Research Agenda
Globelics research agendas reflect the network’s long-standing commitment to understanding how innovation, learning, competence building, and science, technology and innovation policies shape development processes across different contexts. Since its origins, Globelics has contributed to moving innovation studies beyond the experience of advanced economies, placing the realities of the Global South at the center of the debate. Globelics emphasizes that innovation is not only about technology, but also about capabilities, institutions, relationships, power, inclusion, and policy choices. The network’s distinctive contribution lies in asking how innovation can build local capabilities, expand opportunities, strengthen autonomy, and contribute to more equitable and sustainable development pathways.
Local, Regional, and National Innovation Systems
We pioneered the adaptation of innovation systems thinking to Global South contexts, recognizing that:
- Local knowledge matters: Communities know their challenges and have innovative solutions
- Relationships drive innovation: Networks and interactions are as important as individual actors
- Context shapes outcomes: What works in Silicon Valley may not work in São Paulo, Nairobi, or Mumbai
Key Contributions:
- Local Innovation and Production Systems (LIPS) framework
- Recognition of grassroots and informal innovation
- Understanding how macroeconomic policies can strengthen or undermine local innovation
Industrial Systems and Technological Change
We explore how new technologies emerge, spread, and transform economies—with a critical eye on who benefits.
Our Focus:
- Leapfrogging opportunities: How countries can bypass outdated technologies (think mobile phones replacing landlines, or solar power replacing coal plants)
- Reverse innovation: Solutions developed in the Global South that spread worldwide (like Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile money)
- Sectoral dynamics: How innovation works differently across agriculture, manufacturing, services, and digital sectors
- Adapting technologies: Making global innovations work for local needs and conditions
Globalization and Global Value Chains
We examine how countries participate in global innovation and production networks—and whether this strengthens or weakens local capabilities.
Critical Questions We Address:
When does joining global value chains build local innovation capacity?
- When does it lead to dependency and erosion of capabilities?
- How can countries upgrade their positions and capture more value?
- What role do tech giants and corporate innovation systems play in shaping development?
Our research shows that outcomes depend on sequencing, the strength of domestic innovation systems, and smart policy design.
Inclusion and Inequality
Innovation can reduce inequality—or deepen it. We’re committed to understanding and promoting innovation that works for everyone.
Pioneering Work On:
- Frugal innovation: Creating more with less, using local skills and resources
- Pro-poor innovation: Solutions designed for and with low-income communities
- Informal economy innovation: Recognizing the dynamism and creativity of informal businesses
- Inclusive development: Treating poor communities as agents of change, not passive recipients
We deliberately contrast “inclusive development” with “inclusive growth” to highlight the active, build-up of innovation dynamics that expand capabilities.
Digitalization, Artificial Intelligence, and Development
The digital revolution is reshaping economies and societies worldwide, but its benefits are not automatically shared. Globelics examines how digital technologies and artificial intelligence can support development in the Global South, while also addressing the risks of dependency, exclusion, data extractivism, and concentration of power.
Our Focus:
- Digital innovation systems: How countries and regions build the capabilities needed to develop, adopt, and adapt digital technologies.
- AI for development: How artificial intelligence can be used to address challenges in agriculture, health, education, public services, and productive transformation.
- Digital inclusion: How gender, geography, income, skills, and connectivity shape access to digital opportunities.
- Platform economies: Whether digital platforms empower local entrepreneurs and workers or reinforce dependency on global technology firms.
- Data governance and sovereignty: How countries can protect their data, build regulatory capacity, and ensure that digitalization serves public development goals.
- Skills and capabilities: What education, training, and institutional investments are needed for countries to become active producers, not only consumers, of digital technologies.
Globelics asks whether digitalization builds or erodes local capabilities, expands or concentrates opportunities, and supports or weakens inclusive development. The goal is not simply to connect countries to global digital value chains, but to strengthen the capabilities, institutions, and policies that make digital transformation a genuine engine of development.
Environmental Sustainability and Green Transitions
Long before it was fashionable, Globelics integrated environmental sustainability into innovation research.
We’ve moved beyond the outdated “catch up first, clean up later” mentality that’s no longer viable in a climate crisis.
We’re Exploring:
- Green windows of opportunity: How countries can leapfrog to renewable energy and sustainable technologies
- Just transitions: Coupling environmental sustainability with social and economic development
- Bottom-up solutions: Community-led, participatory approaches within broader sustainability strategies
- Alternative pathways: Development routes that don’t replicate the fossil-fuel-intensive paths of the past