The Role of Incubators and Accelerators in the Fourth Agricultural Revolution: A Case Study of Canada

The fourth agricultural revolution has resulted in technologies that could significantly support global efforts toward food security and environmental sustainability. A potential means for accelerating the development of these technologies is through business accelerator and incubator (BAI) programs. Using Canada as a case study, this study examines considerations around building agritech BAI capacity for supporting transitions to sustainable, resilient food systems. The research employs expert stakeholder interview and thematic coding methodology to identify opportunities, success factors, challenges/barriers, and actions/approaches for increasing agritech BAIs in a region/country. The study also identifies findings that are broadly applicable to BAIs in general and those that are specific to sectoral (i.e., agritech) and place-specific (i.e., Canada) contexts. The analysis identified four opportunities themes, seven success factors themes, eight challenges/barriers themes, and eight actions/approaches themes. Of the four thematic areas, success factors were the most broadly applicable to different sectoral and place contexts, and challenges/barriers were most specific to the agritech and (to a lesser degree) Canadian contexts. The study elucidates roles, challenges, and ways forward for building agritech BAI capacity in regions and countries for harnessing the opportunities presented by the fourth agricultural revolution and transitioning to sustainable and resilient food systems.

Building trust and sharing power for co-creation in Aboriginal health research: a stakeholder interview study

<sec id="st1">Background Historically, Aboriginal health research in Australia has been non-participatory, misrepresentative, and has produced few measurable improvements to community health. The Study of Environment on Aboriginal Resilience and Child Health (SEARCH) was established to co-create and co-translate research. Over the past decade, SEARCH has built a sustainable partnership across policy, research, clinical and Aboriginal community sectors which has resulted in improvements in Aboriginal health through enhanced services, policies and programmes. </sec> <sec id="st2">Aims and objectives This study describes the critical success factors behind SEARCH, focusing on how SEARCH was established, and continues to build trusting co-creative relationships. It also explores some continuing challenges and considers how the partnership might be strengthened.</sec> <sec id="st3">Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 stakeholders, purposively selected to obtain maximum diversity of roles and perspectives. Interview questions explored concepts that informed the development of SEARCH such as trust, transparency, leadership, governance, reciprocity and empowerment. Data was analysed thematically and written up using the qualitative description approach. </sec> <sec id="st4">Findings and discussion Nine critical success factors were identified: shared power; strong credible leadership; shared vision, shared goals; willingness to take risks; connecting across cultures; empowering the community; valuing local Aboriginal knowledge; ongoing investment and collaboration; and adaptability. While each of these factors has areas for ongoing improvement, this case example demonstrates that co-creation and co-translation of research in Aboriginal health is achievable and, indeed, necessary to improve health outcomes.</sec>

Challenges Confronting Whistleblowing and the International Civil Servant

More than 800 international governmental organizations employ thousands of civil servants. Whistleblowers in them confront problems that are both common and uncommon compared with their nation-state counterparts. Drawing upon the relevant literature, as well as stakeholder interview data, a research framework is developed identifying whistle-blower challenges. These dilemmas focus on loyalty, impartiality, and immunity, as well as the desire to hold organizations accountable in a governance system lacking in sufficient checks and balances. In addition, significant hurdles confronting whistleblowers include definitions and policies, retaliation and restitution concerns, visa and short-contract constraints, and a resource gap along with judicial composition issues. Future research is needed because international public servants play a significant role in ensuring a transparent and accountable global system.

Disseminating Chronic Disease Prevention “to or With” Canadian Public Health Systems

This article follows a conceptual article published in this journal by Elliott et al. and provides an empirical evaluation of the Canadian Heart Health Initiative—Dissemination Phase. Between 1994 and 2005, seven provincial research teams of the Canadian Heart Health Initiative—Dissemination Phase undertook projects to disseminate and evaluate the uptake of evidence-based chronic disease prevention strategies in their respective health systems. In this study, the authors draw from document and stakeholder interview analyses to assess the influence of strategic decisions about dissemination objects, targets, activities, and relationships between knowledge producers and users on the outcomes of chronic disease prevention programming. The findings show that successful dissemination strategies are not necessarily contingent on a high level of fidelity across these dimensions but depend more on the extent to which they are responsive to contextual variables within highly dynamic health systems.