Inside the hive: First day of CGIAR Scaling Week 2026

More than 400 people from over 40 countries and 100 organisations gathered in Nairobi with a shared question: how do we turn promising innovations into lasting change?

Timothy J. Krupnik, one of the opening speakers at CGIAR Scaling Week 2026, came with an unexpected superpower: beekeeping. Before grad school, a global career as a scientist, and becoming Director of CGIAR’s Scaling for Impact Program, he ran a beekeeping business. 

A hive, he observed, brings tens of thousands of individuals into a coordinated effort that none could accomplish alone. It was an apt image for a week built around the people, partnerships and practical work needed to scale innovation.

The Main Tent at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) soon felt like a hive of its own. Researchers, practitioners, funders and partners had come together to exchange ideas, make connections and move beyond talking about scale towards making it happen.

CGIAR Chief Scientist Sandra Milach challenged participants to think and act “beyond reach.” Counting how many people encounter an innovation matters, but the deeper test is whether it helps them make a difference in their lives. 

Her call was to look beyond attendance and uptake figures and ask what has changed for the people an innovation is meant to serve.

Welcoming participants on behalf of host institution ILRI, Dr Siboniso “Boni” Moyo, Deputy Director General for Research, Partnerships and Impact, spoke about the difficult passage between promising research and impact that lasts beyond a project cycle. 

Recounting an effort to coordinate livestock drought relief across 600 kilometres in Zimbabwe, she showed what it takes to connect ideas, people and action across distance. She also pointed to ILRI’s ambition to improve 300 million lives by 2030: a goal that demands more than isolated successes.

Tim returned to the partnerships that make such ambitions possible. 

As a young scientist, he learned that the presentations he used with fellow researchers did little to persuade private companies to invest in his innovation. He had to understand what mattered to them and learn to make his case in their language. Once he did, the conversation changed.

That experience led into Day 1’s central exercise: the art of the ask. 

Everyone in the Main Tent was invited to write down three prompts: I’m trying to… My ask is… Find me… 

Then came the harder part: turning to the person beside them and saying the ask aloud. 

The exercise pushed participants to be direct, to ask for one meaningful thing, and to give it a timeframe. No lengthy introduction. No apologising for taking someone’s time. No waiting until the wording was perfect.

A rough ask, made to the right person, can start something. A perfect ask kept to yourself cannot.

What was happening across the hive?

Across the open sessions, scaling emerged as a series of decisions made with partners: understanding real demand, testing whether systems are ready, connecting science to finance and delivery, and allowing local people to shape what grows. The discussions also challenged a simple count of people reached. Lasting impact depends on ownership, affordability, resilience and evidence that an innovation works in its context.

In “From forecast to funding,” five AI tools prompted a discussion about those decisions. AI can speed up analysis, participants said, but it cannot replace carefully assessed evidence or expertise in the subject matter. A promising tool needs a wider system ready to use it, a design centred on people’s needs, and a clear answer to who will own, implement and pay for it when project funding ends.

“Connected intelligence for scale” explored an earlier step: understanding demand. A stated need is a useful signal, but it becomes actionable only when people can validate it, put it in context, identify who can act and establish a timeline. CGIAR’s developing Demand Intelligence Platform and FAO’s ATIO Knowledge Base aim to help connect such signals with innovations and investment decisions. Participants stressed that local intermediaries and human feedback remain vital to interpreting what the information means.

Other sessions focused on the connections that help good ideas travel. In “Connected hubs, collective impact,” participants saw scaling hubs as places to bring regional practice and global expertise together, broker partnerships and share evidence. They called for closer links among hubs, universities, national research systems and startups, alongside a shared place to find innovations and learn from efforts that fell short.

“From innovation to investment” examined the TAAT Clearinghouse as a bridge between CGIAR science, governments and development finance. Its work involves turning validated innovations into investment propositions that speak to specific audiences, then connecting them with national research, extension and private sector delivery channels. The measure of success must follow that whole path, through institutional adoption to farmers’ use.

In “Public–private partnerships that turn research into markets,” participants brought the discussion back to trust and practical fit. They urged partners to examine companies’ track records with farmers and their place in the value chain, recognise what each side contributes, and agree on expectations early. Those steps help a partnership move from a shared interest to work that can last.

But who gets to decide what should scale? In “From principle to practice: Equity, legitimacy and power in scaling,” participants argued that innovation and scaling are never neutral. Alongside questions of availability, affordability and awareness, they asked whether people are able to use an innovation and have the autonomy to choose it. Responsible scaling means examining who sets priorities, who makes decisions and who benefits—then involving those affected in shaping the path forward.

That question carried into two sessions on scaling in difficult contexts. “Scaling against the odds” argued that reach alone says little about impact in fragile settings. Responsible scaling can require patience, local ownership and adaptation—and sometimes a decision to hold back. Enterprise models must also remain affordable and viable when economic conditions, infrastructure or policies change.

In “Scaling for Impact in fragile and conflict affected states,” discussion of South Sudan’s seed systems showed why solutions should begin with what farmers already grow and value. Community seedbanks may strengthen livelihoods and social cohesion, while women involved in seed production and distribution need a stronger voice in decisions. Understanding communities, governance and markets is part of the work.

Across the sessions, participants were asking who needs to be involved, what evidence they need, what might fail, and what happens when a grant ends. Each conversation brought another part of the hive into view.

The beehive metaphor was about more than being busy. It was about purposeful work together: understanding what each of us is trying to achieve, finding the people who can help, and building the conditions for innovations to make a lasting difference. Day 1 gave participants a simple place to start: make the ask, then do the work together.