IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/59895.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Innovation and access to technologies for sustainable development: diagnosing weaknesses and identifying interventions in the Transnational Arena

Author

Listed:
  • Anadon, Laura Diaz
  • Matus, Kira J. M.
  • Moon, Suerie
  • Chan, Gabriel
  • Harley, Alicia
  • Murthy, Sharmila
  • Timmer, Vanessa
  • Latif, Ahmed Abdel
  • Araujo, Kathleen
  • Booker, Kayje
  • Choi, Hyundo
  • Dubrawski, Kristian
  • Friedlander, Lonia
  • Ingersoll, Christina
  • Kempster, Erin
  • Pereira, Laura
  • Stephens, Jennie
  • Vinsel, Lee
  • Clark, William C

Abstract

Sustainable development – improving human well-being across present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – is a central challenge for the 21st century. Technological innovation can play an important role in moving society toward sustainable development. However, poor, marginalized, and future populations often do not fully benefit from innovation due to their lack of market or political power to influence innovation processes. As a result, current innovation systems fail to contribute as much as they might to meeting sustainable development goals. This paper focuses on how actors and institutions operating in the transnational arena can mitigate such shortfalls. To identify the most important transnational functions required to meet sustainable development needs our analysis undertook three main steps. First, we developed a framework to diagnose blockages in the global innovation system for particular technologies. This framework was built on existing theory and new empirical analysis. On the theory side, we drew from the literatures of systems dynamics; technology and sectoral innovation systems, science and technology studies, the economics of innovation, and global governance. On the empirical front, we conducted eighteen detailed case studies of technology innovation in multiple sectors relevant to sustainable development: water, energy, health, food, and manufactured goods. We use the framework to analyze our case studies in the common language of (1) technology stocks, (2) non-linear flows between stocks substantiated by specific mechanisms, and (3) characteristics of actors and socio-technical conditions (STCs) which mediate the flows between stocks . We identify blockages in the innovation system for each of the cases, diagnosing where in the innovation system flows were hindered and which specific sets of STCs and actor characteristics were associated with these blockages. Figure E.1 displays the components of our framework and how they relate.

Suggested Citation

  • Anadon, Laura Diaz & Matus, Kira J. M. & Moon, Suerie & Chan, Gabriel & Harley, Alicia & Murthy, Sharmila & Timmer, Vanessa & Latif, Ahmed Abdel & Araujo, Kathleen & Booker, Kayje & Choi, Hyundo & Dub, 2014. "Innovation and access to technologies for sustainable development: diagnosing weaknesses and identifying interventions in the Transnational Arena," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 59895, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59895
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59895/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Isaac Dekker & Shabnam Sharifyazd & Evans Batung & Kristian L. Dubrawski, 2021. "Maximizing Benefits to Nature and Society in Techno-Ecological Innovation for Water," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-16, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:59895. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.