Business as unusual: CGIAR's next-level investment in scaling agricultural innovations

A fresh start for CGIAR 

A new year often means fresh starts—and that’s certainly true for CGIAR as it launches its new 2025–30 Portfolio this January (2025). CGIAR’s current Portfolio introduces: 

• 8 new Science Programs (building on CGIAR’s former 32 Initiatives and 5 Impact Area Platforms) 

• 3 Accelerators (designed to speed up gender equality, capacity sharing, and digital transformation) 

• 1 brand-new Scaling for Impact Program (aimed at helping CGIAR and its partners take their food system innovations to scale)
  

Scaling for Impact is CGIAR’s first unified effort to fully integrate and elevate research with scaling through a comprehensive, Portfolio-wide approach. 

— Scaling for Impact Program Full Design Document, 15 Nov 2024 

The challenge of reaching the “last mile” 

Despite decades of agricultural research for development, many promising innovations—new technologies, practices, and policies—often struggle to reach smallholder farmers and underserved communities. 

[A]doption and sustained use of innovations [. . .] has seldom generated the desired levels of widespread, inclusive, and lasting change to transform food, land, and water systems in a climate crisis.” 

— Scaling for Impact Program Full Design Document, 15 Nov 2024 

Fortunately, CGIAR can draw on thought leadership from experts in the field who have recently produced major agenda-setting, scientific research and approaches that highlight best practices and lessons learned in building better public-sector innovation systems.    

Borrowing from the private sector: Innovation portfolio management 

A recent paper by Marc Schut and colleagues details the ways that public-sector organizations can profit from adopting private-sector innovation portfolio management practices. This paper, co-authored with colleagues from Cornell University, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and Wageningen University, offers public-sector organizations a starting point for managing their innovation portfolios in a structured way to determine where research efforts and funding are best invested in translating research dollars into tangible impact. 

By adopting the principles and practices of innovation portfolio management, the paper argues that non-profit R&D organizations like CGIAR can: 

1. Make better decisions
   Tools like “stage-gating” provide clear checkpoints at different phases of a project. Researchers can pause, review results, and decide whether to move forward, make changes, or redirect resources. This encourages early course corrections to channel energy (and funds) into the most promising ideas. 
2. Stay nimble
   A structured approach might seem limiting, but it actually frees organizations to be more agile. By having a clear framework for making decisions, researchers can adapt quickly when circumstances change. 
3. Maximize limited resources
   In the private sector, venture capitalists invest in a balanced portfolio: some safe bets, some high-risk “moonshots.” Public research organizations can similarly spread risk by investing in a mix of incremental improvements and transformational ideas, making sure some projects push boundaries while others deliver near-term impacts. 
4. Improve performance and impact
   Tracking progress, identifying roadblocks early, and making data-driven decisions all lead to faster, more efficient research. Ultimately, this translates to stronger real-world outcomes—breakthroughs that actually help farmers, communities, and ecosystems thrive.
   

Collaboration is key 

No single organization can solve such megatrend challenges as climate change, global poverty, or food insecurity alone. Schut and colleagues emphasize the importance of collaborative efforts within and across organizations, especially in nonprofit research and development. It takes a village; a collective effort. It takes people sharing knowledge, resources, and even failures to really drive progress. Fortunately, collaborative spirit is something non-profits are good at. And innovation portfolio management can provide them with a framework for making their collaborations even more effective and strategic—able to harness all the collaborative energy to meet big-picture goals.  

The Portfolio balancing act

The authors recommend that non-profits find a balance between agility and long-term vision. Some of the most impactful research, especially in areas like agriculture, takes years, even decades, of work to bear fruit. While private-sector companies are often pushed to generate short-term returns in quarterly profits and the like, most non-profits are obliged to take a more balanced approach, one that includes finding ways to support big ambitious projects—those moonshot ideas—that could be transformative, even if the payoff is way down the line. 

CGIAR’s innovation management journey 

A detailed progress report of what CGIAR has achieved so far in advancing innovation management methods, mechanisms, and mindsets is documented in an earlier 2024 publication by Schut et al. entitled Innovation portfolio management for responsible food systems transformation in the public sector: Lessons, results and recommendations from CGIAR. This paper makes the case that managing innovation portfolios such as CGIAR’s requires a focus on methods, to produce timely, appropriate, and quality data that can inform analytics and decision-making; mindsets, to ensure understanding, capacity and buy-in; and mechanisms, to inform allocation strategies toward responsible innovation and scaling. (Key messages from this publication are summarized in this CGIAR blog article.) An external study also published in 2024 by the Scaling Community of Practice, Mainstreaming scaling: A case study of the CGIAR, confirms CGIAR’s leading role in mainstreaming innovation and scaling management in the public sector. 

A “scaling” era for CGIAR
These publications point to a critical shift in CGIAR, which is focusing on scaling as well as innovating solutions, applying private-sector innovation management methods—from data-driven decision-making to strategic risk-taking to long-term thinking—to its public-sector work, and building productive collaborations and long-term vision needed to create environments where innovations can thrive and make the biggest difference. 

Want to know more? 

If you’re new to the topic of “innovation portfolio management” or just want to hear more, consider listening to this engaging discussion that introduces the topic. This 9-minute “deep dive” podcast, generated by Google’s NotebookLM tool and voiced by two user-friendly and informative AI hosts, is based (solely) on the source materials provided here. 

If you’re a “scaler” yourself or are interested in keeping up to date with agricultural scaling issues, consider joining the CGIAR Scaling Community Group on LinkedIn. It has 553 members and is moderated by Agnes Schneidt (a.schneidt [at] cgiar.org). Hope to see you there! 

Read the paper 

Innovation portfolio management for the public, non-profit research and development sector: What can we learn from the private sector? Innovation and Development,17 Sep 2024, by Marc Schut (CGIAR Portfolio Performance Unit [PPU] and Wageningen University), Ismail Adeyemi (Kwara State University), Benjamin Kumpf (OECD Innovation for Development Facility), Emma Proud (independent consultant), Iddo Dror (CGIAR PPU and International Livestock Research Institute), Chris Barrett (Cornell University), Donald Menzies (CGIAR System Organization), Julien Colomer (CGIAR PPU) and Cees Leeuwis (Wageningen University). 

Header photo: Scientists at the International Potato Center (CIP) genebank in Lima, Peru. CGIAR Centers, like CIP, manage some of the largest and most active collections of genetic material in the world. Photo by Luis Salazar/CropTrust