'Capacity to innovate' is an emerging concept, especially in agriculture and rural development. There is no universally agreed definition for this concept, but many authors agree that it refers generally to the ability of actors to continuously identify constraints and opportunities, and to mobilise capabilities and resources in response – i.e. to produce and sustain innovation processes in a dynamic systems environment. Increasingly, capacity to innovate (C2I) is recognised as playing a critical role in successfully responding to a changing external environment. Facilitating and building this capacity through Research and Development (R&D) interventions is therefore crucial for building farming systems' adaptiveness and for improving the resilience and livelihoods of poor farmers and other rural actors. Yet there is no generally recognised set of metrics to assess C2I, nor is it clear how local actors understand and make use of C2I on the ground. This poster presents the first results of a study that explores various components of C2I and how local actors perceive them, and aims to develop indicators to assess them. We looked at four interventions that have aimed to improve capacity to innovate in Cameroon (Table 1) to identify which capacities were developed and how the intervention approach facilitated that change (if at all). A review of the literature was used as a starting point for developing an assessment framework to measure changes in C2I. We identified four 'core' capacities as being to a) envisage, create and be open to new ideas; b) to connect with others to access and understand new information and resources; c) to iteratively experiment, take risks, analyse and assess; and d) to work with others to achieve change. We conducted 61 semi-structured interviews and ten focus groups with producers, transformers, facilitators and researchers to explore these core capacities and their component sub-capacities. This included asking producers about specific tim