Innovation Adoption - Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
Innovation Adoption - Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - Beef CRC - Beef Genetic Technologies
| 12 January 2009 |
 Q. How do you know you’re a beef producer?A. You can build a fence out of bailing twine and WD40. It’s an old joke, but one which shows when it comes to thinking outside the square, cattle producers can hold their own. But it seems it’s a different story when it comes to adopting new technologies, with research indicating the beef industry is dragging the chain. However, University of Queensland PhD candidate Hayley Moreland hopes to change that, by developing a new framework for research and development organisations, extension and marketing agencies to promote innovation adoption. “Studies suggest both sheep and cattle producers are less likely to seek out information or make changes that will improve their business when compared to grain growers and vignerons,” Ms Moreland said. “The beef industry is innovative, but the more radical changes are less likely to be adopted.” Starting out studying genetics and biochemistry, Ms Moreland has also worked in the world of marketing. “Despite my enthusiasm for the products I was selling I often wondered why people weren’t jumping at the chance to adopt new technology in their business,” she said. “When the opportunity to work with the Beef CRC’s accelerated adoption program arose I thought I’d stop thinking about it and try to find out why.” Ms Moreland believes while a lack of time and money is often blamed, they aren’t the only reasons why producers don’t adopt new technologies. “Producers should not shoulder all the blame. Researchers also have to look at what they can control in developing the technology itself and how they communicate with industry,” she said. Ms Moreland’s preliminary findings are based on the interviews of 22 people from research and development organisations, universities, policy makers and extension agencies. Each person was asked to identify what they thought were the major innovations in the beef industry. The panel was then asked to assess the individual characteristics of each innovation. The expert panel identified three key innovations, namely BREEDPLAN (Estimated Breeding Values), DNA Markers and Meat Standards Australia (MSA). |
 “There are five main characteristics which help promote adoption of new innovations. They are the relative advantage of the technology, how complicated the technology is for the end-user to understand and how easily it can be implemented into their current system,” she said.“Adoption also depends on whether the end-user can observe and trial the outcomes of the innovation.” Ms Moreland said the expert panel found that while all three innovations had obvious relative advantages, BREEDPLAN and DNA Markers were complex and could not readily be trialled and the outcomes observed. “MSA on the other hand has been fairly well accepted by industry in a relatively short period of time. BREEDPLAN has been around for a lot longer but it is still not really understood by the majority of industry end-users,” she said. “DNA markers are still new, and it may be too early to expect their wide-scale uptake yet.” Ms Moreland’s research suggests breeders may find BREEDPLAN and DNA markers complex. This combined with the low short term trialability and observability may reduce producers’ confidence in the technology. “It takes a long time to see the results from a change in genetics. The life cycle of a slaughter steer can be up to 27 months. For a breeding animal, it can take several generations to witness a noticeable change,” she said. “If you’re asking people to take a leap of faith and invest their time and money in technology that could benefit them in five or 10 years time, they really need to trust the technology.” Ms Moreland said although scientists are good at articulating why their research is important, they often overlook characteristics associated with the uptake of their research. “Scientists are great at explaining why an innovation is better than what has been used previously. But they often fail to explain the complexity, compatibility, observability and trialability of the technology,” she said. Ms Moreland said her results indicate everyone from the lab to the paddock need to be on the same page. Ms Moreland said even though MSA is based on complex science, it is a good example of how new technologies can be adopted by industry if the message is clear. In order for beef to achieve the maximum standard, Ms Moreland said people understand there are a variety of things that need to happen. “If a producer is targeting tenderness, they understand breed plays a role, so too does the animals’ nutrition and management and how they are processed.” “What MSA does is say ‘ok you’re choosing to do x so that could mean you may have a lower quality product. However by doing x, y and z you can overcome that’.” She said this is evidenced in northern Australian production systems where producers rely on bos indicus content. Bos indicus content offers the adaptive traits that cattle need to survive in the harsh environments of northern Australia, but can also decrease meat tenderness. Ms Moreland said by crossbreeding animals, tender-stretching carcasses and using different killing methods, producers can utilise the production value of the bos indicus but still maintain a satisfactory eating quality. “It was clear from the very beginning that there were a number of advantages of adopting MSA. Although there were some weaknesses, there were ways to overcome them. I think that’s an important point to stress,” she said. Another aspect of Ms Moreland’s research project is looking at how information is communicated between the lab and the paddock. She said in the past, following the release of a new technology, producers were simply expected to use it. But she said it’s not as simple as that anymore. End-users do not want to read the research papers. They want to be involved in it from the outset. “A prime example is the BeefSpecs calculator. This new tool underwent producer trials so people could play around with it themselves,” she said. “There is a lot of complicated science that underpins this tool, but all the producer sees is an easy to use ‘plug and play’ tool”. “Producers could plug in different scenarios and see how the information it provided could improve their individual enterprises.” “The big challenge is that producers will often try something but if it doesn’t meet their expectations they may throw the baby out with the bath water. Ensuring people get the right information at the right time will hopefully minimise that,” she said. Dr Heather Burrow, Beef CRC CEO, congratulated Ms Moreland on her efforts as Beef CRC’s first post-graduate student in “adoption science”. Dr Burrow said this type of research is desperately needed by industry to help significantly increase the impact of technologies in end-user beef businesses. “Hayley’s research represents a real wake-up call. Not only to the scientists responsible for developing new technologies but to the people trying to extend the technologies to industry, to ensure they consider the factors which ensure new technology is readily adopted,” she said. “It is very clear that in the case of complex genetic technologies, industry needs new ways of trialing the technologies for themselves to observe the huge potential impacts without risking their entire herd for generations to come.” Dr Burrow said this could be, for example, through easy-to-use computer games or working with seedstock breeders to monitor genetic progress in their herds or establishment of demonstration herds in industry. “CRC scientists and extension staff are urged to be as innovative in the transfer of their technologies to industry as they are in developing, packaging and marketing their products,” Dr Burrow said. “This will ensure far greater benefits accrue to industry from the use of new technologies.” |
| For further information, contact Alison Betts, Communications Manager, (02) 6773 3795 or 0439 405 077 |
