down approach to knowledge

diffusion with little, mutual exchange of ideas (2008, pp. 110ff Q15). A rather bottom-up designed

approach, such as FTI, involving the ideas, experience and knowledge of local stakeholders as

experts is therefore quite uncommon to Khorezm. This interlinks with Wall’s fourth point: ‘col-

lective knowledge’ which is rather unitary in nature, prevails in the Khorezmi agricultural

knowledge system, leaving little space for creativity-fostering diversity. Fifth, this unitary

nature of knowledge is further exacerbated by ongoing ‘knowledge loss’ and a ‘growth of ignor-

ance’ in the post-Soviet era of Khorezm (Wall 2008, pp. 123ff Q15).

The participatory, transdisciplinary approach of involving farmers as innovators in the

process of finalising project ideas, therefore meets several Uzbek-specific challenges. The

bottom-up approach is continuously challenged by, and at the same time challenges, a little-

developed culture of openly voiced criticism. This lack of communicated critical reflection

can be observed with regard to the scientific (external) knowledge that is offered by the

project as well as to locally tested, often superior ideas that could enrich the scientifically devel-

oped innovations.

The FTI-process aims for the exchange of explicit and tacit knowledge between researchers

and local stakeholders. While explicit knowledge refers to knowledge made available in books

and databanks, the notion of tacit knowledge focuses on experience gained through action

(Evers et al. 2009; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995). Neither project-employed researchers, nor

local stakeholders hold only explicit or only tacit knowledge; all actors hold different kinds

of explicit and tacit knowledge on the subject. Yet, Botkin and Seeley (2001) argue that

roughly 80 per cent of all knowledge is tacit in character, bound and expressed in action ( Q3).

In this estimate they do not consider how much this tacit knowledge increases in relation to

explicitly expressed knowledge in the situation of an authoritarian, hierarchical system with

repressive mechanisms focusing on the explicit, not the non-explicit knowledge. Locally deter-

mined tacit knowledge is therefore crucial to the process of ‘following the innovation’. The

systematic exchange of the different forms of knowledge shall yield the creation of new explicit

knowledge, manifested in the finalisation and out-scaling of the selected innovations.

Trust as a basis for cooperation and precondition for the mutual transfer of tacit knowledge

has to be built. While this importance of trust is not unique to the Uzbek setting, the project’s

experience shows that the level of trust needed as well as the input required to build this trust is

substantial. Continuous cooperation, meetings, workshops, seminars, material and immaterial

concessions and kept arrangements become crucial to the overall process. This very time and

work intensive process requires staff in the field with the necessary language and communi-

cation skills as well as the scientific qualifications. While this appears logical in terms of the

process design and its desired achievements, it is not easy to recruit the required personnel

and get the required financial means approved.

The administrative challenge

The process design planned for an FTI-facilitator to be continuously present in the field (8

months/ Q16a year in Khorezm; 4 months/ Q16a year in Bonn) facilitating FTI-teams in their

cooperation with stakeholders as well as one or two external consultants for a series of five

training events on participatory methods. Before hiring them, a detailed work package proposal

had to unblock the already approved funds. The external consultancy group was found and hired

relatively quickly. However, the recruitment of the FTI facilitator took three recruitment

cycles to find a candidate with the required profile and willingness to largely stay in



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Urgench/Uzbekistan on a basic academic research position. This resulted in a delay of almost a

year in starting the implementation. The first FTI-training had to be conducted without the FTI

facilitator, before the agricultural season. Consequently the continuity of facilitation was ham-

pered at the start of the progress and negatively influenced the creation of a pro-FTI atmosphere

within the project team.

Scientists’ versus farmers’ knowledge

The initial attitude of the disciplinary scientists to engaging in an eventually transdisciplinary

dialogue on adapting their respective innovations was that being scientists, their role was to

develop cutting edge ‘best bet’ technologies/innovations. Many believed that their discipline

offered ‘the best’ solution to the environmental/economic issue at hand and that the context

should change to fit the innovation, rather than the innovation to fit the context. Several

teams had gone through internal debates about the ‘right things to do’, and the ‘right way of

doing things’. The perception of some that the answers to these questions were rather

imposed by one or the other discipline illustrates the difficulty interdisciplinary teams face in

mutually acknowledging the validity of the disciplines.

