Entrepreneurship as driver of a ‘self-organizing system of innovation’: the case of NERICA in Benin

Abstract

Understanding how an innovation system emerges and develops is critical to its promotion and to ensuring successful innovation processes. Unfortunately, research on innovation system approaches has neglected the interplay between innovation and entrepreneurship and overlooked focus on how innovation systems occur. Based on a unique framework integrating the innovation systems concept and entrepreneurship theory, this study uncovers a process of innovation system formation: a ‘self-organizing system of innovation’ based on a promising technology: the New Rice for Africa (NERICA). This finding highlights the pre-eminent role of entrepreneurship in innovation processes, thereby posing new challenges for development actors and opening up a new avenue for research into innovations.