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21 August 2008
Harnessing Creativity Vital to Economic Growth
Washington-based center teaches ways to foster innovation
Washington -- Developing countries that enable citizens to prosper from their creative and innovative work will defeat poverty, according to a Washington-based scholar.
Life-saving drugs will be developed, memorable movies will be produced, valuable books will be written if the people who create them are able to earn money from them, said Michael Ryan, the director of the Creative and Innovative Economy Center (CIEC) in Washington.
CIEC researches and teaches how developing countries can harness the brainpower of their people to raise the standard of living.
"While writing my book Knowledge Diplomacy: Global Competition and the Politics of Intellectual Property in the 1990s, I realized that knowledge and technology are the keys to economic development," Ryan said in a recent interview with America.gov.
The measurement of wealth has shifted away from the number of factories, smokestacks and assembly lines that rely on low-skilled labor, in Ryan's view. Rather, "knowledge-based" industries, requiring highly skilled and talented people to create, develop and manufacture, are becoming the drivers of economic growth.
After lobbying in academic, government and business circles for a decade, Ryan attracted the funding needed to open the CIEC in 2006 as part of the George Washington University Law School in Washington. Ryan and his colleagues have developed educational programs to enhance biomedical innovation in Jordan and Brazil, movie making in India and health and agricultural enterprise in Africa, to name a few of the CIEC activities around the world.
Ryan plays a persuasive role in correcting the notion held by many developing countries that intellectual property protection is a way industrialized countries enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. Countries engaging in piracy frequently say they are justified in doing so because they are too poor to buy the products at the prices set by the producers.
The CIEC says there is some validity in this view, but it is short-sighted and self-defeating.
Ryan uses the example of Jordan to illustrate what can happen if a country rejects piracy and embraces intellectual property protection. He speaks from the experience of having advised the Jordanian government from 1998 to 1999, when it drafted its intellectual property laws. Those laws helped lay the foundation for Jordan to join the World Trade Organization and sign a free-trade agreement with the United States.
In 1998, Jordan's per capita income was $1,500, and a third of the Jordanian economy depended on foreign aid. Today, Jordan's per capita income is close to $5,000 and the economy is thriving in an environment of knowledge-based industries, Ryan said.
The move to protect intellectual property did not come without cost to the old pharmaceutical sector that operated outside international patent laws. "In the old days, Jordan reproduced medicines that were under patent and sold them for good profits," he said.
But the return from stamping out piracy has been greater than losses to that industry, Ryan said. Today, Jordan's pharmaceutical sector has cooperative relations with international drug makers, which are willing to market their products in Jordan because they are confident their formulas will not be stolen. Jordan has nurtured a vibrant pharmaceutical sector of its own, one that develops medicines and sells them abroad under Jordanian licenses.
"An important money maker is an aspirin derivative that is easier on the stomach than traditional aspirin. It is selling under patent in Europe. Jordan also has rights to make generic drugs," Ryan said.
Jordan's protection of intellectual property has enabled it to become a Middle Eastern center for medical tourism, to which people in the region travel for world-class medical treatment at a fraction of the cost in Europe and the United States.
A similar phenomenon has occurred in Jordan's information technology sector. No longer stealing, reproducing and selling software, Jordan's information technology sector now is a leader in developing software tailored to the needs of the Arabic-speaking world. It has attracted investments from American-based companies Microsoft Corporation, Intel Corporation and Cisco Systems Inc.
Ryan and the CIEC are engaged in projects to transfer the Jordanian experience to other countries. In many African countries, the work involves bringing anti-retroviral drugs at affordable prices to people affected by HIV/AIDS and at the same time developing local drug industries.
In Brazil, the CIEC is helping to create incentives for pharmaceutical companies to tap into the medicinal wealth stored in the Amazonian jungle. After Brazil implemented intellectual property laws in the late 1990s, a Brazilian drug company called Ache produced the first patent-protected biomedical product from a natural resource, Acheflan, an anti-inflammatory cream. It was an instant hit with professional football players, weekend athletes and doctors.
Buoyed by the cream's success, Ache and its partners are developing treatments for anxiety, diabetes, high blood pressure, liver disease and sleep disorders, Ryan said.
