Autonomous Innovations in Rural Communities of Developing Countries II—Causal Network and Leverage Point Analyses of Transformations
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the introduction, it is argued that a new research approach is needed to compare and analyze the impact of practices in communities around the world, aiming to solve complex and difficult problems in social-ecological systems from a comprehensive perspective. Strengthening this claim in the introductory part will increase the credibility. Therefore, one or two more sections supporting this claim should be added to the introduction.
In addition, it would be appropriate to highlight the innovations in the method section a little more.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. In the abstract, there should be an explanation as to whom exactly are the respondents. I recommend the authors shorten the abstract as much as they can.
2. Authors should add some theoretical discussion for every figure.
3. Advantages and motivation of your work should be highlighted in the introduction section.
4. The sections of future works and conclusions are properly written.
5. Include additional thoughts to widen the door of opportunity for other scholars, particularly in terms of the factors and models.
6. Why authors choose the mentioned problems and how the results are better compare to other existing methods, please write some more detail.
7. Please remove all the grammatical errors and cite some latest related references.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
I was very pleased to review your paper. You approached an indeed relevant and important topic of understanding and affecting the process of innovation emergence in a very thorough and systematic manner. However, in the following I would like to discuss some deficiencies which came to my mind while I was reviewing your work. First of all, the chosen approach (system thinking and consequent concept of leveraging points) is somehow lacking the comparison with other possible tools for innovation conceptualization and management which are abundant and exist for high variety of specific areas of application. So, not challenging your approach, I would like to see some motivation, justification and comparison with other alternatives – that would also contribute to a very limited literature review.
Another concern arises from the discussion part when you reflect on intervention possibilities. In my opinion without clear identification of the “final” users such discussion remains quite abstract. In other words, who should implement such interventions? Are we targeting local government, entrepreneurs, etc… these actors apparently have different power to influence the situation and are likely to follow different means to do that so they might benefit differently from the analysis and identification of leveraging points. Overall, despite all thorough work, the proposed methodology is somehow lacking the practical application guidelines. At which stage of the innovation such mapping should be best undertaken? Who should initiate and perform it? You mentioned that the specific application to facilitate the mapping process is being developed, so that could explain the lack of practical instructions to perform the analysis (and that is not the main focus of the paper as well), but still, in my opinion the work would significantly benefit from more clear targeting and more specific implications for practitioners (i.e. users of the proposed approach).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Accepted
