Innovation and accelerating technological advancement are widely credited with improving global quality of life, though far more evidence of positive impact can be found in resource-rich populations. For decades, innovation and diffusion theory has been regularly applied in agricultural development interventions with the goal of reducing poverty and improving livelihoods through technological adoption and behavior change, but adoption rates remain stubbornly low in resource-poor communities and many smallholders remain impoverished and marginalized. Many working in development attribute persistent poverty in the Global South, at least in part, to limited local innovative capacity. Despite growing recognition that participation is critical to achieving sustainable solutions to poverty and environmental degradation, there is a persistent perception on the part of research and innovation firms based in the Global North that end-users in the Global South are receivers and adopters of innovation, rather than innovators themselves. Here I review existing literature to explore the roots and impacts of top-down transfer-of-technology approaches to development and contrast their motivations, methods, and impacts with those of alternative approaches to innovation. I also present a case study illustrating an alternative approach that employed savings-led microfinance as a platform for empowerment and participatory innovation, as well as how in-depth interviews were used to integrate smallholder perspectives on the intervention and on smallholder decision making in general. The results indicate not only that active smallholder participation and the support of enabling environments in agricultural communities are critical to the success of development programming, but also that farmer-centered innovation systems improve the usability, attractiveness, and likelihood of technology use in resource-poor communities and can reduce the financial risks that often accompany adoption. Such approaches may also have a significant empowerment aspect in allowing space for smallholders to be innovators, rather than just adopters of technology.

The book Participatory Technology Development: A Technique for Indigenous Technical Knowledge Refinement comprehensively presenting in depth about Participatory Technology Development, Experimentation, Indigenous wisdom of the farming community, perception aspects of farmers, scientists and extension personnel towards PTD and Technology transfer process. This will enable the different category of users namely the researchers, field extension workers, NGO personnel, student researchers etc, to understand the latest advancement in PTD and the ways and means of solving field issues and follow those ideas in their activities. Thus the book will certainly satisfy those readers who intensely use it.

A how-to-guide to get others in your organization to accept new technologies, processes, regulations, management, etc.