Similarly the value of local knowledge was not immediately clear to everyone. The team

members of almost all groups came up with a scientific work plan intended to ‘raise the aware-

ness’ of stakeholders about the importance of the scientifically identified problem and to

convince the stakeholders of the validity of the innovative solution. One example is the reluc-

tance and disappointment of some regarding unbundling complex innovations, like conserva-

tion agriculture. During the first interaction with farmers, it became obvious that the farmers

were keen to implement laser levelling, but cautious to proceed with all elements of conserva-

tion agriculture. The farmers reasoned that the state had no objection to levelling. Its potential

benefit of saving water, which is critically short in the area, is unquestionably proven. Other

elements of the conservation agriculture innovation package, such as reduced tillage might,

in contrast, attract state sanctions for violating state recommendations on production norms.

Some of the teams had difficulties in discerning between the validation of innovation through

the FTI process and adoption and out-scaling through extension. The teams appeared to design

an approach whereby the phase of jointly experimenting, validating and finalising the inno-

vation together with the stakeholders was considered as one step amongst many. The steps fol-

lowing the stakeholder interaction were already planned in detail, disregarding the possibility

that the phase of joint testing could lead to results that would require a set of completely differ-

ent, so far unanticipated steps.

Team composition and organisation

The division of teams into core and support members, with the former being (mainly male)

senior project scientists holding supervisory responsibilities, and the latter (mainly female)

PhD students and research assistants, in some teams negatively affected the team spirit. It

was understood as a hierarchical organisation of the teams that additionally was not consistently

kept (i.e. with regard to invitation to meetings). This resulted in a demotivating imbalance of

information sharing. Once such tendencies were noticed, a small perception survey was

carried out amongst the students and results shared with the FTI groups as an appeal to

address the root causes. One FTI group addressed this issue by broadening its support member-

ship.

Furthermore, the distance between Bonn, Germany (where ZEF, the project-holding research

institute, is located) and Urgench, Uzbekistan (the capital city of Khorezm province where the



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project is based) posed a challenge. Some core and support members of FTI groups were based

at two locations; Urgench, where field activities are carried out, and Bonn, where most of the

scientific writing and analysis is done. The group on WUA empowerment for example continu-

ously shared minutes, ideas and plans for inputs with colleagues in Bonn. Yet, the inputs

received in return often merely consisted of more questions and suggestions far off from

local reality. This added to the work but little to its value. On the other hand, the group on

salinity and flexible irrigation scheduling had a similar setting, but did not experience such

difficulties. This can be explained by the nature of the different innovations, understandings

of the process, personalities and degree of disciplinary and gender heterogeneity in the team

involved. The socio-political process innovation carried by a discipline- and gender-diverse

team and involving a wide range of terminology and understandings of the process nevertheless

raised most discussion.

The assignment of roles within the teams based on research experience rather than skills in

facilitating stakeholder involvement negatively affected stakeholder interaction. Several FTI

teams, due to the complexity of the innovations, decided that the teams should be ‘led’ by an

experienced scientist from the discipline of the innovation who would not necessarily be a

good facilitator. Consequently the respective FTI groups are experiencing considerable

tendencies of being overly research-oriented in their approach. One of these groups, instead

of preparing a roadmap of stakeholder engagement activities, went through an additional plan-

ning cycle preparing a scientific work plan on ‘how conservation agriculture should be

implemented in a scientifically sound fashion’ rather than ‘how conservation agriculture

should incorporate stakeholder concerns and knowledge into its design’ Q17. This was

subsequently addressed through formal training in facilitation skills as well as informal one-

to-one coaching by the FTI facilitator. Nevertheless some good researchers might never be

good facilitators. After two training events on methods of stakeholder interaction, several con-

crete issues still negatively impacting on stakeholder interaction were identified (Veldhuizen

2008b). These ranged from big rooms with farmers sitting at one end and project team standing

at the other, the difficulty of securing the attention of farmers, to questions too long, often entail-

ing several sub-questions and no eye contact between interviewer and interviewee.

