Building an innovation economy

Boni Mehlomakulu, Deputy Director-General of South Africa’s Science and Technology Directorate.

But if it makes sense to pull together in financial services and car manufacturing, surely efforts to stimulate the economy through innovation should be coordinated too?

That is certainly the approach that is being taken by South Africa, a country at the early stages of its innovation journey, as Boni Mehlomakulu, Deputy Director-General, Science and Technology Directorate, described at the Science|Business conference on the Innovation Economy, held in Brussels last week.

“We have a young system and are looking at innovation in a two-part way. On one hand we are building our national capability; on the other we are positioning South Africa as a player in the global system of innovation,” said Mehlomakulu.

For the past 20 years the government has focused on building up the science base. But at the end of 2008 attention turned to innovation, with the passing of an Intellectual Property Rights Act and a Technology Innovation Agency Act. These aim to put a bridge between universities and companies and promote technology transfer and commercialisation.

An innovation fund of ZAR 1 billion (€88 million) per annum has been set up, which said Mehlomakulu, “Is small by other players’ standards, but is a start.” The Innovation Act also calls for the formation of innovation hubs to connect in researchers and make sure entrepreneurs can get access to the research base, and for the creation of incubators to provide accommodation and mentoring services for start-ups.

In addition, a National Intellectual Property Management Office has been established to help universities with technology transfer. This has a patent fund to subsidise university patenting activity.

The South African government is also seeking to ensure respect for intellectual property rights in indigenous knowledge systems and the country’s genetic resources. “They are often not seen as belonging to a country and needing to be protected. We are working to get them included in IP rights regimes,” said Mehlomakulu.

Nor is the Innovation System being developed in isolation from South Africa’s basic research effort. In particular, the number of PhDs and graduates is being increased to strengthen R&D as a whole.

In basic research, South Africa has a tradition of collaborating with other countries, for example running a joint radio astronomy programme with Australia. “I think we can do the same in climate change and other areas,” said Mehlomakulu. “We can use these existing collaboration models.”

One tactic that would fit well in a global innovation system is the practice of setting up research chairs in South Africa, but also funding chairs elsewhere in the world. “We’ve decided to focus – on climate change, space science, biotechnology, biodiversity and human dynamics. Research elsewhere in the world contributes [to these fields] so we network our programmes globally,” Mehlomakulu explained.

It was also necessary to factor the nation’s brain drain into the policy. Here the strategy takes a very open approach - of working with the country’s diaspora and leveraging knowledge wherever it is located. “That is why we are building an innovation system that works at two levels; this addresses the issue of human capital,” said Mehlomakulu.

A key difficulty in designing the South African innovation system and building it from scratch was finding appropriate guidance and role models. Amongst the sources that were consulted were Canada’s policy from 1965, and policy from the US, Japan, and some European countries was also referenced. “We then considered the South African context and came up with our model,” Mehlomakulu said. She added, “Finding best practice was hard work. There is no basic knowledge inventory.”

Whatever the difficulties, South Africa has made progress according to an OECD review of the system, carried out in 2007. “This found the country is on a path of trying to address the challenges,” concluded Mehlomakulu.

Certainly, there is an open global outlook that maturer, more developed – but still internally focused – national innovation systems elsewhere lack.