Innovation in Emerging Markets

Abstract

Innovation is an increasingly important driver of competitiveness for companies, industries, sectors, and entire nations. While we commonly think of innovation as focusing on products such as smartphones, folding bikes, and biotech and pharmaceuticals, or services such as e-banking, loyalty cards, and low-cost airline carriers, in fact the reach of innovation transcends the private sector – industrial and commercial – to encompass the public and nonprofit sectors as well. To illustrate, when I had the privilege of serving as Vice-president and Foreign Minister of the Republic of Panama in the government of President Martín Torrijos, we introduced a number of sweeping innovative initiatives. These included expansion of the Panama Canal, reforms of social security and pensions, and a push for Panama to build its own science with emphasis on the niches of biotechnology, infectious diseases, and bioprospecting. Through grant programs, scholarships, and other forms of human capital investment, the government of former president Torrijos hugely supported innovation for a knowledge economy. Government policy, in consort with the private sector, nonprofit organizations, and multilateral agencies, was also instrumental in creating Panama’s Ciudad de Saber (City of Knowledge), the former Clayton military base, now home to academic organizations, technology companies, and nongovernmental organizations. This comprehensive, highly readable book is a most welcome addition to the literature on innovation, especially with respect to emerging markets. Ricardo Ernst and Jerry Haar, along with the experts contributing to more than a dozen chapters, are to be commended for their important contribution. One hopes that they and other scholars in the field continue to examine the dynamic relationship between innovation and economic growth and development and that policy makers and business leaders heed the advice and recommendations that emanate from their work.