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Book Title: Innovation Without Patents
Editor(s): Suthersanen, Uma; Dutfield, Graham; Chow, Boey Kit
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN (hard cover): 9781845429591
Section: Chapter 1
Section Title: Innovation and Development
Author(s): Dutfield, Graham; Suthersanen, Uma
Number of pages: 10
Extract:
1. Innovation and development
Graham Dutfield and Uma Suthersanen
1.1 DEVELOPMENT AND DIVERSITY
`Development', a word borrowed from biology, is a term whose meaning is
contested by social scientists and international development experts and organ-
isations. Nowadays, it is common to speak of `economic development', which
focuses on a country's measurable economic performance relative to other
countries; of `human development', which supplements economic development
by incorporating social welfare considerations; and of `sustainable develop-
ment', which takes into account the environment as well.
Conventionally, the extent of a country's development is quantified by using
certain indicators of income and output, such as gross national product (GNP).
This is, of course, economic development. At its crudest, the economic progress
of different countries is compared by making country league tables, with the
richest nations according to GNP per capita at the top and the poorest with the
lowest figures propping up the table at the bottom. The World Bank's annual
World Development Reports rank countries in this way (although the reports
provide various other indicators of development as well).1
More commonly, though, we tend to talk of developed countries and develop-
ing countries as if there are no other kinds of country. Alternatively, but similarly,
following the 1980 report of the Independent Commission on International
Development Issues chaired by former West German Chancellor Willi Brandt,
the developed world is `the North' and the developing world is `the South'.2 In
1971, though, the United Nations (UN) carved out ...
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ELECD/2007/132.html