Innovative technologies leapfrog over intermediate technologies, or create ‘disruptive’ ones, distinctively different in concept or outcome from earlier approaches. This innovation plays a key role in enhancing productivity and economic growth and development outcomes by changing the way business is conducted. Agricultural innovation seeks to identify new approaches in the production, processing, or marketing of crops to improve social and economic outcomes for farmers, households and communities.

The Feed the Future Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research and CRSPs have a history of innovative approaches related both to their research process and their research topics. The CRSP programs were pioneers in working collaboratively with developing country scientists and other stakeholders in identifying key research for development topics and have continued to build collaborations world-wide. From the start, several CRSPs sought to establish interdisciplinary teams to address both the social and the technical aspects of agricultural research. The long-term funding horizon, a hallmark of the Innovation Labs for Collaborative Research and CRSPs, has allowed them to explore new directions in their research.

Each Innovation Lab is innovating in its own way. The Horticulture Innovation Lab is seeking innovative approaches to stimulate the creation of new technologies that decrease cost and increase efficiencies in different parts of the horticultural value chain. The Livestock-Climate Change Innovation Lab and its predecessor the Global Livestock CRSP along with the AquaFish Innovation Lab have expanded the application of existing technologies such as satellites and mobile phones among new groups of users: pastoralists and fishers, both to help them track market data as well as for natural resource management. The Peanut CRSP is expanding knowledge about the known consequences of aflatoxin contamination examining how these toxic molds interact with HIV and other diseases as well as childhood malnutrition.