Global Innovation Ecosystem 2007
As globalization has accelerated, the impact of innovation has increasingly extended beyond national boundaries. Economies throughout the world have become more integrated as Information Communication and Technology (ICT) has advanced at an unprecedented speed. Emerging economies have also made their presence felt in the global landscape. The issues we face today such as environmental degradation, energy supply, and emerging infectious diseases are becoming more global in scale and scope, forcing nations to collaborate in their efforts to resolve these issues. Each and every nation now has the responsibility to apply innovative solutions not only for its own economic development and international competitiveness, but also for the betterment of the world.
The concept of a 'Global Innovation Ecosystem', proposed at the GIES 2006 conference in Kyoto, is the first attempt to define an 'ecosystem' in which regions, countries, and cities compete and collaborate, and stakeholders interact to promote innovation. It is a pioneering effort to lead us to global collaborations that will resolve these challenging issues. This concept supports the goal of the G8 who announced at Heiligendamm, Germany, in 2007 that "We will undertake to bring forward an international economic and political environment that promotes and protects innovation."
At the GIES 2007 Open Symposium, which was jointly sponsored by the Cabinet Office, Japan Keidanren and the Science Council of Japan, we debated this issue and explored the ways by which innovation is fostered at the global scale to resolve these issues. Policy initiatives such as Japan's Innovation 25 and Innovate America were explained in this context. Also debated were specific actions to develop future generations, and mechanisms by which each country can contribute to improving the world through its own strengths and assets.
The GIES 2007 organizing committee proposes the following actions be implemented immediately.
- Identify mechanisms through which advanced economies can support developing countries in their efforts to promote innovation. Increase interaction among the advanced and developing economies for the common purpose to resolving global issues.
- Implement initiatives to resolve issues related to the environment by focusing both on social as well as economic benefits of innovation.
- Begin a global campaign to create the context where a variety of value systems are respected and new values are created through the interaction of diverse values systems.
- Design and establish an open educational system and research environment where people with a non-conformist mentality can be fostered wherever they are in the world, and where the global mobility of these people can be promoted.
- Promote research with challenging goals and transform newly created scientific knowledge into benefits for the world, beyond national boundaries.
- Design capital market and funding mechanisms that will encourage innovation at the global scale.
- Initiate a global information infrastructure and harmonize international intellectual property rights to balance the protection of innovation in an open system.
- Continue promoting the Asian innovation research network further to accelerate regional collaboration and sharing of innovation policy research.
