Country Focus: Innovation to Drive Development - A South African Perspective
| Author | Dr. Sibongile Pefile |
Dr. Sibongile Pefile is responsible for Research and Development Outcomes at the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). In this article for WIPO Magazine she explores how innovation can be fostered to further socio-economic development in developing countries, and she highlights some recent South African innovations which illustrate this.
At the CSIR, our business is to foster industrial and scientific research and technological innovation in collaboration with the private and public sector in order to contribute to improving the quality of life of the people of South Africa. Our focus is on promoting and transferring innovative technologies and scientific knowledge in a sustainable manner, with an emphasis on technologies that have a high potential for impacting positively on communities.
So what does this mean? And how does a developing country like South Africa create the conditions necessary to stimulate - and benefit from - the innovative capacity of its institutions and people? It does no harm to start at the beginning and take a moment to consider what is meant by innovation. A useful way of looking at it is that creativity is the generation of new ideas, inventions are new discoveries that can be patented and provide a solution to a problem, while innovation is their commercialization and exploitation. Therefore, innovation is the application of the solution in society or the economy. It is possible to be innovative, yet never invent anything.
A hand-held computer, connected to a satellite navigational system, provides a high-tech method of tracking animals in the field. Invented in 1996 by environmentalist Louis Liebenberg and Lindsay Steventon, it combines traditional tracking skills with state-of-the-art computer and satellite technology.
CyberTrackers are currently being used in major parks such as the Karoo National Reserve to map animal movements and breeding patterns as part of a major conservation project. A graphic interface enables illiterate trackers to enter detailed information, so helping scientists to carry out their research.
Much work has been done to study the different elements which combine to facilitate innovation in a given sector. For innovation to occur, scientific, business and institutional knowledge is required from different sources. So a "system of innovation"...
To continue reading
Request your trial