Regional Systems of Innovation and Economic Structure in the Arab Region

Abstract

This paper employs both the descriptive and comparative approaches and uses the definition of systems of innovation used in the literature to examine the existence, characteristics and implications of the regional systems of innovation in the Arab region. We examine three hypotheses: that the regional systems of innovation exist but characterized by serious weaknesses in the Arab region compared with other world regions, that the structure of the economy has significant effect in the performance of innovation systems in the Arab region, and that the poor Arab systems of innovation has serious implications in the Arab region. We explain two common characteristics of Arab regional systems of innovation concerning poor subsystems of education, science and technology (S&T), research and development (R&D) and information and communication technology (ICT) institutions in the Arab region and concentration of R&D activities within public and university sectors and small contribution of the private sector in R&D activities. We find that the major implications are the poor performance of the Arab region in terms of S&T indicators, competitiveness indicators, technology achievement index and poor integration in the knowledge economy index. Therefore, it is essential for the Arab region to enhance the institutions of higher education, S&T, R&D and ICT to build the Arab regional systems of innovation and to achieve economic development in the Arab region.