Enhancing the Role of Knowledge and Innovation for Development

Parallel session 7. Innovation research for developmentPresented at GLOBELICS 2009, 7th International Conference, 6-8 October, Dakar, Senegal.The broad aim of this study is to improve our understanding of the nature, extent and importance of commercialisation of knowledge in developing countries. The commercialisation of “new” knowledge, whether generated locally or obtained from foreign sources, is to a large extent determined by the ability to translate it into socio-economic solutions. This necessarily suggests that the commercialisation of knowledge cannot effectively be analysed in isolation from other core components (actors, activities and linkages) of the science, technology and innovation system. This paper addresses two main issues: (i) What are the core elements that enable “new” knowledge to successfully undergo transformations that respond to demand dynamics? (ii) What are the implications of these core elements for knowledge commercialisation in developing countries