Abstract
Agricultural research has an important role for the world population by considering it as a strategic area for providing knowledge and technological base for agricultural production. This sector generates outputs, outcomes with respective impacts to rural zones, supply chains, economy, society and environment. The agricultural research & innovation represents a key piece for reaching the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG), especially to SDG 2 and 12 – to promote sustainable agricultural to eliminate hunger and improving nutrition, as well as to promote sustainable consumption and production, respectively. In order to check whether agricultural research organizations generate sustainable impacts, it is necessary to assess the impacts of their innovations. Funders, supreme auditing institutions, parliament, government, producers, supply chains, consumers and all society require transparency, efficacity, and effectivity of public organizations: they must highlight return of public investment as well as generate positive impact to the economy and society, and minimize negative impacts to the environment. Many public research organizations around the world have developed impact assessment processes. There is no flawed theories and practices approaches to impact assessment context. Therefore, this research seeks to fill gaps or to supplement the existing approaches. The main thesis objective is to summarize theoretical and practical studied approaches on impact assessment, including the experiences of four research organizations, and to develop a conceptual model of innovation impact assessment management system, especially applicable to agricultural research organizations. It adopts a methodology based on literature review, four cases of a comparative study of agricultural research organizations (Cirad and Inra from France, Embrapa from Brazil, and CSIRO from Australia), and benchmarking these experiences studied. The innovative contributions of this thesis are I. construction of a conceptual model of an impact assessment management system based on the open innovation process; II. the model of innovation impact assessment management system considers a cross-cut view of sustainability, integrating the environmental, social, political and economic dimensions; III. the innovation impact assessment system will be based on a unique managerial process that regards ex-ante and ex-post assessment stages according to its respective temporality; IV. the management of the innovation and impact assessment processes foresees the insertion of behavioral approaches such as concepts of holism, constructivism, transdisciplinarity and agile management practices as essential requirements for the effective engagement of the internal and external actors and the effectiveness of the evaluation process. This thesis has an original approach by bringing a research governance tool with an innovative focus on ex-ante and ex-post impact management, helping research and innovation organizations to become increasingly sustainable in their institutional missions, thus contributing to the achievement of the UN's sustainable development goals towards more productive and sustainable agriculture.