Abstract
The changing economic and social situation in the regions leads to the changing understanding of the potential which exists in the countryside. This research is based on the idea that farmers operate in close neighbourhood with the local communities and therefore they may hold a potential to start innovation processes in rural regions as agents of change. This may happen individually or together with the local community. Farmers are active in acquiring new knowledge and experience through collaboration with advanced innovation centres in research laboratories and universities, and sharing with the local community, thus making these innovations open. The success of innovators comes in line with the collaboration and therefore the defined three key factors of ‘innovating together’ in this research are: first, the shift from technical to organizational innovations; second, the shift from sectorial to territorial rural development strategies; third, the size of farms and rural enterprises due to the limited number of employees. Theoretical findings are followed by empirical investigations from representative data collected in Lithuanian farms in 2017, supported with relevant statistical analysis. Research results show that the potential for ‘innovating together’ in Lithuanian farms is rather weak when taking into account all three factors. However, there are reasons behind this which give insights for future developments in the field.
JEL codes: M14, O31, O35, R11, D85
Vilke, R.; Vidickiene, D.; Gedminaite-Raudone, Z. 2018. Innovating apart or together: Lithuanian farmers and rural communities. Proceedings of Annual 24th International Scientific Conference “Research for Rural Development 2018”, Volume 2, p. 160–166. online ISSN 2255-923X, ISSN 1691-4031, DOI: 10.22616/rrd.24.2018.067; [AGRIS; CAB ABSTRACTS; CABI full text; EBSCO Academic Search Complete; Web of Science Clarivate Analytics; Thomson Reuters Elsevier SCOPUS].