There is no single best way to turn research results into useful products. In the agricultural sector the task is typically taken up by governments. Agricultural education and extension provide farmers with research-based information and demonstrate and support the uptake of new technologies. In recent decades many governments have reduced these services and increasingly rely on private companies for the implementation and distribution of innovations (Klerkx and Nettle, 2014). Rather than fully privatized services, involvement of the private sector in agricultural extension is often established through PublicPrivate Partnerships (PPPs). Such partnerships change the rules and procedures among the parties developing and introducing agricultural innovations (Spielman et al., 2010). This paper presents and discusses a diagnostic framework for understanding institutional change related to agricultural innovation. In particular we focus on initiatives and discussions about agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. An important motivation of PPPs for agricultural innovation is to enhance market integration of smallholder farming and therewith increase food security and reduce rural poverty. Institutional factors have been central in recent studies focusing on agricultural innovation. By and large these studies address institutions as the organisational arrangements, rules and routines that guide the behaviour of the actors involved in the innovation process. In fact, changing the organisational arrangements is considered a core element of innovation in agriculture, as a condition for successful introduction of new agricultural technologies and improved production (Hall, 2004; Hounkonnou et al., 2017). As this paper will argue, conceptualising institutions as sets of rules and related normative guidelines for behaviour provides a useful but limited understanding for institutional change. As we will argue, a performative notion of institutions, focusing on patterned operational practices of a particular society or group in society, provides a more useful understanding of institutions. A performative understanding of institutions helps to trace different responses to introduced innovations. Such an approach to institutions also helps policy makers and development agencies to deal with local responses more adequately, in particular when facing seemingly misplaced and dismissive responses from smallholder farmers. A second component of our diagnostic tool for institutional change related to agricultural innovation is technology. In most literature on agricultural innovation, technology is considered an input. Agricultural technologies typically consist of a package of technical objects, guidelines and instructions for (improved) farm-management practices. This understanding of technology tallies with a rule-based understanding of institutions. As elaborated in the next section, this is problematic as it assumes a single best way of technology use. A proper institutional diagnostics requires a perception of technology as an affordance, anticipating unforeseen adjustments and (partial) rejections of introduced technology, affecting the change process (Glover et al., 2017). Conceptualising technology as an affordance opens up questions about multiple groups benefitting in different ways from an introduced technology. Technology as an affordance complements a performative understanding of institutions.