Innovation Research for Low-Income Countries

Can innovation be studied as a field of science? What benefits are derived by doing so? Who are the subjects of innovation studies?

These are the questions that authors Jo Lorentzen and Rahma Mohamed answer in their paper, ‘Where are the Poor in Innovation Studies.’

The authors point out that while the study of innovation has been around for more than 50 years, very little work has been done on understanding low-income countries or regions. The paper goes on to explore the role played by innovation in development and discusses possible reasons for why so little has been focused on low-income countries.

Through a review of innovation literature addressing innovation for the poor, the authors point out that most research was not done by innovation scholars, and tended to focus more on issues of livelihood, especially agriculture and health. Their concluding ananlysis of the study of innovation is that research for low-income countries would benefit extensively from a synthesis of “economic analysis of technological learning and sociological analysis of innovation diffusion.”

Read the entire paper here.