It used to take those watching the sun three days to notice a change from the solstice to the sun rising either earlier or later. For those seeking instant gratification this can seem like eternity, but this period is also anopportunity for reflection and preparation for the next cycle. Governments are often called on both to move more quickly as well as to prepare for changes that will take many cycles to be seen clearly. It is rare for the first mover to be the ultimate winner, as seen by the iterations of internet search engines or browsers.
Turkey, the focus of this month’s regional report, is one of many countries grappling with the immediate challenges posed by technology while also preparing its technology research and development and business sectors for continued rapid growth over the next decade. Other countries, such as the UK and US, have also been questioning the responsibility of corporations for the uses made of their products and services, even as their intelligence agencies are among those wanting to co-opt them.
Ilker Aycı, president of Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (Tubitak), which over the past year has started backing venture capital funds (VCs), in an interview with Global Government Venturing, noted: “The Turkish ecosystem is still in its infancy, and recent regulatory changes will have transformative effects on its development. Partnerships between academic institutions and the industry are also key to success, which have also been backed through various support programmes by Tubitak and the [prime minister].”
Partnerships might be important for an innovation ecosystem but they take time to form and are vulnerable to the motives of the insiders directing them.
It has been instructive to watch the recent pressure put on the UK government to change tax laws on corporate venturing from accountants and parties wanting change to show their stakeholders their own value or as a way of effectively creating business opportunities.
That corporations and our sister title, Global Corporate Venturing, attending this year’s round-table at the prime minister’s office, said there was no current need for a tax break undermined the pressure. Global Corporate Venturing’s own report for the government, prepared in 2011 and published by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, said a tax break could be useful for some but timing was an important consideration, as was the risk of unintended consequences that tax breaks could benefit others.
The important test is to find structures and organisations that are tasked to help without getting in the way of others that could do better. The needs for a coherent policy and response to innovation pressures means governments around the world are setting up or bolstering their strategic and development agencies.
As Ken Cooper, managing director of venture capital solutions at British Business Bank, said in our inaugural survey asking about the big issue of this year: “I suspect that the big one for us, and a few other countries, is the rise of the public development bank. With the launch of the British Business Bank there are now very few, if any, major economies without one.”
Many of these government-backed agencies will meet in February for our inaugural summit, along with the corporations, universities, entrepreneurs and VCs that help make up an innovation ecosystem, to discuss what works and how they can build the international partnerships that will hopefully help all.
In The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals, author Thomas Suddendorf argues that people have a capacity for imaginative storytelling and an ability to work together to integrate ideas and actions. The organisational structures and policies that encourage both are the ones that help societies use the ideas created – just as the sun seeming to stand still at certain times of the year helped create the stories that eventually moved societies to develop the then cutting-edge technologies used to move parts of mountains to places such as Stonehenge.
As we move into a new year, governments can reflect on which stories are resonant now and what technologies will make them come to life.