Innovation Policy and Technology Management in Emerging Economies

Innovation policy and technology management in emerging economies encompass the strategic frameworks and institutional mechanisms aimed at accelerating technological capability, fostering domestic industrial upgrading and integrating into global value chains. These policies often combine state-led initiatives, such as targeted subsidies, tax incentives and pilot-city experiments, with market-oriented reforms to cultivate a dynamic innovation ecosystem. Key objectives include overcoming structural constraints associated with middle-income status, promoting knowledge spillovers between universities, research institutes and industry, and enhancing technology diffusion beyond urban centres. In practice, selected regions operationalise these objectives through place-based experimentation, public–private partnerships and tailored support for general-purpose technologies. The interplay between central directives and local governance shapes heterogeneity in outcomes, while the balance between closed and open innovation strategies determines firms’ access to external knowledge networks. Across diverse contexts, emerging economies seek to leverage systems thinking to address feedback loops, identify systemic bottlenecks and align industrial policy with sustainable development goals. The global significance of these efforts lies not only in their potential to redress developmental gaps, but also in offering alternative governance models for technology governance in an increasingly multipolar innovation landscape.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have employed quasi-experimental designs to assess the impact of place-based industrial policy on firm-level innovation. One investigation into a national manufacturing initiative used pilot-city assignments to demonstrate that local participation in industrial policy experimentation boosted corporate research investment through tax relief, public subsidies and facilitated academic collaboration. A complementary analysis of a medium- to long-term science and technology development plan has traced the evolution of national strategic planning over a fifteen-year cycle, highlighting how systematic goal-setting and performance reviews underpinned the transition towards an innovation-oriented economy. That study also articulates the challenges of sustaining collaborative networks, integrating market mechanisms and recalibrating policy instruments for the subsequent planning horizon, thus providing a template for other emerging economies seeking to scale up central planning without stifling regional autonomy.

Innovation Policy and Technology Management in Emerging Economies publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in innovation policy and technology management in emerging economies across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Innovation policy: A set of government measures designed to support research, development and technology adoption across sectors.

Technology diffusion: The process by which technological innovations spread among firms, industries or regions.

Indigenous innovation: Domestic development of new technologies, often under state encouragement, encompassing both closed and open practices.

General-purpose technology (GPT): A technology with broad applicability across multiple industries, driving widespread economic transformation.

Closed innovation: An approach in which firms develop and commercialise technologies primarily within internal or tightly controlled networks.

Open innovation: A model in which organisations leverage external knowledge sources, collaborations and partnerships to drive technological progress.

Middle-income trap: A development situation where economies struggle to transition from middle-income to high-income status due to insufficient innovation capacity.

References

1. How does industrial policy experimentation influence innovation performance? A case of Made in China 2025. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2024).
2. Planning for science: China’s “grand experiment” and global implications. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2021).
3. Beyond catch-up—can a new innovation policy help China overcome the middle income trap?. Science and Public Policy (2017).
4. How Can Government Promote Technology Diffusion in Manufacturing Paradigm Shift Evidence From China. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (2020).
5. Implications of China's innovation policy shift: Does “indigenous” mean closed?. Growth and Change (2020).
6. Leveraging industrial-technological innovation to achieve sustainable development: A systems thinking perspective. PLOS ONE (2020).