Natural resources, innovation and development

5/5 ( ratings)

Abstract
In this Globelics Thematic Review, the author team presents and discusses recent research on the relationships between natural resources, innovation and development, and suggests some implications of this body of knowledge for policy makers. The Review sets out to explore three interlinked questions with a particular focus on innovation and industry dynamics. First, to what extent is it currently possible for a country to develop on the basis of natural resources? Second, what are the main underlying mechanisms of resource intensive development paths? Third, how can such mechanisms be supported politically? The Globelics review considers a range of contemporary and historical studies and diverse theoretical positions concerning resource intensive development paths. The intention is to make it easier for analysts and policy makers to learn both from countries that in the past have succeeded in transforming their natural resource wealth into long-term development and from recent obstacles to resource intensive development encountered by some developing economies. The review furthermore considers whether a resource intensive development path is more or less environmentally sustainable than other forms of industrial specialization.

Foreword
Globelics is a worldwide community of scholars who place learning, innovation and competence building at the heart of the development process. Over the years, Globelics has been a forum for cross-fertilising the two rather different traditions of innovation studies and development studies. While these in themselves are both interdisciplinary and broad, their intellectual traditions are quite separate and they have hitherto tended to unfold in separate communities. The policy circles with which they have engaged have often been disparate.
Although the Globelics community incorporates a range of social science disciplines and approaches, the focus on learning, innovation and competencebuilding systems is a defining element of their analyses of a wide range of economic and social development processes and problems. The objective of the Globelics Thematic Reviews is to communicate insights relevant to policy from the community to policy circles and development donor organisations. Each review focuses on a separate theme, in a format that aims at making it relevant and accessible to users outside academic circles. It gives an overview of research outcomes as well as reflections on policy implications.
The present review was produced by Allan Dahl Andersen, Björn Johnson, Anabel Marin, Dave Kaplan, Lilia Stubrin, Bengt-Åke Lundvall, and Raphael Kaplinsky. Substantial input was drawn from a 2-day Globelics seminar entitled ‘Natural Resources, Innovation and Development’ in Copenhagen, March 2014, and from a subsequent special session of the Globelics Annual Conference in Addis Ababa in October 2014. We thank all of the participants for their valuable inputs and comments. The review reflects the insights from papers on Natural Resources, Innovation and Development at Globelics conferences in general and the meetings in Copenhagen and Addis Ababa in particular. We are furthermore grateful that colleagues invested some of their scarce time to comment on earlier versions of this review. Those colleagues are: Tilman Altenburg, Michiko Iizuka, Keith Smith, and Max Rolfstam. However, responsibility for the final review lies with author team and the secretariat. The editors are also thankful to Nina Kotschenreuther for editorial support and to Shagufta Haneef for extensive support in editing references and helping with various bibliometric analyses.
The purpose of the Thematic Review is to inspire future Globelics research and to influence policy. However, there is no intention of giving specific advice to donor and development organisations about the conduct of development aid and design of development strategies in the field of natural resources and development. The intention is merely to offer practitioners insight into an innovation perspective on development on the basis of natural resources. We hope that this review may inspire the design and development of new and effective policies for innovation systems and strategies for development.

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