Sustainable Economic Growth in Developing Economies

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Innovation strategies to drive sustainable economic growth, backed by market intelligence, inclusive insights, and culturally appropriate solutions

Countries around the world are embracing innovation-led economic growth. However, implementing innovation strategies is complex and highly situation dependent. To be successful, it is necessary to understand the country’s or region’s innovation ecosystem—its diverse array of stakeholders, the formal and informal interactions within it, and the environment in which they act. When leveraged correctly, they can be combined to drive ongoing innovation and economic growth for more inclusive prosperity.

Our team integrates expertise across a broad set of disciplines, such as technology commercialization, university/private-sector partnership programs, regional development strategy, and impact evaluations to strengthen elements of the innovation ecosystem. We are also able to leverage sectoral expertise in fields relevant to economic growth—such as energy, food and agriculture, health systems, and manufacturing—with multiscale capacity-building experience to ensure that innovation-led economic growth policies, initiatives, and programs gain traction and deliver measurable results.

Supporting Emerging & Developing Economies

Every innovation ecosystem is unique, including ones in emerging and developing economies. Practices that succeeded in well-established and globally renowned innovation hubs cannot be simply copied into new settings. To deliver the results desired by mission-oriented initiatives or by corporations seeking to capture high-growth market-entry potential, each ecosystem’s assets and potential must be considered. We work with clients to produce new technologies and programmatic strategies that are tailored to these ecosystems.

A critical step in this process is understanding user insights and the socioeconomic and cultural context in which innovations will be deployed. With this context, our approach helps to de-risk technology launch and new product development efforts by first providing market and user insights, and then focusing on the true technology required.

We achieve this by conducting field testing of prototypes, addressing local regulatory issues and guidelines, identifying local value chain partners, validating business model assumptions, and arming teams with market intelligence to make informed decisions.

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Equitable and Sustainable Economic Development

RTI also understands that the benefits of innovation can be concentrated in certain geographies and job positions. RTI works across sectors—government, community, education, and business—to design and implement growth strategies that can bring more benefits across geographies and to a wider workforce. Tackling these issues will take a community of practice testing a range of innovative ideas to best localize solutions for more equitable outcomes. The Idea Lab for economic development is a virtual platform that offers in-depth articles and interviews from a variety of sources concerned with improving the field.

Visit the Idea Lab about Equitable and Sustainable Economic Development