Reimagining Bangladesh’s National Innovation Ecosystem
by Ishtiaque Hussain
Bangladesh, a small country with over 160 million people, is usually known for being poor and vulnerable to natural disasters. Over the last decade however, the same Bangladesh has written a bold new narrative for itself. The country’s remarkable development trajectory has sustained and accelerated the pace of socioeconomic transformation even in the backdrop of a global recession. Social indicators such as gender equity, women’s empowerment, life expectancy, primary school enrolment, reduction in child and maternal mortality rates and health hazards are remarkably better than those of neighboring countries with higher GDPs. In the last 10 years, internet penetration in Bangladesh has gone up 100 times. This means that about 100 times more Bangladeshis are able to take advantage of the internet for information, education and trade. Mobile phones could not be conceived of in the hands of anybody below the middle class. Today, almost everybody has access to mobile phones, even if they don’t own one. Bangladesh is the world leader in mobile money adoption. And of course the country has also seen remarkable examples of innovations that have become textbook material, like microfinance and BRAC.
Having said, that, this is no time to rest on our laurels. Serious challenges remain: What will be the future of Bangladesh’s economy with its heavy dependence on low-skill industries like readymade garments and migrant workers for remittances? Will the education sector be able to adapt to provide the skills needed as the country progresses in its growth path? For a geographically small country like Bangladesh with a massive population and the imminent threat of losing significant parts of its territory to rising sea levels, it has to raise its innovation game and take it to a whole new level.
Developing Bangladesh’s National Innovation Ecosystem could have a truly transformational effect and become a further catalyst for the country’s aspiration to become a knowledge-economy.
National innovation agencies can play a catalytic role in fostering innovation ecosystems by building connections, direct investment, conducting research and help promote a conducive policy environment. But how does one undertake such a monumental task? As David Madden points out, in many developing countries, these kinds of innovation ecosystems don’t exist. But, they can be built. However, there is no ready made recipe to follow for creating an agency of this kind. Should we follow a model like Finland’s SITRA? Or maybe more like India’s National Innovation Foundation? How do we preserve the agency’s ability to think long term (beyond immediate political priorities) and experiment with different approaches — be it ‘mission driven’ innovation or ‘government as a platform’? Should it engage in the formulation of innovation policy or perhaps even innovation diplomacy? Will the agency be able to attract top talent, a challenge that Mariana Mazzucato has reminded us of?
Maybe putting all our eggs in one agency is not the way to go! Look at Singapore and its constellation of public and private focused entities including A*STAR, PS21, SPRING, and IPI all specializing on different parts of the innovation ecosystem — all the way from science and technology research to civil service innovation capacity and intellectual property. Poland also has a collection of agencies working together addressing a lack of cooperation between industry and academia while simultaneously establishing new funds to co-finance Venture Capital funds or to create corporate VCs within large companies. Taiwan also boasts a blend of private and public sector enterprises employing over 5,000 people.
It will also be important to take into account what’s already being done, what already exists and then determine what the opportunities are. Take Phandeeyar for example, in Myanmar it rolled out a series of programs to boost the pool of tech talent, develop and support local startups, incubators and grow the innovation community as a whole.
So, there are many different types of innovation ecosystems and varying models for building them. But what type of innovation ecosystem do we want to promote? Can we shape its mandate and values so that it becomes a powerful enabler for inclusive innovation? Perhaps the most important question is, what works best for the future Bangladesh that we want to build?
One thing we are certain about — we will have to make important design choices (create our own recipe!) based on the unique context of Bangladesh.
Luckily, as we explore different options, we stand on solid ground, building on the experience of the a2i Programme (popularly known in Bangladesh as simply a2i), a successful initiative of the Bangladesh government supported by UNDP that started as a government digitization project but then quickly expanded its scope to a number of different areas including fostering public service innovation and social innovation, catalyzing pro-poor fintech innovations, empowering Bangladeshi youth with future skills and experimenting with ways to reorganize the work of government around a network of shared APIs, open standards and data-driven policy making. The hope is that this will allow whole-of-government and whole-of-society, including the private sector to interact, co-create and deliver radically better services to citizens.
Since its launch over a decade ago, a2i’s initiatives have saved Bangladeshi citizens over 3 billion dollars. The average time needed to receive services has fallen by 85%, costs by 63%, and the number of required visits by 40%. Many services such as land records, birth registration, banking, and rural e-Commerce have been added to the list of 100 plus services that are delivered from 5,000+ digital one-stop shops to a monthly average of 5 to 6 million people. 10,000 new digital self-employment opportunities, half of which are for female entrepreneurs, have emerged.
Our exploration journey, as we challenge our assumptions and explore different design options will include interviews with key experts, a literature review and in-depth looks at examples such as India’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF), the UK’s NESTA, Agensi Inovasi Malaysia (AIM) Malaysia’s Innovation Agency, Sri Lanka’s CITRA Lab, NYU’s GovLab, the Finnish Innovation Fund SITRA, Sweden’s Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems (VINNOVA), Chile’s Economic Development Agency (CORFO), Israel’s Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) and the Scottish Investment Bank, to name a few.
We will keep you posted on our finding and in the meantime, should you be interested in joining this exciting journey and shaping the future of innovation for Bangladesh please do not hesitate to get in touch! Share your thoughts with us on Twitter @Ishtiaque_IH @ric_undp
