Pages: 266
December 09

Innovation is crucial to long-term economic growth, even more so in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis. Making innovation-driven growth happen requires action in a wide range of policy areas, from education and science and technology to product and labour markets and trade.

The OECD and the World Bank are joining forces to work more closely on innovation, particularly insofar as this issue is a crucial factor in the success of development policy, notably in middle-income economies. In this volume, the two organisations jointly take stock of how globalisation is posing new challenges for innovation and growth in both developed and developing countries, and how countries are coping with them. The authors discuss options for policy initiatives that can foster technological innovation in the pursuit of faster and sustainable growth.

The various chapters highlight how the emergence of an integrated global market affects the impact of national innovation policy. What seemed like effective innovation strategies (e.g. policies designed to strengthen the R&D capacity of domestic firms) are no longer sufficient for effective catch-up. The more open and global nature of innovation makes policies for innovation more difficult to design and implement at the national scale alone. These challenges are further complicated by new phenomena, such as global value chains and the fragmentation of production, the growing role of global corporations, and the ICT revolution. Where and why a global corporation chooses to anchor its production affects the playing field for OECD and developing economies alike.

Chapter 1:

Introduction - why innovation matters

Chapter 2:

Competition, innovation and growth - theory, evidence and policy challenges

Chapter 3:

Korea and the BICs (Brazil, India and China): catching-up experiences

Chapter 4:

Priorities for growth in OECD economies

Chapter 5:

The development of global innovation networks and the transfer of knowledge

Chapter 6:

Innovation strategies for growth: insights from OECD countries

Chapter 7:

Different innovation strategies, different results - Brazil, Russia, India, China and Korea (the BRICKs)

Chapter 8:

Technology diffusion in the developing world

Chapter 9:

Foreign investment and the development of telecommunications in Latin America

Chapter 10:

Broadband as a platform for economic, social and cultural development - lessons from Asia

Chapter 11:

User-driven innovation and communications development