Contested transdisciplinary cooperation

The FTI team on WUA empowerment realised the importance of trust as a precondition to any

further collaboration very early on in the process and strongly emphasised the building of it.

Water User Associations in Uzbekistan, while officially being farmer organisations, were

created by the state and are until today by many regarded as state organisations. Therefore,

the FTI group initially envisaged social mobilisation and awareness creation as an innovation

for strengthening collective action and improving governance practices within the WUA.

The group consciously turned against technological improvements, believing that those

would distract the focus of the WUA from management issues. However, after several

rounds of dialogues, the group realised that a minimum level of hardware inputs was necessary

to demonstrate the project’s interest in cooperating as well as to enable the WUA to do their

work. During the discussions with the WUA it became obvious that it physically cannot be

present on the land for which it is responsible due to lacking a means of transport. The

WUA staff could not be present at several places a day and therefore also be present in the

minds of the farmers as an organisation representing them. Contrary to the original design,

the group kick started with hardware (equipping the WUA with bicycles while at the same

time and from then onwards increasingly offering ‘soft’ inputs (i.e. training workshops, visits

to best-practice WUAs in Ferghana Valley, etc.)).



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The FTI team on innovative salinity assessment tools faced the ‘salesman’ challenge in its

interaction with local stakeholders. This innovation addresses one of the critical constraints

faced by Uzbek policy makers: salinity maps in Uzbekistan are, due to the process of how

they are made, outdated when published. The use of advanced tools could overcome this,

but since they are interpretative tools, their scientific validity is questioned by Uzbek scien-

tists. The group identified three key stakeholder groups: (a) policy makers who use the maps

but are not involved with their making, (b) technical institutions that prepare salinity maps,

and (c) educational institutions that carry out research on the science of salinity mapping.

Among these, the FTI group targeted institutions involved in the making of maps as their

primary stakeholders. During the meetings with directors of these institutes, no interest in

experimenting with the tool could be raised. The group member responsible for introducing

the innovation felt like a salesman of a manufacturing company and the question arose when

the project would decide that a certain innovation at hand would not be valid and could be

neglected in the future.

The conservation agriculture team has faced the problem that required technology for the

innovation to work (i.e. adjusted seeder) is too cost-intensive for the stakeholders. Conse-

quently, cost-sharing arrangements and jointly written proposals to third-party donors are

discussed. This rather often encountered problem of high- versus low-external-input technol-

ogies (Roling 2009, pp. 25ff) poses an immense challenge on inter- and transdisciplinary

research teams around complex innovation packages. The level of internationally financed,

technological research equipment often lies substantially above the technological equipment

of local stakeholders. The (international) researcher therefore finds their self pulled between

international fame as disciplinary researcher or local fame as transdisciplinary researcher

developing innovations that require little or no external input and make sense for the local

end-users.

Discussion

The process of ‘following the innovation’ took off after the second training event in June 2008.

From then on, the four FTI teams, accompanied by the FTI facilitator, identified their main sta-

keholders, established cooperation and suitable paths of jointly testing the innovations at hand.

The speed and eagerness with which the teams moved this process forward varied strongly.

Yet all four teams actively reflected on their mode of conducting this process and took first

steps.

The challenges we faced and the lessons learned can be categorised into five groups. First, the

system of knowledge creation and dissemination in rural Uzbekistan is rather top-down in

nature, with a hierarchic and male-dominated organisation. As such it poses a direct contrast

to the bottom-up approach attempted by the project. Instead of openly voiced criticism and dis-

cussion, a mentality of first listening to and potentially adopting presented knowledge rather

than critically working with this external knowledge in order to develop it further, was encoun-

tered. This attitude was partly overcome and partly continues to challenge day-to-day inter-

actions. It became obvious that a form of interaction in which the project FTI teams are

active presenters of their knowledge while the stakeholders are passive listeners cannot lead

to successful enrichment of each other’s tacit and explicit knowledge. This was especially con-

firmed by the experiences of the groups on salinity assessment and conservation agriculture. In

terms of lessons learned, this means that the bottom-up approach faces an immense challenge in

the Uzbek setting, but at the same time seems to be the only possible approach for assuring that

the developed innovations make sense in the local setting.



