Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Capacity: Are Innovation Brokers the Answer?

This paper examines the role of innovation brokers in stimulating innovation system interaction and innovation capacity building, and illustrates this by taking the case of Dutch agriculture as an example. Subsequently, it reflects upon the potential role of innovation brokers in developing countries' agriculture. It concludes that innovation brokerage roles are likely to become relevant in emerging economies and that public or donor investment in innovation brokerage may be needed to overcome inherent tensions regarding the neutrality and funding of such players in the innovation system. The Dutch experience suggests that innovation brokers need to be contextually embedded, and are unlikely to become effective through a centrally-imposed design. Hence, we conclude that stimulating their emergence requires a policy that supports institutional learning and experimentation. In the evaluation of such experiments, it is important to note that innovation brokers tend to play intangible roles that are not easily captured through conventional indicators.Agriculture, Developing Countries, The Netherlands, Innovation Broker, Neutrality, Institutional Learning, Context-Specific, Innovation Systems, Capacity Strengthening, Agricultural Extension

Market Linked Innovation Systems : Opportunities for Strengthening Agricultural Development in Ethiopia

This study on Strengthening Market Linked Innovation Systems was produced at the request of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ethiopia. It offers a perspective on how innovation processes and capacities could be further developed in support of Ethiopia’s Economic Growth and Transformation Plan (EGTP) and the Agricultural Growth Programme (AGP). More specifically it provides recommendations to the Netherlands Embassy on strategic priorities in supporting development of agricultural sector in Ethiopia

e-Reverse logistics for remanufacture-to-order : an online auction-based and multi- agent system supported solution

Due to the rapid obsolescent nature of consumer products, the remanufacture-to-stock strategy, in which remanufacturers tend to collect certain amount of end-of-life products, remanufacturing them as many as they can and keep these remanufactured products in stock waiting for customers come to buy, is not always an optimal solution. Under this circumstance, remanufacture-to-order policy, as an effective complement, provides a good trade-off for remanufacturers between meeting consumers’ demand and, in the meantime, keeping the inventory cost at a lower level. To remanufacture the used items, the manufacturer must retrieve them from the market where they are dispersed among consumers. This is accomplished by means of a reverse logistics chain that is comparable to the new product distribution system in reverse. However, the current reverse logistics do not respond to remanufacture-to-order at an efficient level. Therefore it is a necessity to develop a novel infrastructure, which can deal with these issues. This paper presents a framework called e-reverse logistics that aims at filling this gap. The major features and architecture of the proposed e-reverse logistics are detailed in this work

The Impact of Information Technology(IT) in Trade Facilitation on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Sri Lanka

This paper examine the extent of automation of trade facilitation in Sri Lanka and to assess the impact of automation on SMEs in the country.Impace of Information Techonology, SMEs, Sri Lanka

Dynamic communication across supply chain services

This thesis deals with the design of communication protocol solutions across a Supply Chain Management System. These solutions are capable of operating in multi-agent environments, and allow customers to order services online. As part of two Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, it is divided into four main sections. The first issue deals with a dynamic communication protocol, which aims at agent-to-agent operability in an open environment, such as the Internet. In the second section, we proposed a protocol correctness system, which enables detection of deadlock errors in communication protocols. Further, a comparison of the proposed validation techniques and those currently in use, is provided. Next, the problem of routing and scheduling in the transport industry was tackled, resulting in the development of an autonomous route scheduling system, MIDAS (Mobile Intelligent Distributed Application Software). The MIDAS server uses wireless technology to communicate with different parts of the system, which was investigated in the final section of the thesis. The MIDAS system was tested on devices with a GSM-enabled network connection, with results indicating that it takes less than thirty seconds for information to be processed and transmitted. Further, studies relating to this topic could involve extensions of the proposed systems using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). While undertaking my PhD, I wrote the following five papers, which were published in various journals and conferences: 1. Towards the Right Communication Protocol for Web Services, International Journal for Web Services Research (IJWSR), June 2005 2. MIDAS - An Integrated E-Commerce Solution for the Australian Transport Industries, International Journal on Web Engineering and Technology (IJWET), 1(3), 353-373, October 2004 3. MIDAS’s Routing and Scheduling Approach for the Australian Transport Industries, International OTM (OntheMove) Workshops, November 2003 4. An XML-based Conversational Protocol for Web Services, 18th ACM International Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), 1179-1184, May 2003 5. Towards Robust and Scalable Infrastructure for Web Service, IEEE International Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT), December 200

A Multi-Agent Architecture for Distributed Domain-Specific Information Integration

On both the public Internet and private Intranets, there is a vast amount of data available that is owned and maintained by different organizations, distributed all around the world. These data resources are rich and recent; however, information gathering and knowledge discovery from them, in a particular knowledge domain, confronts major difficulties. The objective of this article is to introduce an autonomous methodology to provide for domain-specific information gathering and integration from multiple distributed sources

Studies in Trade and Investment: The Development Impact of Information Technology in Trade Facilitation

This chapter examines the extent of automation of trade facilitation in Sri Lanka and assesses the impact of automation on SMEs in Sri Lanka. The focus of the study was on the experiences of the garment industry, which has been an important driver in the Sri Lankan economy in recent years.Trade facilitation, automation, garment industry, IT, SMEs, export, customs, Sri Lanka