For more than a decade, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s innovation lab model played an influential role in global development. Through long-term, university-led research partnerships, these labs helped generate evidence, technologies, and institutional capacity to address persistent challenges in agriculture, nutrition, and food security, often in areas where short funding cycles and siloed programs made sustained progress difficult.
Among them, the USAID Feed the Future Horticulture Innovation Lab at University of California, Davis worked at the intersection of horticulture, nutrition, gender, and agricultural markets. Its portfolio spanned seed systems, postharvest loss reduction, value-chain development, and nutrition-sensitive agriculture, with a consistent emphasis on fruits and vegetables as high-impact but underinvested crops. The Lab supported applied research across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, trained hundreds of researchers and practitioners, and generated evidence that helped shift conversations about diet quality, livelihoods, and resilience.
One of the greatest strengths of the Horticulture Innovation Lab and the broader Innovation Lab ecosystem was its ability to build connective tissue across food systems, linking researchers and implementers, agronomy and nutrition, and evidence with decision-making, and connecting thousands of researchers globally. Responsible Innovations was established to carry this legacy forward, strengthening these connections while supporting collaboration today and building capacity for the future. Through this work, RI helps ensure that promising research informs real-world investment, scaling, and policy decisions.
Areas of Collaboration: RI works across the food system with funders, implementers, researchers, and private-sector partners to translate evidence into strategic choices. Our three core areas of work are:
- Food Systems Research & Evidence Synthesis: We curate and synthesize global evidence to inform outcome-based decision-making, identify local market and value chain gaps, and assess high-potential solutions. This includes rapid literature reviews, landscape and stakeholder analyses, and context-specific research to support responsible growth strategies.
- Responsible Innovation & Scaling Capacity Strengthening: RI strengthens organizational capacity to design and scale innovations responsibly, with a focus on inclusive management and equitable outcomes. We support more effective scaling that delivers tangible benefits for intended populations, using signature tools such as GenderUp, a facilitated, discussion-based approach to responsible scaling.
- Private Sector Implementation: We work with international and local partners to design and implement field-based pilots that test new products, services, and value chain innovations, generating practical insights that inform both impact and scale.
With equity as a driving ethos for effective solutions, RI prioritizes food system pathways that expand opportunity for smallholder farmers, women, and marginalized communities, including through underrecognized crops, inclusive value chains, and locally grounded innovation. We continue to focus on areas that are often overlooked or assumed, such as indigenous and locally adapted foods, postharvest and market constraints, gendered barriers to participation and benefit, and nutrition outcomes that are frequently promised but rarely measured.
How we work is just as important as what we do. At Responsible Innovations, our approach is grounded in five core values: Equitable Partnerships, Social Impact, Navigating Tradeoffs, and Diversity in Nature & Community. These values are reflected in our global network of RI experts- food systems scientists and researchers who advance work independently across topics and regions. Through the RI network, they connect to pursue interdisciplinary, integrated, holistic food systems solutions. RI supports this network through capacity strengthening, collaborative support, and opportunities for shared learning and thought leadership.
RI is focused on deepening its work in three critical ways:
- Strengthen the Bridge Between Research & Investment Helping donors and partners allocate resources where nutrition and equity returns are highest. This means making evidence accessible, relevant, and actionable for decision-makers—turning academic findings into strategic guidance for real-world investment.
- Advance Honest Conversations About Tradeoffs & Scalability Moving beyond “it works” to “it works here, for these people, under these conditions—and here’s what we’re trading off and what could go wrong.” Scaling at speed often means compromises on equity. RI helps partners navigate these real choices to achieve intended impact.
- Support Collaborative, Cross-Sector Approaches Recognizing that food systems are dynamic, political, and deeply context-specific. Change requires working collaboratively across sectors – funders, implementers, researchers, communities- not in silos. RI facilitates these collaborations and builds capacity for partners to work across boundaries.
Sustained, interdisciplinary research has shown what is possible when evidence is generated with intention. Responsible Innovations exists to ensure that evidence continues to guide responsible, equitable, and impactful action – today and into the future. We look forward to working with you.