Innovation platforms to improve smallholder dairying in India and Tanzania
This report by ILRI reflects on the potential role of innovation platforms as spaces to identify and spread useful innovations associated with dairy production and feeding. It draws examples from MilkIT, a project to promote milk production in India and Tanzania. The idea of innovation platforms is introduced and it is shown how they can be used to define the key issues quickly. Furthermore, various changes in local practices that innovation platforms can stimulate are highlighted. The report also considers how local innovations can move beyond innovation platforms, and strategies to ensure that innovation platforms generate wide-scale changes are outlined. Important lessons from the report include: consider scaling early on, set a realistic time horizon and pay special attention to building sufficient local capacity in facilitation.