What model of innovation for the least developed countries?
In LDCs it is important to support certain types of innovation as engines for growth. Otherwise, local needs and local markets may not necessarily be well served and more effective government incentives may be required.In terms of their innovation capacities LDCs are characterised by two features: they are small countries (in terms not of the size of GDP but of the relative size of the relevant sectors of the economy, those that would potentially benefit from technological spillovers from innovation) and they have weak absorptive capacity. This entails both a difficulty and a risk: the difficulty of integrating spillovers that originate elsewhere; and the risk that the export-oriented R&D they do will spill out of the country and benefit external firms and consumers rather than the local economy. For the LDC, the balance of knowledge and information spill-in and spill-out may therefore be negative.Therefore, even if an LDC may benefit from plugging some of its activities into the globa
