Brandon University's Rural Development Institute (RDI) has received $182,000 in government funding for a two-year research project on rural innovation.

RDI director Dr. Bill Ashton says the project is aimed at gaining an understanding of how people in food development achieve success and commercialization. He says rural areas are often considered to have a risk-adverse culture, which this project will examine.

"My sense is that people in rural areas are always solving problems," Ashton says,"so we actually want to sort of dig in a little more to see if there's truth behind risk adverse culture because producers are taking risk all the time on their seed, on their fertilizers, on when to sell and when to hold in terms of their product. So we want to begin to see what that looks like."

Other barriers to rural innovation is a lack of venture capital and fragmented government services. Ashton says this project is important because innovation is essential for growth and prosperity.