Regional systems of innovation in the Arab region

Economic Systems of Innovation in the Arab Region, 2016

This paper employs both the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the definition of systems of innovation used in the literature to examine the existence, characteristics and implications of the regional systems of innovation in the Arab region. We examine three hypotheses, that the regional systems of innovation exist but are characterized by serious weaknesses in the Arab region compared with other world regions, that the structure of the economy has a significant effect in the performance of innovation systems in the Arab region, and that the poor Arab systems of innovation have serious implications in the Arab region. We explain two common characteristics of Arab regional systems of innovation concerning poor subsystems of education, S&T, R&D and ICT institutions in the Arab region and concentration of R&D activities within public and universities sectors and small contribution of the private sector in R&D activities. We find that the major implications are the poor performance of the Arab region in terms of S&T indicators, competitiveness indicators, technology achievement index and poor integration in the knowledge economy index. Therefore, it is essential for the Arab region to enhance the institutions of higher education, S&T, R&D and ICT to build the Arab regional systems of innovation and to achieve economic development in the Arab region.

2011

This paper employs both the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the definition of systems of innovation used in the literature to discuss the systems of innovation in the Arab region. We explain that the two common characteristics of poor Arab regional systems of innovation is apparent from both the poor subsystems of education, S&T and R&D and ICT institutions

International journal of innovation and knowledge management in the Middle East and North Africa, 2016

Purpose: The Arab region has generally failed to catalyse and convert knowledge production into innovation effectively, and/or add value to products and services in the different economic sectors. Insufficient government commitment for science, technology and innovation (STI) and research, poorly designed national STI policies, and government that is ineffective in doing business are some of the factors causing these disparities. This paper identifies the main areas on which the Arab Countries should focus to allow innovation to take off towards a knowledge-based society in the region. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study adopts the comparative analysis approach to identify best practices and successful experiences from other regions of the world, and map the results to the particulars of the Arab region to identify discrepancies in public policy and institutional structures of the different national STI platforms in the region. Findings: The Arab countries face a host of hurdles, including a lack of focus in research priorities and strategies, little awareness of the importance of good scientific research, inadequate networking, limited collaborative efforts and brain drain, a disconnect between policymakers, scientists and society in generating, sharing and utilizing scientific knowledge, and, to a higher extent, insufficient funding and a lack of the required technical workforce. Lack of the technical 'critical mass' in specific/priority areas of research, and similarly in certain productive economic sectors, has greatly affected these sectors region-wide.

Arab countries are entering a new phase of economic development with an emphasis on the crucial role of innovation and technology in promoting sustainable development, and close the gaps with the rest of the world as quickly as possible. Technological capabilities and innovation have always been a fundamental component of economic growth and welfare. The word of innovation uses a lot to describe something new, amazing or unique, even we talk about superior ideas or arts, without distinction between these things especially from it's nature, in the fact not every thing new or amazing is called innovation that can make the abilities of industrial firms and whole economy become more strong. The term of innovation was used for the first time by Schumpeter, he was among the first authors to stress the important role of innovation in his book "The Theory of Economic Development" (1934). There, he not only described economic development as the disruption of the regular circular flow caused by the introduction of novelties, but he also dedicated a large part of his presentation to the description of the entrepreneur as the economic actor who kicks off economic development (Hanusch and Pyka, 2006). This study could achieve some results, and suggest that despite some important achievements in the field of the study, there are still big challenges facing the Arab countries to make a high jump towards innovation and technology economies and better societies. To achieve the goals of the study, it's divided to an introduction and literature review, section 3 provides a summary of Socio-economic characteristics of GCC and Rest of Arab countries.

E/ESCWA/TDD/2017/Technical Paper.1, 2017

Research and policy recommendations for development have long focused on technology transfer, especially for the purpose of industrialization. At the turn of the century, the focus moved towards information and communication technology (ICT): making available the benefits of new technologies, especially ICT, was a clear target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs, target 8F). Today, achieving a knowledge economy is a key objective for developing countries. Recently, innovation has become a principal aspect of development. Goal 9 of the 2030 Agenda on industry, innovation and infrastructure stipulates building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and fostering innovation. Consequently, innovation has become a core aspect of development, like infrastructure and industrialization. Research centres and international organizations have undertaken intensive activities to analyse the impact of innovation on countries’ production systems and its contribution to development, so as to derive policy recommendations, especially within the context of the 2030 Agenda.

