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Purpose
This paper aims to explore ethnic minority women's gendered perceptions and processes of agricultural innovation in the Northern uplands of Vietnam. The key research question asks how women develop innovations and learn new agricultural practices within patriarchal family structures.


Design/methodology/approach
In-depth interviews including life histories were conducted with 17 female and 10 male farmers from different socio-economic groups; participant observation and key informant interviews were also carried out.


Findings
Women's innovation processes are deeply embedded in their positions as wives and daughters-in-law. Their innovation tends to be incremental, small-scale and less technological, and they use innovation networks of women rather than those of the formal agricultural institutions, including bringing innovation knowledge from their birth family to the patrilocal household. Unlike men's perceived innovation, women's innovation is strongly linked to small-scale entrepreneurship, and it is a powerful approach in the sense that it strengthens the position of women in their families while improving the household economy.


Research limitations/implications
Identifying socially constructed innovation processes helps policymakers to rethink the introduction of ready-made innovation packages, both in terms of content and delivery, and to facilitate innovation for women, as well as men, in marginalized positions.


Social implications
Understanding the gendered processes of innovation instead of measuring gender gaps in innovation outcomes sheds light on women's interests and preferences, which can inform policies for supporting women's innovation and thereby lead to social change, including gender equity.


Originality/value
This paper contributes to the understanding of gendered innovation processes and entrepreneurship associated with agriculture in rural areas in non-Western ethnic-minority contexts, which is an area that past and current research on entrepreneurship has relatively ignored.

The Farmer Business School (FBS) is a participatory, action learning process focused on product and business development, and like the Farmer Field School, is a complex, multi-dimensional innovation with the potential to benefit large numbers of farming households economically, socially and institutionally. Scaling this approach requires rethinking both innovation and scaling. The paper draws on the insights of recent research which argues that a systems approach to innovation can better address the complexity of scaling processes and provides frameworks that link together processes of innovation and scaling. In examining these frameworks, the paper identifies the key role of partnership dynamics in those processes. Drawing on both the innovation and scaling literature and literature on partnership dynamics, a conceptual framework is developed to analyze how partnership dynamics contribute to and constrain the transition from small-scale 'niche' innovation testing led by researchers, to large scale integration of the approach by development partners in agricultural 'regimes'. Using case studies involving partnerships between a small international agricultural research grant recipient and six large development projects supported by IFAD multilateral loans and managed by government agencies undertaken in four Asian countries between 2011 and 2018, the study analyses the variable dynamics of the partnerships from initial networking to integrated collaboration, in the process of scaling the FBS innovation. Responding to the main research question about the drivers of partnership dynamics that contribute to scaling, the paper examines the partnerships in terms of six drivers which derived both from the literature and also from the empirical evidence presented in the study. The drivers include two dimensions of "fit", one about the convergence of research expertise and development demand, the other about the systematic integration of the innovation with different elements of the development actions. Other drivers relate to the issue of the convergence of project cycles, the stability of staffing in partner organizations, internal decision-making processes and the dimension of "partnering" – the value-based and behavioral aspects of collaboration. The paper also discusses the results of a "partnership health check-up" process conducted periodically during the partnerships and reconsiders the driver about system fit to understand the extent to which there had been a transformation in the conventional 'regime' approach to innovations and scaling. Finally, the paper proposes to adjust the conceptual framework based on the analysis of these partnerships for scaling innovations.