Rough Road to Market: Institutional Barriers to Innovations in Africa

Translating R&D and inventive efforts into a market product is characterized by significant financial skills, and the ability to overcome technical and instititonal barriers. Research into and translation of new technologies such as biotechnology products to the market requires even greater resources. This paper aims to understand the key factors that foster or hinder the complex process of translating R&D efforts into innovative products. Different pathways exist in developed countries such as firm-level efforts, the use of IPs, the spin-off of new firms that develop new products, or a mixture of these. Developing countries differ substantially in the kinds of instruments they use because of their considerably weaker institutional environment and for this reason our framework takes a systemic and institutional perspective. The paper comtributes to this issue by examining systemic institutional barriers to commercializing biotechnology in a develping context within a systems of innovation framework.

Keywords: Biotechnology, commercialization, innovation, Africa, learning and institutions.

ISSN 1871-9872