2015

9 (OECD, 2010a). p 2. 10 Ibid., p 3. 11 As a case in point GHG emissions in OECD countries could be reduced to 14 Gt of CO 2 by 2050 due to the possible generalization of some key technologies compared to their current (2010) emission levels of 30 Gtprojected to more than double by 2050 if no effective measures are taken (Ibid., p 5). 12 The reader may refer to Annex 1 of (World Bank, 2013)-p 141-142for a useful theoretical framework establishing the contribution of TFP growth to output per worker' growth. 13 (World Bank, 2010), p5; italics highlights are ours. 20 Schumpeter's quotes are borrowed from John Elliott's introduction to (Schumpeter, 1983). Originals are from Schumpeter's book "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy". 21 The fact that such debates were echoed by a widely known liberal and pro-capitalist publication (The Economist, 2014) does indicateat leastan absence of an ideological a priori bias. 22 (The Economist, 2014). Italics highlights are ours. 23 (ESCWA, 2014b) 24 (OECD, 1996), p 14; highlights are from the original source. 25 Ibid., page 14.

2018

We show that the space in which scientific, technological and economic activities interplay with each other can be mathematically shaped using techniques from statistical physics of networks. We build a holistic view of the innovation system as the tri-layered network of interactions among these many activities (scientific publication, patenting, and industrial production in different sectors), also taking into account the possible time delays. Within this construction we can identify which capabilities and prerequisites are needed to be competitive in a given activity, and even measure how much time is needed to transform, for instance, the technological know-how into economic wealth and scientific innovation, being able to make predictions with a very long time horizon. We find empirical evidence that, at the aggregate scale, technology is the best predictor for industrial and scientific production over the upcoming decades. Knowledge production and organization represents the main activity of modern societies-"learning economies" 1 in which most of the wealth of a country is intangible, and the organization of the national innovation system 2 , and of diffused creativity 3 are the crucial capabilities for success. Therefore, in the last thirty years the relationships between science, technology and economic competitiveness have become an important focus for social sciences in general and economics in particular 4,5. Even though the layman narrative links science, technology and economic productivity in a direct flow 6 , actual interactions on the fine-grained scale of individual activities are typically multi-directional and far more entangled 7,8. The literature on industrial organization and evolutionary economics changed the description of the innovation system from a directed chain to a co-evolution of distinct processes driven by different motives and routines 9. This non-hierarchical and multi-directional interplay among the individual components of the innovation system is indeed the footprint of a complex system. Differently from the traditional social science approach, the new techniques of Economic Complexity do not try to average out the complexity of the system, but embrace it by explicitly building on the heterogeneity of individual actors, activities and interactions to extract the relevant and statistically robust parameters characterizing the system. Trying to recover the qualitative insights 10 and the few quantitative attempts 11,12 of the heterodox economists and social scientists, researchers used this approach to study unobservable features and capabilities of countries 13-15 , and to unearth unexpected synergies among different activities 16,17 (see also 18). Following this line 11,16,17,19 , here we create the network of interactions between the different human activities involved in the innovation system. Differently from previous analyses, that describe the interactions between very general and broad activities (e.g., science and technology) or represent specific case studies (e.g., relationships between technological development and productivity in the semiconductor industries), our construction provides, for the first time, a disaggregated picture of the bidirectional impact between all the possible pairs

Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2013

This paper employs both the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the definition of knowledge and knowledge indicators used in the literature to examine the existence and development of the knowledge economy in the Arab region. We fill the gap in the Arab literature and present a more comprehensive analysis of the development of knowledge indicators in the Arab region. Our findings support the first hypothesis that the knowledge economy exists in the Arab region and coincides with a substantial knowledge gap compared to other world regions. Our results corroborate the second hypothesis concerning the variation in knowledge indicators, according to the structure of the economy in the Arab region, and support the third hypothesis concerning the poor and slow progress in the trend of knowledge-related indicators in the Arab region. Therefore, it is essential for the Arab region to enhance the knowledge economy and indicators to achieve economic development in the Arab region.

UNU-MERIT Working Paper Series, 2010

In this paper we use the systematic, descriptive and statistical approaches, fill the gap in the Arab literature and present a more comprehensive analysis of the important ways of enhancing the incidence and transfer of knowledge in the Arab countries. Different from the conventional view in the literature that use the conventional classification of countries according to income level, an interesting element in our analysis is that we use a more comprehensive classification not only by income level but also by geographic location and the structure of the economy to examine the important ways of enhancing the incidence and transfer of knowledge in the Arab countries. We find that somewhat surprising the classification of Arab countries by income level provides inconclusive evidences in terms of capacity to create knowledge. Our findings support the first hypothesis that the components of knowledge show positive correlation with economic growth and hence can be used to enhance economic growth and promote human capital in the Arab countries. Our results corroborate the second and third hypotheses that the incidence and transfer of knowledge can be enhanced by institutional support in the form of subsidies and incentives to knowledge components (education, R&D and ICT). The major policy implication from our findings is that in order to benefit from integration in global knowledge economy the Arab countries should create the most appropriate political, economic, educational, technological and scientific institutions. The Arab countries should stimulate local efforts and incentives for building and transferring knowledge and should pay more attention to enhance institutions setting, especially, effective system of intellectual property rights protection to motivate the creation and transfer of knowledge. A part from the role of Arab governments, it is essential for Arab societies to support the culture aimed at fostering and enhancing the incidence and transfer of knowledge.