Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

CHAPTER FIVEARAB PERFORMANCE INRESEARCH AND INNOVATIONIntroductionThe term “innovation” is used here in anexpanded sense that embraces both the ideaof “inventiveness,” with its connotationsof scientific and technical ingenuity,and “creativity,” with its associationswith culture and the arts, inspiration,intelligence, emotional sensitivity, and theimagination. This expanded definitionmakes the word that best suited to denotethe subject of the current chapter and meetour goal of widening the significationsof the knowledge society concept and thecentral concepts associated with it currentlycirculating among Arabs. This chapterwill not, then, treat only the factors usuallyaddressed with regard to innovation in theknowledge society and will not limit itselfsimply to monitoring the state of innovationin scientific and technical knowledge. Norwill it restrict itself to indicators derivedfrom the social environment such as arecommonly used in reports dealing with theknowledge society. Rather, it will seek tobuild upon these basic elements and developother indicators applicable to the Arabworld. It draws on research in the humanand social sciences despite the problematicissues thus raised and despite the lackof the detailed data that would facilitatethe study, classification, and formulationindicators. Cultural, imaginative, andsymbolic production also have a role toplay in the analysis, since this chaptersurveys innovation in the art forms that webelieve have contributed to enriching Arabsensitivities and developing the aesthetic andaffective values of our societies. Our goal isto provide an overview of how innovationmanifests itself and to diagnose where itis lacking in terms of the current state ofArab knowledge.In this chapter, then, we set forth fordiscussion a number of points that willallow us to examine the limitations of thedialectics of absence and aspiration, ofdependency and intimations of independenceand development. Discussion of innovationin the context of Arab knowledge requiresan interrogation of these dialectics, just asit does the construction of their componentsinto an approximate picture of the currentstatus and future trajectories of Arabknowledge.INNOVATION AND THEKNOWLEDGE ECONOMYThe Arab world lacks a pan-nationalmonitor that could prepare quantitativeand qualitative indices for the Arab regionand guarantee the credibility of data onresearch and the dissemination of scienceand innovation within it. Internationalinstitutions similarly suffer from a severeshortage of information from the Arabworld. Despite persistent follow-up fromthe United Nations Educational, Scientific,and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO),only six Arab countries have providedcomplete and official data on their statuswith regard to the dissemination ofscience and innovation (Kuwait, Algeria,Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Sudan).Six other countries have provided partialinformation (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,Oman, Egypt, Lebanon, and Mauritania)and data remains almost completelylacking for ten Arab countries. 1Regardless of precision and currency,the available data indicate that, in all ArabThe Arab worldlacks a pan-nationalmonitor that couldprepare quantitativeand qualitative indicesfor the Arab regionand guarantee thecredibility of dataon research andthe disseminationof science andinnovation within itThe available dataindicate that, inall Arab countries,performance in thefield of innovation isweak in comparisonto that of the otherpillars of knowledgeARAB PERFORMANCE IN RESEARCH AND INNOVATION181