Institutionalizing occupational safety and health (OSH) innovations often challenges researchers and practitioners, particularly when working with agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AgFF) workers. These three industries face many unique challenges, including remote worksites, long hours, frequent multitasking, variable weather conditions, and low profit margins, among others.^1–5 Because of these challenges, it can be difficult for employers and workers in these industries to prioritize OSH, particularly when the situation is not immediately life-threatening.¹ While OSH innovations can be difficult to put into practice at a large scale, they are, without question, needed. AgFF workers face disproportionally high rates of injuries (5.3 per 100 workers⁶) and fatalities (19.5 per 100,000 workers⁷) compared to the general working population (2.7 injuries per 100 workers⁸ and 3.6 fatalities per 100,000 workers⁹). These injuries stem from a variety of sources including machinery, animal handling, chemical exposures, and weather,^10,11 making prevention efforts even more challenging. Beyond health and safety outcomes, these injuries and fatalities can have broader consequences, including lost productivity, increased financial burden, and business closures.¹²

Though much work has been done to develop innovative solutions to OSH issues among AgFF workers, research has demonstrated that few solutions are ever widely adopted or institutionalized.^13,14 Even those innovations that are can take, on average, 17 years to reach this stage – a widely accepted estimate based on past implementation science efforts.¹⁴ Further, these findings reflect only innovations that are developed in research settings or other manufacturing settings, neglecting many innovative OSH tools developed in situ by AgFF workers. These innovations are unlikely to spread far, if at all, as workers within these industries often lack the resources, knowledge, and time needed to evaluate, scale up production, market, and disseminate products, or navigate the legal aspects of such efforts.

Incubators and acceleration programs have been designed to aid entrepreneurs in many business sectors with launching new products or innovations. For instance, the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) is a 7-week program designed to “[accelerate] the economic and societal benefits of National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded and other basic research projects that are ready to move toward commercialization.¹⁵” Throughout the process, participants work toward better understanding target consumer needs so that they may effectively market and distribute their solutions.¹⁵ Other incubator programs additionally offer support and mentorship in areas such as product testing, applying for patents, large scale production, distribution, and marketing. While these programs have proven to be quite useful in their goals, OSH innovations for AgFF worksites are rarely found within their portfolios, with incubators often featuring more profitable innovations than those in the OSH domain.

In this brief report, we will discuss a literature review and web search exercise conducted to inform the development of an incubator specifically targeted at OSH innovations for AgFF populations. As a first step in designing the incubator, the study team assessed peer-reviewed literature and websites for existing incubators and accelerators to identify key components of successful research to practice (r2p) efforts.

Briefly, the literature review replicated a 2017 study of r2p initiatives by Tinc et al,¹⁶ focusing specifically on manuscripts published between 2016 and March 31, 2023. Five databases (PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, PsychInfo, and ProQuest Dissertations) were searched for studies pertaining to r2p in AgFF safety and health. The specific keywords and inclusion-exclusion criteria used are identical to those presented in the prior study.¹⁶

R2p examples included in the analysis focused on OSH for AgFF populations, as they are defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). Though important to the wellbeing of AgFF workers, education-only initiatives were excluded from this study, as prior research has documented that AgFF workers often face more significant barriers such as cost, access to technologies, or the feasibility of implementing particular technologies when it comes to the adoption of OSH innovations.¹⁷

Web searching activities were designed around existing incubators, accelerator programs, venture capital, and governmental programs, including those with a specific focus on AgFF innovations. Going forward we use the term “incubator” to refer to all four forms of support. Incubators searched included: The Yield Lab Institute and The Yield Lab Latin America, SproutX, Sparklabs Cultiv8, RootCamp, Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Techstars, Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, Nebraska Combine, NSF I-Corps, Capital Factory, Rockstart, Urban Future Lab, Innovation Incubator, AG Launch365, Le Camp, Blueprint Health, the Agricultural Incubator Foundation, and Launch Academy. There are several important nuances to gathering this data worth noting. Specifically, many incubators include multiple programs. We sought to include that program or family of programs which appeared to be the culmination of the incubator’s activities or most closely related to AgFF OSH. Numerous incubators offer multiple forms of support, ranging from cash investment to competition opportunities to access to resources (cloud computing credits, land, laboratories, etc.). In our assessment we attempt to differentiate cash versus in-kind support based on publicly available information. Some incubators, largely those that are backed via venture capital, require renumeration in the form of equity in the company whereas other incubators charge for access to resources. The degree of transparency in presentation of these costs online varies significantly, introducing some uncertainty into our findings. In summary, the key limitation of this assessment is the ability to parse publicly available website data into a common framework.

