OSLO MANUAL: GUIDELINES FOR COLLECTING AND INTERPRETING INNOVATION DATA
2.2.1. Instability 488. Instability in micro and small businesses may mean that some have good potential to upgrade national innovative performance and function as cradles of innovators, while some lack resources and support for any innovation. Macro level uncertainty limits any long-term innovation activity.
2.2.2. Informality 489. Developing countries’ economies rely significantly on informal practice. Informality is not a favourable context for innovation. The sometimes great creativity invested in solving problems in the informal economy does not lead to systematic application and thus tends to result in isolated actions which neither increase capabilities nor help establish an innovation-based development path.
2.2.3. Particular economic and innovation environments 490. Many enterprises in developing countries operate in unusual economic and innovation environments owing to the existence, and in some cases prevalence, of state-owned enterprises (China) or massive parastatal enterprises (some Arab states), where a lack of competition sometimes discourages innovation or drains local markets of innovative potential., although big state-owned enterprises (for example in sectors such as oil, aerospace or telecommunications) sometimes become technological leaders through important investments in experimental development work (as in some Latin American countries). Moreover, in countries with less developed economic systems, major government S&T policies and programmes may have more impact on innovation than the activities and strategies of private enterprises. 491. Past techno-economic paradigms have continuing economic importance in some cases; in others, a paradigm switch is delayed owing to the high costs involved, insufficient supplies of local capital and lack of credit for big technological investments. 492. Local markets in developing countries tend to be small, sometimes as a result of a less developed infrastructure, and this reduces the scope of the enterprise’s actions and the relevance of actual innovations (“new to the market” may have a different meaning in such environments). 493. Innovations in the agricultural sector have a high economic impact, owing to the sector’s significant overall economic weight.
ISBN 92-64-01308-3 – © OECD/EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES 2005
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