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Innovation

The Day After Tomorrow: If You Want To Grow, Learn

Submitted by Otaviano Canuto, co-authors: Marcelo Giugale on Wed, 01/05/2011 - 15:44

Why is it that some countries are more developed than others? A country is “less developed” not only because it lack inputs (labor and capital) but because it uses them less efficiently. In fact, inputs are estimated to account for less than half of the differences in per capita income across nations. The rest is due to the inability to acquire, adopt and adapt better technologies to raise productivity. As an engine of growth, the potential of technological learning is huge—and largely untapped. Four global trends have begun to unlock that potential, and are bound to continue.

First, the vertical decomposition of production across frontiers allows less-advanced countries to insert themselves in supply chains by initially specializing in

The Power of Innovation - free Webinar TODAY at 3PM EST

Submitted by Ihssane Loudiyi on Thu, 07/22/2010 - 12:40

Join Aleem Walji, formerly of Google.org, now the Practice Manager of WBI’s Innovation Team and one of the lead authors for a webinar to mark the launch of a special issue of Development Outreach magazine on “The Power of Innovation.”

In a post-crisis world, innovation may be the single most important driver of economic growth and competitiveness. The time is right to move development forward through creative uses of technology. We now have the capacity to scale up innovative approaches to meet the needs of people at the “bottom of the pyramid” when traditional markets fail to do the job. Our authors share their thoughts on how to mobilize innovative solutions to reduce poverty - smarter, better, faster, and differently. Global experts discuss policy, process, new applications, and projects in social enterprise and innovation.

 

Webinar - Thursday, July 22, 2010 3pm EST (login opens at 2:45)

To join the meeting:
1. Go to http://worldbankva.na4.acrobat.com/devoutreachlaunch/
2. Click on Guest, and type your name to enter the meeting.

More info at: http://bit.ly/cVVZmU

Internal Ventures of the Post-Washington Consensus: “Only Connect”

Submitted by Yevgeny Kuznetsov on Fri, 05/21/2010 - 16:30

The post-Washington Consensus has emerged recently as an umbrella denoting the search for pragmatic and context-specific solutions to problems of developing countries. The recent financial crisis, with its epicenter in the rich economies, has demonstrated that the whole world, not just poor countries, is developing. One feature of the new pragmatism is that industrial policy is back. But in contrast to import substitution, it is an open economy industrial policy – the objective is to increase economic openness: enhance flows of knowledge, foster productive innovation, and promote non-traditional exports. Under rubrics such as productive development policies or innovation strategies, governments in developing countries are providing public inputs, each customized and bundled to suit the needs of particular domains of economic activity, but not others.

How are we responding? One way to understand the World Bank’s role in articulating the post-Washington consensus is to imagine a pyramid. At the top are the ‘thinkers’ of DEC, the Bank’s research and data arm. There are encouraging discussions on new structural economics (Justin Lin), empirical work on new trade theory, and – as one would expect – a new open industrial policy. At the foundation are task managers of lending operations. By being responsive to the needs of the client, but without much fanfare, they are in the forefront of the post-Washington consensus in their dialogue with our most sophisticated and demanding clients such as India, China, Argentina, Mexico, Russia, Malaysia or Chile. A new generation of lending technology and innovation operations is quietly emerging which emphasizes selectivity and focus on a few domains and sectors of the economy deemed strategic rather than the across-the-board focus on innovation climate. Practitioners take the need to make ‘’strategic bets” for granted (‘’the entry costs are high, technology is changing rapidly, one can’t do everything, we need to be selective”), so the issue here is to design private-public institutions to share risks and minimize state capture. New institutions of open industrial policy are being self-discovered on a daily basis, yet there is too little contact between the new theory (‘thinkers’) and cutting edge practice (‘doers’).

The Service Revolution

Submitted by Ihssane Loudiyi on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 14:50

by Ejaz Ghani

China and India are both racing ahead economically. But the manner in which they are growing is dramatically different. Whereas China is a formidable exporter of manufactured goods, India has acquired a global reputation for exporting modern services. Indeed, India has leapfrogged over the manufacturing sector, going straight from agriculture into services.

The differences in the two countries’ growth patterns are striking, and raise significant questions for development economists. Can service be as dynamic as manufacturing? Can late-comers to development take advantage of the increasing globalization of the service sector? Can services be a driver of sustained growth, job creation, and poverty reduction?

Some facts are worth examining. The relative size of the service sector in India, given the country’s state of development, is much bigger than it is in China. Despite being a low-income region, India and other South Asian countries have adopted the growth patterns of middle- to high-income countries. Their growth patterns more closely resemble those of Ireland and Israel than those of China and Malaysia.

India’s growth pattern is remarkable because it contradicts a seemingly iron law of development that has held true for almost 200 years, since the start of the Industrial Revolution. According to this “law” – which is now conventional wisdom – industrialization is the only route to rapid economic development for developing countries.

The Power of How

Submitted by Ihssane Loudiyi on Mon, 03/22/2010 - 11:17

What exactly do we mean by Capacity Development?

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Stichting Nederlandse Vrijwilligers (SNV Netherlands) redefine the concept through this creative new video. Enjoy!
 

 

Please visit the Power of How to learn more on this capacity development initiative.

OECD-World Bank Innovation and Growth Book Now Available

Submitted by Ihssane Loudiyi on Tue, 12/15/2009 - 14:54

Innovation is crucial in 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 labor 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, Innovation and Growth: Chasing a Moving Frontier, edited by Vandana Chandra, Deniz Erocal, Pier Carlo Padoan, and Carlos A. Primo Braga, the two organizations jointly take stock of how globalization 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 a faster and sustainable growth.

For more information about the content of this new book, and to purchase your own copy (e-book and print versions available), please visit this link.

You can also view the World Bank's work on Growth Analytics or the OECD Innovation Strategy website for more information about the topic.

ADePT: a Great Software for Data & Analytical Reports

Submitted by Ihssane Loudiyi on Wed, 11/04/2009 - 19:14

ADePT, the Software Platform for Automated Economic Analysis, is a free program designed to simplify and speed-up the production of analytical reports. Created by the Research Department (DECRG) of the World Bank, it can be used to extract indicators from micro-level surveys and present them in a print-ready form. ADePT can generate sets of about 50 print-ready tables and graphs in different areas of economic analysis, and already includes, among others, modules on Poverty, Inequality, Labor, Gender, Education, Health, and Social Protection.

ADePT helps both to minimize human errors and to introduce new techniques and methods to a wide audience of practitioners. It can be used as a tool for sensitivity analysis, data checking, and simulations - it's an ideal tool for training! Tasks that take several weeks of work from qualified consultants could be accomplished within minutes using ADePT. Furthermore, by producing a standard set of tables and graphs, the program allows standardization of the economic statistics among countries expanding the possibilities for research on intra-country comparisons.

The website contains a free, downloadable version of the software, as well as video tutorials in several languages, PowerPoint presentations, examples and more about how to use ADePT by utilizing different data sets. Please visit www.worldbank.org/adept for more information.

 

The current version of ADePT requires a prior installation of the STATA software, but updates might be available in the near future to bypass this requirement.