Transforming roles of public extension to strengthen innovation: lessons from Bangladesh.

The rapidly evolving nature of agricultural innovation processes in developing countries requires agricultural extension to make necessary transformations of classical roles that previously supported linear knowledge circulation and adoption. New ways of conducting extension activities are emerging that involve facilitation of interactive communication among multiple stakeholders and a wide range of intermediation tasks within (and between) stakeholders operating in different social spheres. Drawing on lessons from an agricultural extension for development project in Bangladesh we examine whether and how the public-sector agricultural extension agency has transformed its roles in order to strengthen agricultural innovaion as an outcome of effective functioning of innovation systems and collective actions. The findings suggest that agricultural extension projects miss the opportunity to deliver extension services as collective and systemic functions. We argue that this is due to institutions that curb the agricultural innovation system function within the linear paradigm of technology transfer, under-estimation and depreciation of intermediary roles of extension personnel (e.g. brokering, negotiating, convening), and inability to foresee 'extension methods (e.g. training, demonstration)' as facilitation of learning and knowledge embedding processes.