Systems of Innovation and Underdevelopment (original) (raw)
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Innovation systems and developing countries
2005
Connecting the theory of National Systems of Innovation with Development theory offers new insights for a global and interdisciplinary analysis of the current problems of underdevelopment. Some of the main contributions of classical Development thinking are seen to be most relevant. The role of different social actors is highlighted. Attention is driven to concrete processes of interaction., as well as to their economic, political, institutional and cultural contexts.
Innovation Systems and Development
Ideas, Experience, and Prospects, 2014
This chapter analyzes the connections between development and the innovation system approach, which represents a powerful instrument for understanding and orienting policies to promote learning, innovation, and competence building. It considers innovation, knowledge, and systemic learning as central elements of development, and establishes a bridge between the territory, social and political contexts, and economic activities. The experiences discussed in the chapter underline the importance of understanding the unique characteristics and development trajectories of each region and country. Learning and innovation are not restricted to a group of Cassiolato, de Matos, and Lastres
Systems of innovation and underdevelopment: an institutional perspective
Science Technology Society, 2006
Based on recent field survey data collected in three African countries, this study examines interfirm and inter-organizational collaboration in African industry. Three sets of interactions were analyzed namely: firm-firm linkages, including user-supplier and subcontracting relationships; firm-university linkages; and firm-industrial association linkages. Employing univariate and multivariate analysis, we examined the channels and institutions for collaboration and tested three hypotheses. Collaboration with universities was expected to promote greater firm-level technical innovation resulting in greater output and product quality but little incidence of such collaboration was recorded. However, collaboration among suppliers of inputs, subcontractors and firms was found to have contributed to significantly better performance.
Systems of Innovation for Development in the Knowledge Era: An Introduction
Systems of Innovation and Development, 2003
At the turn of the millennium, as radical transformations affect the ways we produce, reproduce and organize our very existence, the challenges to social and economic development seem, at times, overwhelming. What is the nature of these transformations? What are the interests and forces orienting them? What are the impacts of these transformations on the productive and innovative capacities of developing countries? How can they best face these challenges? What are the policy implications?
Innovation systems in developing countries
This paper provides a review of what every developing-country policymaker should know about low-carbon innovation. It explains what is unique about low-carbon innovation, why low-carbon innovation systems matter, and in what ways they need to be strengthened. However, building low-carbon innovation systems is a resource-intensive and long term endeavour, the outcomes of which are neither guaranteed nor predictable, and no single approach fits all national contexts. To mitigate the risky nature of building innovation systems, the public sector needs to provide financial support alongside private sector investments. Innovations emerge from a system of interconnected firms, (research) organisations and users all operating within an institutional environment that supports the building and strengthening of skills, knowledge and experience, and further enhances the interconnectedness of such players. Successful development and adoption of low-carbon technologies in developing countries depends on the presence of appropriate policies and innovation systems. Appropriateness means they are responsive to their local context in terms of available resources, comparative advantages, societal characteristics and cultural practices. Innovation skills and knowledge should be built in tandem with the adoption of low-carbon technologies and practices. An advantage for poorer developing nations stems from the weaker entrenchment of vested interests and less well established energy infrastructures. These provide opportunities for more easily steering development in low-carbon directions, avoiding the high-carbon pathways that industrialised countries have taken. International initiatives could help to build low-carbon innovation systems in developing countries, but they should align with national policies of countries in order to better enable self-determined low-carbon innovation.
Developing countries and innovation: Searching for a new analytical approach
Technology in Society, 2008
This article argues that the technological innovation is a contextual process whose relevance should be assessed depending on the socio-economic condition it is embedded in. Without this, technology-led economic policies (of Catch-Up varieties) are unlikely to meet the needs of most people, especially in countries where innovation and poverty reside side by side. We analyse micro-level account of the cognitive and socio-economic context within which innovations arise and argue that a process of real importance is being sidelined: the ability to innovate under 'scarcity' conditions. In this process, idiosyncratic innovative paths are followed, which we argue have been least theorized and which may provide solutions for urgent and otherwise unsolved problems. We sketch a scarcity-induced innovation framework to analyse such paths and provide a brief account of institutional aspects of planning and policy in this approach. r
Developing National Systems of Innovation
Developing National Systems of Innovation, 2015
Economic development in countries behind the technological frontier requires innovation both by firms, and by farms, hospitals, and other organizations that provide goods and services. This is not innovation in the sense of introducing something new to the world economy, but of introducing something new to the particular context. In general, in economies that are significantly behind the frontier and that are aiming to catch up, the new practices put in place by firms tend to be modelled on practices that have been employed for some time by firms at the frontier. However, empirical research shows clearly that innovation of this kind has many of the attributes of innovation at the frontier. A large share of these efforts fails. Success generally requires a considerable amount of learning by the firms by doing and using before they acquire the needed capabilities. This view of the process through which developing economies acquire increased capabilities to produce goods and services is relatively new among economists who study the process. Traditionally, economists have focused on the investments needed. They saw the problem of mastering new ways of doing things as mostly involving "technology transfer", a term that played down the difficult learning processes involved. In the early writings of development economists on the need for firm learning, the focus was on what the firms themselves needed to do. More recently, there has been growing recognition that firms are part of a community of organizations and institutions whose interactions affect the direction and efficacy of learning. The concept of an "innovation system," which for some time has been employed by scholars of innovation in advanced industrial countries, is now more often used to denote and characterize the complex collection of actors and interactions that are involved in innovation in countries behind the frontiers and striving to catch up. The research projects in this book focus on a particular part of the workings of innovation systems: the interactions between universities and public laboratories and firms, and how these interactions affect the efficacy of the efforts of firms to acquire new capabilities. In recent years, the relationships between universities and firms, and how these relationships x Developing national systems of innovation xi Acknowledgements We would like to thank Professor Richard Nelson and his Catch Up Project for the tremendous incentive and help provided for this research. Our international research is a child of the Catch Up Project. Launched at Columbia University in May 2005, the Catch Up Project provided the first opportunity for researchers from 12 countries and three continents to make contact and exchange information about a potential research project. In September 2006 in Milan, the Catch Up Project held a meeting hosted by Franco Malerba to improve the project proposal for presentation to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Professor Richard Nelson always helped our theoretical and empirical discussions, and generously used his knowledge to improve our proposals. We would like to thank IDRC and its Research on Knowledge Systems (RoKS) Program for funding our research in three continents and 12 countries. The guidance, help, and enthusiasm provided by Jean Woo, since the RoKS Workshop in Ho Chi Minh City in January 2007 and during all phases of our research, were very important for our work. In addition, the Globelics network provided opportunities for our groups to come together in South Africa, Mexico, and Argentina to both organize our research and present preliminary results. Funding from IDRC helped attract other funding sources in many countries. We would like to thank the Mexican agency Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), the Argentine agencies Consejo
Science and public Policy, 2002
An intractable issue for many developing countries is in building local technological capability (LTC). Contemporary capitalist economies have amply demonstrated that building LTC is a necessary condition for any nation aspiring to develop technologically. In industrial and newly industrialising countries, the national system of innovation (NSI) has been shown to be a major factor in technological advancement in the past century. We have identified the important features of the NSI framework, especially as related to the less developed countries. Using Nigeria as an illustration, this paper presents some insights into how a less developed country can articulate strategies aimed at building LTC using the NSI features as guides for relevant policies.