In total, 182 unique articles were identified via the literature search; of these just 11 publications pertaining to 7 innovations met the inclusion criteria. The web search activity identified two success stories related to AgFF OSH innovations; notably both involved robotic solutions that improve safety and in parallel reduce workforce effort. Table 1 provides a brief description of each included innovation and the relevant citation(s) or weblink.

Though the aim of this study was to understand what factors are necessary to develop a successful incubator for AgFF OSH solutions, this proved challenging. Though some of the peer-reviewed studies specifically examined barriers and facilitators to scaling up innovations, these same studies neither defined success nor demonstrated widespread adoption of innovations,^18–23 making it difficult to extract key factors for success. Though true, many of the factors described fit well within existing models of implementation research, which considers aspects of the intervention, individuals involved in implementation, inner and outer contexts, and the implementation process.²⁴

Included incubators did provide examples of innovations that have been taken to scale and could be considered successes. Presumably, the design of the incubators that support these innovations contributed to their success; though detailed information regarding these trajectories was beyond the scope of this work. Table 2 provides a summary of key characteristics of the 19 incubators reviewed. While incubator duration, financial supports, and renumeration vary, the most consistent finding is that nearly all offer mentorship and/or networking and some form of entrepreneurial curriculum or training opportunities.

While these searches provided limited novel information, a key finding relevant to this effort, as well as efforts of AgFF OSH researchers in general, was that solutions deemed successful via incubators tended to be financially lucrative for innovators and their champions. This is relevant, as few OSH innovations, particularly those developed for AgFF populations, will be immediately profitable, with workers and employers favoring low-cost solutions.^18,19,25 Instead, examples from the peer-reviewed literature demonstrated indirect financial savings, such as costs related to injury prevention, rather than significant profits.²⁰ Thus, it is necessary to harness other benefits of moving innovations to scale when designing safety innovations or an AgFF OSH-specific incubator.

However, this begs the questions; what are those alternate benefits, how do we learn about them, and how do we use them to our advantage to take AgFF OSH solutions to scale? We note anecdotal feedback from our target population that innovations that reduce regulatory burden, insurance costs, work effort, or task time are opportunities for innovators.

As prior studies have suggested, planning for effective r2p in the earliest stages of innovation development is imperative for developing solutions that AgFF workers want and can access.^16,26 This includes understanding the perceived benefits of those innovations, as well as what barriers to adoption need to be overcome. As such, for those innovators without research backgrounds, a key component of this incubator or future efforts should be training in this area, such as through the I-Corps Customer Discovery course.¹⁵ In addition to engaging innovators in the I-Corps Customer Discovery course, this incubator will connect innovators with diverse professionals who can help them navigate identified r2p barriers. Supporting this incubator are 17 advisory board members with expertise in a range of fields; for example, manufacturing, patent development, and marketing.

As researchers working within AgFF OSH, it is our responsibility to ensure that workers have access to and adopt the innovations that we dedicate our careers and resources to developing. Similarly, with our strong connections to multi-sector partners, we are ideally suited to help innovators from within the workforce, and who have the greatest knowledge of it, bring their ideas to fruition. As in many fields, this process has thus far been slow and resulted in relatively few adoption success stories. The exploratory searches described here aims to identify ways to make this process easier. To further probe for commercialization potential of safety innovations, one must track the innovations through to implementation to identify the “how” as well as the degree of impact on AgFF OSH, a task that was not possible within this particular review. Additionally, it may be of value to conduct a similar review of patents focused on AgFF OSH. This article provides an initial exploration of the factors that may improve the journey from idea conceptualization, to execution and worker adoption. However, there is much we don’t know about successful AgFF OSH r2p initiatives, and we invite others who are interested in this work to join us in improving our understanding of what it takes to get research into practice.