Jo Lorentzen

Learning by firms: the black box of South Africa's innovation system

South Africa designed its post-Apartheid science and technology policies in the mould of the national innovation system approach. Yet policymakers knew little about the determinants of technological upgrading in latecomer firms either in the developing world more generally or in South Africa specifically. These two blind spots made for a veritable black box hiding the engines of innovation. Policy was designed around this black box and was thus largely and by necessity borrowed rather than learned. This paper describes why this is a problem and what can be done about it. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Food on the table and disease at the door: insights from low-income countries and regions for measuring innovation

An important discussion regarding innovation indicators concerns their relationship with theory. It is theory that tells us something about cause–effect relationships and other patterns, which in turn suggests what indicators to collect for which purpose. Therefore, as theory advances, indicator methodologies can be expected to change as well. If they do not, they may become irrelevant or victims of logical fallacies. Innovation in agriculture and health – the stuff that can change the livelihoods of poor people for the better – is not well understood, certainly not by researchers who have to date focused on manufacturing innovation in middle or high income countries. The question that motivates this paper is whether we know enough about innovation in poor countries to be able to create the indicators that would adequately and meaningfully reflect the underlying agents and processes of change.

The geography of innovation in South Africa: a first cut

The geography of innovation in the developing world is poorly understood, both because certain spatial economic data are difficult to access or do not exist at all and because the existing information is rarely submitted for analysis at subnational level, where the relevant literature would conceptually and empirically inform the research questions. This paper makes a contribution to addressing both shortcomings for the example of South Africa. It discusses how well productive and knowledge-based activities are integrated in the countrys provinces and analyses how relevant the geographic proximity between firms and other knowledge users or producers is for this relationship.

Multinational strategies, local human capital, and global innovation networks in the automotive industry: case studies from Germany and South Africa

This paper focuses on the relationship between strategies of Northern and Southern firms, mostly multinational enterprises (MNEs), and human capital in Southern host countries in the automotive supply industry and the implications of this relationship both for the management of technological change and for the constitution of global innovation networks (GINs). Using a case-study approach drawing on firm-level interviews in both the home country (Germany) and the host country (South Africa), we find that the offshoring of knowledge-intensive activities is beginning to appear in an industry that is known more than others for centralizing most such activity close to headquarter locations and always in developed economies. It is also evident that the extension of GINs is not just based on Northern MNEs taking advantage of advanced capabilities in developing countries. Firms from the South, too, inshore the relevant knowledge through the acquisition of strategic assets in the North.