The World Economic Forum has published a special edition of the Global Competitiveness Report (GCR) titled “How Countries are Performing on the Road to Recovery”. This edition focuses on competitiveness factors and future priorities, greatly influenced by the current pandemic.
With regards to the revival of the enabling environment, the consistent erosion of institutions, with weaknesses shown in checks and balances and lack of transparency, gives cause for worry. The GCR identifies priorities to solve this issue: improving both government’s long-term thinking capacity and digital mechanisms delivering public services and support policy interventions (revival phase); ensuring the bond of trust between government and citizens is reformed through strong governance principles and long-term vision (transformation phase).
According to the Report, an interesting paradox has been observed regarding the transformation of the innovation ecosystem: if on the one hand entrepreneurial culture has grown in the past decade, in turn this has not brought forth neither the creation of new firms nor of breakthrough technologies. Furthermore, the innovation that has indeed occurred has not proven widely successful in delivering solutions to reducing energy consumption, managing emissions, or providing inclusive social services. To overcome these shortcomings, it is pointed out that in the revival phase public investments in R&D need to be expanded and that venture capital and R&D in the private sector need to be incentivized. Countries need to promote the diffusion of existing technologies supporting the creation of news firms and employment for the so called “markets of tomorrow”. In the transformation phase, focus should be on incentivizing and expanding investments on research, innovation, and invention, while pushing firms to adopt principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion to boost creativity.
If you are interested in reading the whole report, you can find it here.
Source: The International Network for SMEs - INSME
