What approaches might improve technology flows between developed countries and emerging markets?
First, getting rid of the concept of “developed countries” and “emerging markets” will improve the flow. Implicit in this lexical colonialism is that engagement in the consumer process is a surrogate for some linear scale of development. For technology transfer to occur, as I’ve previously stated, as much emphasis and respect must be placed on the recipient as on the artifact being transferred. We need to see that the recipient has an established need in a defined context and we need to understand that that need and context is appropriately empowered to engage with the artifact. At the same time, we need to have the holder of the artifact adequately informed to engage in a culturally relevant context. We can learn from GE’s work with trade credit offsets in which it experimented with using education, training, and explicit innovation licensing, as a means to build prospective engagement in counter-party countries with whom it was doing business. While nascent, this model, taken to scal
