Transcript Document

Innovation Technology
Entrepreneurship Centers (ITECs)
Alistair M Brett
Senior Consultant, The World Bank
Technology Commercialization
Advisor, T2 Venture Capital
Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship Centers (ITECs)
Problem
The majority of technologies required to reduce poverty, add value to natural resources,
and upgrade the technological proficiency of local industry have already been invented,
used elsewhere – but not widely used in many developing countries
Proposed solution
Build eco-systems to improve a developing country’s capacity to use existing
technologies:
• Requires structures to develop engineering, technical, and vocational skills
• Requires a balance with conducting R&D and technology commercialization
Building R&D capacity, by itself, will not solve many of the most pressing development
challenges facing these countries.
ITECs help eco-system components work together
Import, adapt, and adopt
knowledge produced
outside the country
Education,
vocational
training, and
R&D
Institutes
Enterprise capacity
to use knowledge –>
produce higher value
added
products/services
Produce and use new
knowledge by
commercializing R&D
Technologically
skilled
workforce
Government
capacity to use
knowledge to
produce higher
value added
ecosystem
Mentoring,
legal advice,
networking
Adapted from: World Bank STI Action Plan
Early stage
grant, debt,
equity finance
It’s not the
ingredients
– it’s the
recipe
Build STI institutions that, in collaboration with each other
and other public and private sector organizations, can:
1. Locate, identify, and evaluate relevant technology that exists
outside the home country
2. Spin-in this technology and bring it into the country
3. Pass it along to scientists and businesses who can perform
“translational” research to adapt this technology for local use
4. Spin-out this technology to local entrepreneurs who can start new
businesses on the basis of this “new-to-the-country” technology
What can the AfDB do to promote ITECs?
• Focus capacity building initially on one or two strategic subsectors – e.g.
clean energy, clean water, food processing – rather than broad omnibus
capacity.
• Affiliate ITECs with existing institutions – e.g., research institutes,
university engineering schools, infoDev incubators, etc.
• Make us of technical assistance available from WIPO and related
organizations.
Aleck Ncube, Intellectual Property Educator at the National University of
Science and Technology (NUST), Zimbabwe, http://www.nust.ac.zw
Stanley Kowalski, University of New Hampshire Law School, USA
http://law.unh.edu/itti/
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