Africa has become an investment magnet thanks to its general economic performance as measured by a continuous improvement of its gross domestic product (GDP) and its population dynamics. Africa’s GDP increased by 3.5 percent in 2018, about the same as in 2017 and up from 2.1 percent in 2016. This growth is projected to accelerate to 4.0 percent by the end of 2019 and 4.1 percent in 2020.1 Projections of population growth predict that the African population is likely to reach 1.7 billion by 2030.2 These prospects have created an environment in which foreign firms and development partners are bound to interact with local firms and institutions. This has led to a complex and crowded policy environment that, if properly managed, will lead to good business outlooks, employment, and well-being for the African population.

In 2000, Korea established the Technology Transfer and Commercialization Promotion Act, a Korean Bayh-Dole Act, and the ownership of public research results became able to be transferred to universities and public research institutes. The next year, the ownership of public research results was transferred to universities and public research institutes in compliance with the new regulation on the management of government-funded R&D projects.

The main aim of this research is to explore the progress of the knowledge transfer system in the Republic of Korea and assess how much of this generated knowledge had been successfully commercialized. The chapter reviews policy changes since 2000 that were implemented to improve knowledge transfer from public research institutes. It identifies the important knowledge transfer channels in the Republic of Korea and reviews the challenges that government policy and public research institutes face in achieving successful knowledge transfer. The chapter concludes that for the national innovation system in the Republic of Korea to change from the old catch-up mode characterized by the twin dominance of big businesses and the government, the Korean system would need to support demand-oriented research, provide monetary incentives for researchers in terms of license income, place more weight on knowledge transfer performance in performance evaluation of researchers, and recruit high-quality personnel for knowledge transfer offices.

Commercialization of public research to support economic growth involves the transfer of knowledge produced by public research organizations to private sector businesses or government agencies. This chapter describes the diverse range of national and institutional policies and practices implemented across countries to encourage knowledge transfer between public research organizations and firms. The chapter largely focuses on the IP licensing model, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages, and discusses how the costs of IP-mediated knowledge transfer can be minimized. It outlines the main reasons for collecting knowledge transfer metrics for licensing – for benchmarking, for identifying factors that support or hinder knowledge transfer, and for informing policy. The chapter also identifies the most commonly used methods for collecting knowledge transfer metrics, and discusses basic metrics that all countries should collect on the IP licensing model, plus supplementary metrics of relevance to specific policy issues.

A typical view of income distribution in emerging economies is of countries composed of two types of consumers, a tiny wealthy elite and a massive poor class. This was typified in the metaphor of “Belindia,” which although used to describe Brazil as consisting of two countries, a wealthy one such as Belgium and a very poor one such as India in the 1970s, it is still being applied to other emerging countries. One outcome of this polar wealth distribution was managers of advanced economy multinationals directing their firms toward serving the wealthy classes with the same products they sold to consumers in their home countries. The introduction of the concept of the base of the pyramid changed this attitude. Even though the large segment of the population at the base of the income pyramid could not afford the products offered by foreign multinationals, they were nevertheless a potentially profitable market if only multinationals would locally adapt and innovate their products to make them very inexpensive. The result was a reinforcement of the bimodal segmentation of consumers in emerging markets: a small wealthy segment that are global consumers, and a large poor segment that are local consumers.

This chapter analyzes the progress that Chinese universities and public research institutes have made in the fields of research and education as well as the factors that hinder the growth of knowledge transfer from universities and public research institutes to firms in China. The chapter describes how the role of universities and public research institutes in China has evolved in recent decades with the transition to a market economy. It reviews the laws and policies governing knowledge transfer activities in China. It examines the various channels of knowledge transfer that universities and public research institutes in China use to transfer technology such as making new knowledge publicly available at no cost and through cooperative arrangements, including contract research and collaboration, licensing, and establishing spinoff enterprises. The chapter concludes that while Chinese universities and public research institutes have been dramatically transformed in order to meet government policy goals of producing cutting-edge scientific and technological developments to support economic and social advancement since the 1980s, there are challenges in the areas of limited licensing opportunities for leading technologies, lack of long-term financial support, ambiguous corporate governance and regulations, and underdeveloped intermediary agencies resulting in high transaction costs that remain to be addressed.

