Working Paper #2011-058
Arab regional systems of innovation: characteristics and implications
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 across the Arab countries and the heavy
concentration of R&D activities within both public and universities
sectors and very limited 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, local technological
capabilities, technology achievement index, increasing technological and
knowledge gap and distance between the Arab region and the other
advanced regions in the world and poor integration in the global
knowledge economy. Therefore, the major policy implication from our
analysis is that it is essential for policy making in the Arab region to
confirm commitment to enhance the institutions and systems of higher
education, S&T, R&D, technological infrastructure, ICT and scientific
cooperation to build the Arab regional systems of innovation and to
achieve economic development in the Arab region.
- Keywords
-
- Education
- S&T
- R&D
- Systems of innovation
- Arab region
- JEL codes
-
- O10
- O11
- O30
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Nour, S. S. O. M. (2011). Arab regional systems of innovation: characteristics and implications (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2011-058). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=4588