The strategic deployment of innovation can be a central and significant enabling factor for agrifood system transformation, and act as an engine of ensuring inclusive, resilient and sustainable rural development. 

Innovation (in agrifood systems) is used as a verb (to innovate) referring to the process by which individuals, communities or organizations generate changes in the design, production or recycling of goods and services, as well as changes in the surrounding institutional environment, that are new to their context and foster transitions towards sustainable agrifood systems for food security and nutrition. Innovation is also used as a noun to refer to the changes generated by this process. Innovation includes changes in practices, norms, markets and institutional arrangements, which may foster new networks of food production, processing, distribution and consumption that may challenge the status quo (HLPE, 2019).

Agricultural innovation is the process whereby individuals or organizations bring new or existing products, processes or ways of organization into use for the first time in a specific context in order to increase effectiveness, competitiveness, resilience to shocks or environmental sustainability and thereby contribute to food security and nutrition, economic development or sustainable natural resource management (FAO, 2019).

Innovation consists of doing something new and different, whether solving an old problem in a new way, addressing a new problem with a proven solution, or bringing a new solution to a new problem (UN Innovation Network, 2019).