Exploration of Community Innovation Systems

The purpose of the project reported here is twofold: 1) to assess how community and regional innovation systems have been responding to societal challenges confronting rural South Africans, and 2) to evaluate how the two systems are aligned with each other for increased societal impact. The specific objectives of the study were to:
- Investigate if community and regional innovation systems exist in South Africa;
- Explore how such systems respond to both economic and societal challenges;
and
- Establish if there are linkages between the different systems with the aim of
encouraging active participation by local rural communities.