Capabilities for inclusive innovation

Joanna ChatawayDSA 2013

Outline of talk

• What do we mean by inclusive innovation, why is it important and what are some of the different types of II?

• Inclusive innovation as a social technology challenge

• Different types of capabilities and capacities needed to underpin II

• Three questions

What do we mean by inclusive innovation?

• Inclusive innovation may be new to the sector, new to the country or new to the world and may involve a variety of excluded populations. These innovations may foster inclusion in production, in consumption and in the innovation process itself and by promoting the agency of the excluded. They may also contribute to environmental and social sustainability (Kaplinsky, 2013)

Google data on web searches for II

Thanks to Heeks et al

2013

Why is II important?

• Places the spotlight on those who do not automatically benefit from conventional economic growth strategies

• Encourages a focus on social and organisational processes underpinning innovation and growth strategies – rooted in a capabilities approach

• Focus on demand

Different takes on a common themeMNC and local

developing country firms developing new

business models

Public and PPP approaches for

addressing social needs

Local adaptations of techs

Honey Bee network and

others

Distinctive features about inclusive innovation?

• Innovation that meets poor people’s needs but also involves low income people as agents or architects

• Inclusion is about process and output• Different versions of II have different emphasis but

inclusion as about process and output/ producer and user is common to all versions

• Private sector is core to much II activity – a reorientation towards low income markets in MNCs and developing country firms. But can the private sector do it alone?

• Giving rise to new policy frameworks

Inclusive innovation

• Requires change at all levels

• But inclusive innovation is a broad term and has different meanings and the success of different types of inclusive innovation will depend on different sets of change at institutional, organisational and individual levels according to definitions.

Innovation and capabilities

• Institutional

• Organisational and social technologies

• Physical technologies

Inclusive innovation as physical and social technology experiments

• “ …. A recipe characterisation of what needs to be done represses the fact that many economic activities involve multiple actors, and require some kind of a coordinating mechanism to assure that the various aspects of the recipe are not performed in the relationships to each other needed to make the recipe work. The standard notion of a recipe is mute about how this is done…. [We] propose that it might be useful to call the recipe aspect of an activity its “physical” technology, and the way work is divided and coordinated its “social” technology.”

Social technology experiments and new capabilities

Physical technologies are the science and tech we can put

our hands on – the ‘recipe’ for baking a cake

Social technologies are the means by which the application

of physical technologies are coordinated – how we produce

the cake

Ideas and concepts in this slide are informed by Nelson and Sampat, 2001; Chataway, et al, 2010, Nelson, et al, 2011

Institutions include regulations, governance structures, health systems and the ‘operational environment’ – the kitchen

Different takes on a common theme from a capabilities perspective

Institutional capabilities: Regulating in the

interests of inclusiveness

Social tech capabilities: public private collaborations

Adaptive capabilities

Social tech and

institutional capabilities:scaling up?

Financial innovation?

Three questions

•How to create policy coherence?

•What are the synergies and spillovers?

•How to build capabilities and capacities?