Abstract/Summary

In this commentary, I consider the chapters by Papageogiadis & McDonald, and Giuliani, and Jacqueminet & Nieri, and how their insights on cross-border, collaborative innovation and intellectual property rights (IPRs) shed light on some of the challenges of economic development. Effective collaboration for both innovation and development is often challenging to achieve, particularly between firms of different nationalities, structures and industries. Generating positive development outcomes requires appropriate institutions to govern the interactions between private firms, MNEs and non-firm actors, particularly those associated with IPRs. Well-defined IPRs are indispensable for development, and when used intelligently and strategically, IPR policies have the capacity to be an important complementary asset within the industrial policies of host governments. However, when legislated and enforced mechanically by utilising a generic template for more advanced economies, they have the capacity to impede development and growth. There are high costs in enforcement and monitoring of the IPRs of domestic actors and MNEs. Resource constraints in the public sector of developing countries, especially the skilled human capital to evaluate sophisticated IPRs, is a significant bottleneck, exaggerated even more because a majority of the economic actors are in the informal sector.