Sophie Alvarez, a consultant at CIAT, had the opportunity to facilitate a meeting of representatives of the four RTB participating Centers (Bioversity, CIAT, CIP, IITA) and other partners of RTB in CIAT Headquarters last March. The Research Program has been in the intensive process of establishing the foundations for results based management, thus dealing with impact pathways. In this workshop, the focus were flagship products and their pathways through intermediate development outcomes, with the end of improving the impact on livelihoods. RTB is looking to answer difficult questions regarding what it entails to implement results based management “for real”. The team has been leading with the concept of “flagship products” as a way to “encompass the big ideas for RTB research and research results” and “to go beyond a simple aggregation of the current product portfolio within themes, toward rational cross-theme, cross- center and cross-crop products and outcomes” (Graham Thiele, RTB Director). RTB has already influenced Consortium-level thinking on the inclusion of flagships as an indicator in annual performance monitoring.
Roots, Tubers and Bananas – Working on “Flagship Products” towards Intermediate Development Outcomes