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Second, we encountered administrative challenges, particularly in getting the process started.

Here, one lesson learnt is that substantial finances and open support from the project manage-

ment have to be provided. To develop an understanding of the process requires a continuous

facilitator in the field as well as external expertise that is not present in the project team, and

which – and this point should not be underestimated – legitimises the process. The internal

facilitator is crucial in advising and mentoring the interdisciplinary teams in how to plan and

conduct the process of stakeholder interaction. Roadmaps have to be designed and discussed,

concrete questions of how to communicate with the stakeholders addressed, and continuous

coaching on different approaches to knowledge transfer (linear versus non-linear thinking) is

required. The external expertise is important to justify the design, time and resource intensive-

ness of the process facing criticism within and outside the project. Furthermore, very well

trained staff are needed to continuously interact with the stakeholders for building and maintain-

ing the level of trust crucial for collaboration.

Third, it became obvious that the interaction of two highly differing cultures of knowledge

creation and dissemination between researchers and farmers requires continuous discussions

of the value of each type and form of knowledge. Thus, implicit views on one type of knowledge

being superior to another are present and require a continuous process of reflection, attitude

building and learning. It is a process that requires a high level of personal self-reflection, open-

ness and egalitarian value-guided action. Fourth, internal issues of team composition and

organisation are crucial for motivating team members. Interestingly, linear and hierarchical

thinking dominated the composition of the project’s internal FTI teams. Hence, the hierarchical

thinking that was regarded as counterproductive in the interaction with stakeholders was

employed to a comparable degree in the organisation of the project teams themselves.

Through several concrete events and reflection on those, the teams had to realise their role in

acting as role models for the transdisciplinary interaction with the stakeholders (including ques-

tions such as ‘are decisions taken in meetings with all members present or in the realm of a

private office excluding some?’, ‘Are these decisions documented and implemented, or

not?’, etc.). The successful mutual knowledge transfer requires a horizontal team composition

and participatory forms of communication within the transdisciplinary innovation team. In

order to achieve this, the project’s own internal FTI teams have to express and demonstrate

this participatory communication and organisation to the stakeholders. This realisation

continues to pose a major challenge to the overall project.

Fifth, we faced a number of challenges in direct interaction with stakeholders that made us

question our innovations. It became obvious that the crucial basis for any form of stakeholder

cooperation is trust. This trust had to be built and maintained through means of regular meet-

ings, transparency, openness and more so by offering something of immediate importance to the

stakeholders. Due to the experience of the WUA team, we learnt to be open to the direct needs

of the stakeholders as long as it still contributed to collaboration on the respective innovation.

With regard to the salinity assessment tool, questions arose regarding the innovation itself and

the degree to which we should pursue the interaction with disinterested stakeholders (salesman

challenge). We learnt the need to regularly reassess our innovations selected as ‘plausible

promises’, identified stakeholders and objectives of interaction. Furthermore, the problem of

high-external-input technologies was faced. Here, modes of drafting proposals together with

the stakeholders have to be discussed more systematically in the future. Furthermore, we

realised that the nature of the chosen innovation packages resulted in interacting with male-

dominated stakeholder groups. Specifically female agricultural knowledge is hardly accounted

for in the overall process. An exception forms the tacit knowledge of one female farmer

interacting with the afforestation team.



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Of these challenges, the most interesting and at the same time most difficult is the high degree

of linear thinking, further strengthened by hierarchical and authoritarian structures. It reflects

mainly on two areas: the composition and distribution of roles and responsibilities within the

interdisciplinary FTI teams in the project as well as in the confrontation of the external, scien-

tific knowledge and the local, stakeholders’ knowledge. We consciously speak of a confronta-

tion. The prevailing linear thinking within the project internal teams, as well as in the interaction

with stakeholders, leads to a polarisation of the different types and forms of knowledge that we

are trying to merge for the enrichment of the overall knowledge stocks as well as their carriers

(actors) involved. This, for example, resulted and/or was expressed in practical plans on how to

out-scale the production of an innovation before having tested the validity of it in a real-life

setting.

