A SYSTEMIC PERSPECTIVE TO HORTICULTURAL INNOVATION - THE CASE OF ENERGY SAVING INNOVATIONS IN GERMAN HORTICULTURE

To meet worldwide challenges such as restricted natural resources, climate change, food-security or higher consumer demands, innovative solutions in agriculture and its subsectors are required. In order to make agricultural innovation systems more effective, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms of innovation processes. Nonetheless, innovation research has been marginalized by horticultural and agricultural scientists in Germany in the past. Recently, changes in agricultural and horticultural knowledge and innovation systems have been reported worldwide. Yet, it is unclear, if and how these changes have influenced the way innovations are being brought about in the sector and among actors. The sectoral innovation system approach by Malerba (2002, 2004) provides an analytical, but not methodological framework for the description and analysis of innovation systems. We therefore developed a conceptual framework based on this approach, taking into consideration specific characteristics of the agricultural sector. For the analysis we determined different sector-levels within the system in order to localize where innovation takes place. We used a method-mix consisting of e.g., literature reviews, expert interviews, expert workshops and the Delphi method in order to analyse the agricultural innovation system and its subsystems (horticulture, plant production, lifestock-farming). For each of the subsystems one case study was carried out. This paper presents results from the horticultural case study. We used value chains to look at innovation processes around a specific single solution or group of solutions. For the subsector horticulture the case energy saving innovations in the greenhouse value chain was chosen as an example that addresses current societal, ecological and economic challenges. Results showed that innovation activities in horticulture are strongly connected to other sectors; but cross-sector communication is poor. The method is suitable to study innovation mechanisms in the heterogeneous horticultural sector on different levels of interaction and allows for a systemic understanding of innovation.