Challenges of African Transformation: Exploring Through Innovation Approach

Chapter 9 - Where are the Flags of Our Fathers?

173 SUMMARY This paper builds on the idea that embedding social policies within innovation policies and vice versa is one of the main ways to put the might of academic research at the service of those at the bottom of the pyramid. The aim of the paper is to analyse systematically the problems that prevent research to fulfil the promise of modernity and progress for vast majorities of the world population and to propose ways to overcome such problems. INTRODUCTION We are all told that we live within a ‘globalised knowledge economy’. This is put forward as being a positive situation leading to economic growth, progress and ultimately reduction of poverty, disease and ‘backwardness’. Yet for many we are looking at a situation that could be labelled as the unfulfilled promise of knowledge-led progress. Truth is distorted while promises are made for the future that rarely becomes tangible reality. In particular we would argue that there has been a simultaneous failure for the developing world of the three flags of the French Revolution (equality , freedom, fraternity). There is more and more inequality in the world; ‘development as freedom’ implies ‘underdevelopment as un-freedom’, and so un-freedom is how we can describe the state in which most of the world population is embedded; while fraternity, or solidarity, seems to have been pushed into the realm of private life, diminishing its drive as an inspiration for public policy. ‘Trickle down’ strategies from economic growth, able to finance the burden of social policies, have rarely been successful in terms of advances towards sustainable processes of development. Efforts devoted to the Where are the Flags of Our Fathers? RethinkingLinkagesbetweenSocialPoliciesandInnovationPolicies Rebecca Hanlin and Judith Sutz CHAPTER 9 174 the fulfilment of the promises of knowledge and modernity in developing countries. The term ‘interstitial’ qualifies the strategy pursued: it aims neither to compete nor to substitute the main role of R&D and innovation in the knowledge economy, but to foster the emergence of differently oriented research and innovation agendas in interstices of the ‘canonical’ ways of doing research and designing public policies in actual institutions. In Section 1 of the paper we briefly discuss some evidence that shows the failure of the ‘trickle down hypothesis’ to put knowledge to work to solve the needs of the poor or the excluded; the necessity for alternative approaches is thus outlined. We posit that a main new goal for innovation policies should be to foster research and innovation directly oriented towards the fulfilment of the social policy agenda; we posit as well that social policy can provide the effective demand for research and innovation that are sorely needed to foster and accumulate knowledge capacities in developing countries. In Section 2 we develop an exploration of the feasibility of this approach by presenting a preliminary taxonomy of the mismatches that hamper the use of knowledge to solve social problems and select some success stories of resolved mismatches. In Section 3 we discuss the reasons behind these successes and propose a checklist for detecting them and orienting policy design. A CIRCUIT THAT IS NOT WORKING WELL ‘Research and innovation for competitiveness + economic growth stemming from improved competitiveness + spare money to finance social policies able to redress inequalities of the past as well as the new ones’ is a circuit that is not working well. We shall take as evidence the Chilean situation, because Chile is a good example of successful export-led economic growth production and use of knowledge in developing countries have as a main justification the positive relationship between knowledge and economic growth. So, not achieving economic growth or not being able to diminish inequality through economic growth weakens the social legitimacy of such efforts; usually small and threatened by other priorities. In this paper we provide a systemic explanation of the unfulfilled promise of knowledge for development. In so doing we further explore a possible ‘interstitial’ way to put knowledge at the service of those excluded from its main benefits: to embed innovation policies in social policies and the other way around (Arocena and Sutz, 2006). Our point of departure is modern research activities, already acknowledged as a major contributor to the knowledge economy. The aim is to extend our understanding of what these activities have to offer and how they can be conveyed to advance towards CHAPTER 9 175 WHERE ARE THE FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS? with...