Andreas Stamm Eva Dantas Doris Fischer Sunayana ... - ETH Zürich

Box 4: Internationalisation of innovation systems in anchor countries
22
Andreas Stamm et al.
Science, technology and innovation (STI) policy, a traditionally inward-oriented policy field, is increasingly
becoming part of global politics. Over decades, governments in Western European countries, the US and
Japan pursued explicit strategies to enhance their performance in research-based innovation and science.
They delegated responsibility to intergovernmental organisations (IO) such as the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD) and special entities at the United Nations (UN) to refine the
formation of science- and innovation-related policies and their impact on economic development. Since the
end of the Second World War, a fragmented architecture of ‘global governance’ in STI has come into existence.
Beyond the regulation of intellectual property rights (IPR), several global governance institutions have
begun to provide models and policy guidelines elaborated on the basis of their own research or in collaboration
with social scientists with the objective of promoting STI in the developing world.
Anchor countries play a threefold role in this setting: First, anchor countries pursue explicit science and
innovation policies to increase their international competitiveness and raise the welfare of their societies.
Their governments are experienced in STI policy making in different development contexts, often in close
contact with intergovernmental organisations. They now also provide models for STI policy for less developed
countries.
Second, following decades of inward-oriented science and technology policy, their strategies have shifted
towards outward and systemic innovation policy. Some governments in anchor countries assume the role
of driving forces in voicing the interests of the developing countries in international organisations. Brazil
and Argentina initiated a development agenda for World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to
ensure that the institution aligns its activities to the UN Millennium Development Goals. 2003 saw the
emergence of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum, which has a programme on science
and technology cooperation. Furthermore, the G8 invites the governments of selected anchor countries,
the so called O5, Mexico, China, India, Brazil and South Africa, to join its annual summits. The OECD
also initiated ‘outreach programmes’ with selected anchor countries that allow them to participate in and
observe the committee meetings.
Third, as global problems grow, these countries are indispensable partners for collective action to promote,
quickly and efficiently, research and infrastructure for technological innovation - although there is
as yet no common understanding as regards how to best to organise multilateral research cooperation.
There are, thus, good reasons to consider anchor countries as strategic partners in internationally
coordinated efforts to quickly bring about the innovations required for the transition
towards a sustainable development path. This is mainly due to three reasons:
— due to their large and quickly growing environmental footprint, technological change
is essential in these countries;
— they have significant technological capabilities that enable them to contribute to the
development of sustainable solutions;
— technologies developed under the ecological conditions and factor endowments of the
anchor countries could prove to be more adequate to be rolled out in less advanced developing
countries in their world region than those developed in industrialised countries.
Setting up R&D cooperation networks between industrialised and anchor countries might,
however, see itself faced with some specific challenges. Private companies in OECD
countries that are owners of technologies may be very reluctant to share specific knowledge
with anchor countries, as they fear increasing competition in high-end markets from
non-traditional actors that, while catching up technologically, benefit from considerably
lower production costs. It is thus not surprising that the question of how to deal with IPR
issues still remains highly contentious in international negotiations, and is especially
prominent in the context of climate change mitigation (Ockwell 2008, 4104).
German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)