The Dutch innovation program KodA aims for sustainable arable farming practices by putting knowledge into practice. ICT is seen as a key enabler to achieve this. The program is setup as a private-public partnership, with a strong emphasis on the private business partners to be in the lead, resulting in a renewed cooperation between research and practice. In this paper, it is argued that this calls for a deviating approach for project management in which stakeholder management plays an important role. A new approach was gradually developed by setting up and running the program. The objective of this paper is to present and discuss this new approach. It is described that an important basis was already laid during the pre-phase of the project by creating synergy through a shared vision and goals. To avoid the risk of illegal public aid to private companies and also keep the administrative burdens low, a special program structure was designed. The core of this structure is that private and public project activities are kept separated with respect to financial resources. This also appeared to be a very powerful steering mechanism for spending public money. A facilitating key instrument was developed, called the KodA Miles, copied from the well-known Air Miles. Private partners ‘save’ KodA miles by investing in own activities related to the program’s objective and they can ‘use’ miles by requesting projects for an equal amount of public money that are related to their own activities. Another important part of the approach is an organizational structure that enhances program cohesion, accompanied by appropriate steering mechanisms. It is concluded that, despite of some critical remarks that can be made, this new approach for project management is a very suitable one for private-public innovation programs in which stakeholder management plays an important role.

To maintain the strong position of Dutch arable far ming, a transition should take place towards a sustainable, process-oriented farm management, based on actual information combined with state-of-theart knowledge. Management support systems and ICT can play a key role in this transition. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study result ing in a program proposal to work on this transitio n. The proposal focuses on cooperation in practical networ ks in which management tools are developed in a demand-driven way. Integration of new and existing ICT systems must support and sustain the activities in the networks. This will result in an infrastruct ure consisting of a personalized web portal, contai ning management supporting applications, a set of generi c tools and a facility for data storage. Attention will also be paid to the process of knowledge constructi on to accelerate adoption of management tools.

Dit rapport beschrijft een voorstudie, uitmondend in een voorstel, voor een nieuw programma, getiteld Kennis op de Akker. Het doel van dit programma is het geven van een innovatie-impuls aan de akkerbouwsector in Nederland, waarmee de transitie naar een duurzame, procesgeorienteerde bedrijfsvoering op akkerbouwbedrijven wordt versneld, zodat de positie van het gehele Nederlandse akkerbouw-food cluster op de wereldmarkt wordt versterkt. Het programma moet leiden tot een vernieuwde kennisinfrastructuur met vraaggestuurde kennisconstructie als speerpunt. Verbetering van ondernemers- en vakmanschap van de primaire producent staat hierbij centraal, ondersteund door de ontwikkeling van management tools waarin actuele kennis en bedrijfsspecifieke gegevens worden gecombineerd. This report describes a preliminary study for a new programme for stimulating innovation in arable farming in the Netherlands, in order to accelerate the transition to sustainable, process-oriented farming and strengthen the Netherlands' position in the world market. The emphasis is on improvement of the primary producer's business and farming skills, supported by the development of management tools which combine up-to-date knowledge and farming-specific data