The linear, hierarchical thinking furthermore substantially weakened agency within the

group. Designating one researcher as ‘team leader’ resulted in the rest of the group leaning

back, waiting for the team leader to move. While this might depend on leadership and manage-

ment styles, in the transdisciplinary teams it resulted in a high level of demotivation, especially

as long as the leader did involve the rest. Action independent of the action of the leader was

hardly taken.

In the interaction with local stakeholders it nevertheless became obvious that despite the

present culture of a top-down, hierarchically organised society, bottom-up approaches proved

most successful. Researchers who created an egalitarian, horizontally structured atmosphere,

showing signs of respect with regard to the farmers’ experience and knowledge were by far

more successful in receiving open, seemingly honest answers that could form the required

basis for cooperation. In opposite cases, farmers did not give answers at all, became insecure,

or obviously felt uncomfortable. Accordingly, the FTI team explicitly opting for a participatory,

transparent bottom-up approach in interacting with the stakeholder group was one year after

starting the process, the first to sign a formal agreement for cooperation, including a concrete

12-step plan, with the respective Water Users Associations. Besides relating it to the bottom-

up approach, this can also be traced back to this FTI team engaging with the process more

actively than others. The success of this so far suggests a clear superiority of non-linear thinking

and participatory approaches in terms of stakeholder interaction over linear thinking polarising

Q18knowledge stocks and their carriers. This finding is especially interesting in the very hierarch-

ical setting of Uzbekistan, where linear thinking and approaches have dominated knowledge

transfer, education and agricultural extension systems since early Soviet-times. Yet, how

sustainable this is and how the WUA continues the path of institutional strengthening during

a time of less interaction with the project will be seen in 2010. Q19

Consequently this ‘follow the innovation’ process is crucial for testing, adapting and finalis-

ing our, Q20partly very complex innovations to a degree that we can rightly argue that they make

sense and pose a potential for development in the real-life local setting of rural Uzbekistan. Yet,

it is a difficult, time and resource intensive process that requires the energy and openness of

every project member and stakeholder involved. It requires a degree of openness that allows

and encourages every single member of the transdisciplinary FTI team to pull down boundaries,

and meet with ‘the other side’ on an equal level for the mutual exchange of explicit and tacit

knowledge to a degree that new knowledge is formed and innovations are finalised according

to scientific rationale and local sense.

Acknowledgements

This research was conducted under the ZEF/UNESCO project ‘Economic and Ecological Restructuring of

Land and Water Use in the Region Khorezm (Uzbekistan): A Pilot Project in Development Research’,



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funded by the Ministry Education and Research (BMBF), Germany (Project Number 339970D). The

authors would like to thank the transdisciplinary FTI-teams (project members and local stakeholders) men-

tioned in this article for the continuous learning process achieved. Further, we would like to thank Iskandar

Abdullaev, Lisa Oberkircher and John Lamers for valuable comments on this article, as well as Oybek

Egamberdiev, Inna Rudenko, Akmal Akramkhanov, Nodir Djanibekov, Elena Kan, Farida Abdullaeva

and Bashorat Ismailova for their hard work in fostering the FTI process. We thank Maike Retat-Amin

for her valuable assistance in editing and formatting.

Note

1. The case study presented therefore contributes to an emerging body of literature on transdisciplinary

research; see for instance www.transdisciplinarity.ch/d/Bibliography.

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The authors

Dr Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of

Bonn is the Coordinator of the social science research in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land

and Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’.

Q24

,[email protected].

Mehmood Ul Hassan, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of Bonn is the

Facilitator of the ‘Follow the Innovation’ component in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land

and Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’. ,[email protected].

Dr Peter Paul Mollinga, Senior Researcher, Center for Development Research, University of Bonn who

formerly coordinated the social science research in the ZEF-UNESCO project ‘Sustainable Land and

Water Resources Management in Uzbekistan’ and was responsible for designing the ‘Follow the Inno-

vation’ component. ,[email protected].



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Documents

Transdisciplinary innovation research in Uzbekistan – one year of ‘Follow-the-Innovation’