Innovation Policy: A Guide for Developing Countries

Innovation in all its Forms, Particularly Technological Innovation, has Become a Crucial Driver of growth, enhancing competitiveness and increasing social well-being in all economies of the world. In a broad and diversified sense, innovation comprises not only the creation of new technology, but even more important, it includes the diffusion and use of products, processes, and practices that are new in a given country context. Inspired by the experiences of both industrial and developing countries, this book focuses on the needs and issues of the latter.

Aiming at creating a climate in which innovative initiatives can flourish and multiply, innovation policy, by its nature, touches such diverse policy areas as education and training, skills development, science and research, the business environment, information and communication technology, and other infrastructure. This guidebook adopts a holistic perspective and presents in detail the actions required in such a varied set of policy areas, which typically work in silos. It also offers insights into the implementation of innovation policies in the difficult contexts of low- and medium-income countries characterized by the resistance of innovation systems to significant improvements.

Innovation Policy: A Guide for Developing Countries is geared toward the policy-making community. This Large group includes not only those who deal directly with technology, industry, science, and education but also those in charge of finance and economics. Indeed, it includes the top government leadership, which plays a crucial role in successful innovation policies.

The importance of innovation is being recognized increasingly in developing countries. Innovation-led growth and innovation-led socioeconomic development are becoming major strategic thrusts. In that context, this is both a comprehensive and a timely book providing a valuable guide for innovation policy setting in developing countries. It is extraordinarily well researched and will be a very useful tool to policy makers, academics, and practitioners as a source of rich material, nicely gathered and coherently organized all in one place.---RAMESH MASHELKAR President, Global Research Alliance, South Africa Former Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India

The heart of the development process is the bringing into effective use of technologies and other practices that are new to the country---that is, innovation. Strangely, up until recently, this fact has been only barely recognized in the economic development literature or in the accepted canons of good development policy. This World Bank volume changes all that. It provides a clear and persuasive analysis of the fundamental role of innovation in the economic development process and of the policies that are needed to support the process.---RICHARD R. NELSON Henry R. Luce Professor of International Political Economy Columbia University, New York, USA