As a response to a severe economic and environmental crisis facing banana production in Guadeloupe (French West Indies, FWI), different agro-ecological innovations such as improved fallowing and intercropping are being developed. As a contribution to this process, we characterized farmers’ flexibility for adopting these innovations. Using a typological approach we characterize the diversity of the different banana management systems, their performance and their compatibility with farmers’ decisional framework. Revealing these internal compatibilities we were able to assess the flexibility of the different farm types for adopting the innovations. Our results showed that flexibility may vary greatly, both among farm types for a given innovation, and among innovations for a given farm type. The results are then used for discussing the relevance of the innovations to different farming situations.