Working Paper #2018-038
Innovation in Global Value Chains
Developing countries are faced with significant challenges related to
building and deepening their innovation capabilities. In this chapter,
we focus on innovation in global value chains and on the role that such
chains play in building and deepening capability. We also focus on the
trajectories along which firms, once inserted into global value chains
and located in developing countries, acquire or lose innovation
capability. To do so, we bring together the global value chains and
innovation systems approaches. Our key arguments are that global value
chains interact with innovation systems in multiple ways and that these
interactions have important implications for the speed, depth, and
overall quality of capability building in developing-country firms. We
outline five innovation capability trajectories and show how capability
building at the firm level interrelates with the various ways in which
global value chains and innovation systems co-evolve.
- Keywords
-
- global value chains
- innovation systems
- technological capabilities
- innovation policy
- coevolution
- JEL codes
-
- F23
- D23
- L22
- L25
- O10
- O32
- O38
Cite this as
APA 7th ed.Lema, R., Pietrobelli, C., & Rabellotti, R. (2018). Innovation in Global Value Chains (UNU-MERIT Working Paper No. 2018-038). UNU-MERIT. https://unu-merit.nl/publications/working-papers/abstract/?id=7966