The Future of Post-COVID Innovation Finance – Global Innovation Index 2020 / 2021

May 5, 2021

On May 3rd a virtual event on The Future of Post-COVID Innovation Finance – Global Innovation Index (GII) 2020 / 2021 was held on the occasion of the sixth Annual Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals (STI Forum), program available . The event was co-organized by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia to the United Nations in New York, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Cornell University.

While the topic of leveraging Science, Technology and Innovation to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has received significant consideration, the question on how to finance innovation, and the innovative approaches of countries on how to overcome financial barriers, have not received sufficient attention.

WIPO`s Director General stated that “[a]gainst all the odds, and throughout the pandemic, countries have intensified their efforts to seek innovative innovation policy solutions throughout the COVID-19 crisis. WIPO has actively collaborated with national governments and regional and international organizations to foster apt innovation and IP policy reactions. The countries with us today, Jamaica, the Philippines, Tanzania and Turkey, have excelled in fostering their innovation performance in collaboration with WIPO throughout 2020 and the first months of 2021.”

The event's objective was to contribute to overcoming this gap by i) assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on innovation expenditures, and ii) assessing the state of global innovation finance. The WIPO Secretariat presented new data and policy findings on both topics . Findings on innovation finance can be summarized as follows and more details are available in the GII 2020 Theme section.

1. Access to innovation finance is skewed across countries and sectors
2. Sound innovation ecosystems must balance start-ups, scale-ups and mature firms
3. Finding a balance between under/over investment in search for unicorns is key
4. New instruments—that have raised expectations—are helping, but have not eased financial constraints in developing economies
5. A policy mix is essential to improving the innovation finance landscape

Ambassador Mohammed Koba, Chargé d’affaires of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Indonesia and co-chair of the STI Forum stated in his opening remarks that “[i]n the present context of COVID-19, we are compelled to come up with different and new ideas in order to carry us out of the pandemic. Finance provides the vital spark that brings ideas from concept to reality and enables the global economic recovery to build back better.”

The following speakers shared their country`s responses to the pandemic and how to foster innovation finance:

• Fortunato T. De La Pena, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, Philippines
• Errol Morrison, Chairperson, National Commission on Science and Technology, Jamaica
• Amos Nungu, Director General, Tanzania’s Commission of Science and Technology
• Zekeriya Coştu, Director General, Ministry of Industry and Technology, Turkey

The event also shed light on the GII as a tool for the development/strengthening of technology and innovation ecosystems. As policymakers invest resources to analyze their GII results in cross-ministerial task forces and use the GII to design appropriate innovation and intellectual property (IP) policies, panelists shared their own national experiences and practices in using the GII as a policy instrument.