ICT and social media as drivers of multi-actor innovation in agriculture

Summary

Innovation occurs as a result of the creativity and interplay between actors combining new and/or existing (tacit) knowledge. As input to a report on agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (EU SCAR, 2013), we analyzed the use of social media and other information and communication technologies (ICT) tools as drivers of innovation in agriculture and other sectors. We found, that there is a great potential for using existing social software tools and platforms for communication, interaction, knowledge sharing, preservation of information and as such stimulate multi-actor innovation. Apart from a few exceptions, our review of social software systems revealed that agriculture as a sector to some extent has adopted the general social software programs as tools for networking and knowledge sharing, but the potential to use it for crowdsourcing and cooperation or as a supplement to face-to-face interactions has not yet been exploited.