Globally, there is a growing interest in the role of universities and public research institutes in the alchemy of innovation, the emphasis being on how they can make more systematic efforts to unlock the commercial value of their research. While many of these feel it is imperative that their knowledge transfer activities work to recover costs, from my experience, revenue generation, in most cases, is not and in my view should not be the primary motivation. The reasons these institutes engage in knowledge transfer is to advance education and research; and at the same time it helps to ensure that public investment in research is impactful, that it contributes to broader socioeconomic development objectives. However, the going is tough, even in high-income countries and the entrepreneurial character of these institutes remains the subject of academic scrutiny. The chapter inspires a deeper understanding of this critical area by examining the evolving role of institutes in national innovation systems. It also examines the impact of legislative and policy initiatives that promote protection of inventions through patenting and their commercialization through licensing and startup formation.

The chapter examines various modes of knowledge transfer from universities and public research institutes to industry, together with the policies that support knowledge transfer, in order to develop a conceptual framework for comparative country studies and identify relevant and useful metrics for assessing the economic impact of this activity.

This chapter shows that implementing similar policies supporting the transfer of knowledge from public research to industry in countries with different innovation systems requires different sets of complementary policies. Drawing on six case studies, which range from high- (UK, Germany, Republic of Korea) to middle-income countries (China, Brazil, South Africa), this chapter describes the process of policy convergence and why countries might differ substantially in their approach. In high-income countries with mature national innovation systems, the adoption of Bayh-Dole-inspired legislation meant that research expected to produce patents was incentivized and preferred over other types of commercialization. The policy challenge here is to ensure all channels of knowledge transfer are appropriately nurtured. In middle-income economies, where knowledge ecosystems were less mature, the Bayh-Dole legislation resulted in a process of institutional reform, such as incentives to researchers, changing the legal structure of the university incomes and the use of public research institutes. Thus, for knowledge transfer policies to be successful, it is crucial to identify the appropriate complementary measures.

South Africa (the “Rainbow Nation”) is a vibrant dynamic country of 57 million people speaking at least one of the eleven official languages, spread across nine provinces. It is a country rich in natural resources with a number of well-established industries, including mining, manufacturing, and agriculture, with strong financial, transport, and communication infrastructure but with significant weaknesses in areas of labor, health, and primary education. South Africa is strongly characterized in our National Development Plan (NDP; Vision for 2030) by the three permeating challenges of unemployment, inequality, and poverty. The NDP acknowledges that science and technology, and, indeed, innovation are a means to “fundamentally alter the way people live, connect, communicate, and transact, with profound effects on economic development,” with “the ability to innovate and learn by doing by investing public funding to help finance research and development in critical areas” being required. Public research institutes and universities are integral in the approach to address a number of the challenges experienced, not just as a third stream of income for the public research institute or university but also as a combination of commercialization and utilization of research results for societal benefit. South Africa experienced the same global trend in that it required a policy intervention to shift the focus at our public research institutes and universities from pure academia and teaching to knowledge transfer. In South Africa, it was the impetus of the Intellectual Property Rights from Publicly Financed Research and Development Act (IPR Act; No. 51 of 2008) that mandated the shift from “publications” to “innovations.”

The challenge of education for everyone is a problem for middle-income countries around the world. The experience demonstrates that these nations cannot provide an extensive and quality education, specifically in the secondary and tertiary Education. At the same time, this reality is a significant opportunity for business. In fact, where the presence of State is weak to fulfill its social obligations to citizens, new opportunities for enterprises emerge. This chapter analyzes the condition of education in Latin America and how some schools and universities that focus on the population of the middle of the pyramid have emerged. As the middle class has risen in these countries, the demands for an accessible and quality education have increased. Therefore, the “emerging middle class” in Latin America is a critical economic and social actor because of its potential as an engine of growth and a way to solve social demands. The analyses of six cases in Peru, Colombia, and Mexico evidence that it is possible to offer quality academic services to the population sector. This article concludes emphasizing the importance of the innovation process to expansion and consolidation of the educational market.

Public research and development plays a crucial role in technological advances and development and indirectly contributes to economic growth. Business sectors depend on public research to produce innovations of commercial significance, and many countries have, since the late 1970s, changed their legislation to regulate or facilitate IP ownership and promote increased commercialization of the results of public research. These “third mission” policies were intended to increase the economic effect of public investments in research and development. Maximization of the economic impact of academic research will happen only when the private sector uses and builds on research done in the public sector and when industrial research complements and also guides basic research. The chapter explores cross-country trends in public research and development and outlines the challenges faced by high, middle- and low-income countries in increasing their research and development and knowledge transfer capabilities.