Brian Wright Agricultural and Resource Economics UC Berkeley 17 th Annual ICABR

1. Innovation of Innovation:A (Personal and Partial) Appreciation of the Contributions of Bob Evenson Brian Wright Agricultural and Resource Economics UC Berkeley 17th Annual ICABR Robert Evenson Memorial Ravello Italy June 19, 2013

2. Focus:Innovation of Innovation The Challenge: How to ensure • Innovation that is consistent with societal goals • Innovation that optimally exploits scientific advances • Diffusion and adoption of such innovations at optimal speed • Sustained performance of such innovation and adoption over generations

3. Agriculture as the Model Advantages: • Data availability • Relevance • My personal window on Bob Evenson’s contributions

4. Background • Earlier studies (including crucial contributions of Schultz and Griliches, Evenson’s mentor) • Application of economics to sociology of diffusion of innovation established: • Response to incentives • Role of education • Region-specificity • Demise of the myth of the “unresponsive peasantry”

5. Background • Earlier studies (including important contributions of Griliches, Evenson’s mentor) • Economic evaluation of rates of return to research • Agriculture as the example • Importance of data availability • Remarkable rates of return

6. Background Hayami, Ruttan, Binswanger • Response of direction of research to economic returns: • Empirical evidence • Theoretical rationalization

7. Prior Achievements • Empirical verification of economic responsiveness of farmers to incentives including innovation opportunities • Establishment of high rates of return on US agricultural research • Verification of theory that research can be an effective, (if under-supplied ), public good

8. Unanswered challenges: How to conceptualize a system of agricultural innovation of an appropriate global scale? How to design and implement it

9. Key challenges for Innovation of Agricultural Innovation Systems: Design Funding Implementation Evaluation

10. Evensons’s Focus: Design of innovation missions and their global integration Implementation: national and international Evaluation: private and social

11. 1. The Design of Innovation Missions Innovation as an economically guided activity Farmers and Blacksmiths as pioneers of “open source” innovation International research centers as upstream research providers with an evolving role Established importance of local adaptive research capacity Dependence of extension on innovation supply Emphasized and evaluated empirically the complementarity of national and international innovations

12. The Design of Innovation Systems The supply of basic research Pioneering modeling of innovation as search using extreme value distributions (with Kislev) Empirical verification Emphasized development of capacities for local research, and research management

13. The Design of Innovation Systems 3. The design and role of patent systems - used citations - constructed concordance

14. Implementation of Innovation of Innovation Institutions Worldwide efforts

15. (a sample of)Evensons’s Contributions:(my personal experience)Implementation of Innovation of Innovation Institutions Philippines work at IRRI Applied econometrics to questions from crop breeding to nutrition Mentored many leaders in the area

16. (a sample of)Evensons’s Contributions:(my personal experience)Implementation of Innovation of Innovation Institutions 2. EMBRAPA Brazil in the 1980s Followed Ed Schuh’s lead Project evaluation courses International education as sustained EMBRAPA policy Sustained leadership in institutional development Big and sustained payoffs

17. Evensons’s Contributions:Implementation of Innovation of Innovation Institutions 3. Construction and analysis of new patent and citation data sets Anticipated later widespread interest Farmer and Blacksmith agricultural innovations Famous “concordance” with Jon Putnam

18. Evensons’s Contributions:Implementation of Innovation of Innovation Institutions 4. Founding leader (with Vittorio Santaniello) of the Ravello meetings on the economics of agricultural biotechnology and the “gene revolution” Pasquale Scandizzo as the “Godfather” of the initiative David Zilberman and Carl Pray as carriers of the torch from a few dozen to hundreds of participants in a few years Created an international community of researchers

19. Evensons’s Contributions:Implementation of Innovation Institutions 5. Evenson as teacher and mentor of researchers who became key elements of all parts of the global innovation system In agricultural and development economics (look around you today!) AND beyond

20. Influence beyond agriculture • Found complementarity of domestic and foreign patenting in Indian Industry (with Anil Deolalikar) • Anticipated TRIPS discussions on effects on LDCs.

21. Influence beyond agriculture Evenson emphasized and demonstrated empirically the complementarity of national and international innovations: Influenced fundamental, highly cited papers in Business. For example: • Teece 1986 • Cohen and Leventhal

22. David Teece:“Profiting from Technological Innovation”Research Policy 15 (6) 1986 • Emphasized role of complementary assets in determining the success of firm innovation • Ability to adapt to (mainly demand side) features of the market • Importance of interaction with local manufacturing • Anecdotal post-hoc reasoning • Unclear prescriptive content

23. Wesley Cohen and David Leventhal • “Innovation and Learning: The Two Faces of R&D.”Economic Journal 99, 1989 • “Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation.”Administrative Science Quarterly 35 No. 1, 1990 • Importance of scientifically informed “gatekeeper” • Importance of local research • Cohen was a Yale student when Evenson was a professor

24. Summary:Evenson as Intellectual leader • History of science for agriculture in US • Design and performance of global and local agricultural research institutions • Analysis of economics of agricultural research • Construction and analysis of patent and citation data • Precursor of leading literature on innovation strategy in industry • Rare example of an economist whose contributions have had undisputable effect on the welfare of people.

25. SummaryEvenson as a human being • Visionary with his feet in the dirt, his hands on the data, and his heart in the right place • Exemplary human being • Wonderful mentor • Had a wonderful asset in his wife Judy • A friend forever

26. Thanks, Bob!