Category: technologies

The Global Challenge Foundation’s New Shape Prize

Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros spent six years as the director of the Global Indicators Group in DEC (Development Economics) with the World Bank in Washington, DC, directing a team of some 100 professionals within the Bank´s economic research infrastructure. While on sabbatical from his position with the World Bank at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros was awarded the New Shape Prize by the Global Challenges Foundation in Sweden in recognition of his work on the proposal titled Global Governance and the Emergence of Global Institutions for the 21st Century.

The Global Challenges Foundation introduced the New Shape Prize in late 2016 as the most comprehensive competition of its kind, with an overriding goal of enhancing existing frameworks for global governance and global catastrophic risk. The Foundation felt strongly that the governance system that emerged in 1945 with the creation of the United Nations and its associated organizations was no longer fit for purpose. While, against the background of the Second World War, the founding of the United Nations was an important initiative in international cooperation, it was no longer adequate to meet the challenges of the 21st century, from climate change and its multiple consequences, to nuclear proliferation, rapid population growth, persistent poverty and growing income disparities, among many others. Finding sustainable and credible solutions to these problems would require a rethinking of the global order that has underpinned international relations during the past seven decades. The proposal by Dr. Lopez-Claros and his co-authors Arthur L. Dahl and Maja Groff presented a range of reforms to the UN system intended to turn the United Nations into a problem solving organization, at the center of a system of enhanced international cooperation, building on an impressive legacy of achievements (improving the normative framework for human rights, helping to avoid superpower conflict, assisting in the process of decolonization and conflict resolution and peacekeeping), while also proposing reforms to address some of its more serious flaws, such as improving its democratic legitimacy, phasing out the power of the veto in the Security Council, boosting its financial resources, among others.

The foundation solicited submissions for more than a year before convening in Stockholm, Sweden, in May of 2018 to present the competition winners at a three-day event. More than 2,700 entries were accepted as part of the competition and submitted to international expert panels, with proposals hailing from 122 countries. Submissions came from various sectors and industries, from academics in universities and researchers in private think tanks. The semi-final panel chose three winners from the 14 that were selected for final review. Winning proposals addressed subjects as diverse as AI-supported global governance and optimizing United Nations operations. A $1.8-million prize was split among the three chosen proposals. More information about these proposals and the future of the New Shape program can be found at www.globalchallenges.org.

Leaving No One Behind – Establishing a Global ICT Platform

Before his appointment as senior fellow at the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign Service, Dr. Augusto Lopez-Claros was a director at the World Bank. With years of experience as a development economist Dr. Lopez-Claros has written and lectured extensively about policies that encourage growth. In a talk he delivered in 2009 at Microsoft’s Government Leaders Forum he addressed the importance of adopting an information and communication technologies (ICT) platform to remain competitive. He said that an increasingly important factor in explaining successful economic development concerned the agility with which an economy adopted existing technologies to enhance the productivity of its industries.

This is critical because technological differences have been shown to explain much of the variation in productivity between countries. In fact, the relative importance of technology for competitiveness has been increasing in recent years, as progress in the dissemination of knowledge and the increasing use of ICTs have become increasingly widespread. Technology-intensive foreign direct investment not only provides strong productivity gains and improvements in business processes, but also has a number of important spillover effects, including improvements in management practice and positive effects on human capital where new technologies provide the incentive for employees to acquire new skills. At the same time, other companies become increasingly aware of the advantages of upgrading technology, with positive repercussions for the productivity of the sector as a whole.

Innovation, of course, is particularly important for countries that have reached the high-tech frontier. While less advanced countries can still improve their productivity by adopting existing technologies or making incremental improvements in other areas, for countries that have reached the innovation stage of development, this is no longer sufficient to increase productivity. Firms in these countries must design and develop cutting-edge products and processes to maintain a competitive advantage. This requires an environment that is conducive to innovative activity, supported by both the public and the private sectors.

In particular, this means sufficient business investment in research and development, high-quality scientific research institutions, collaboration in research between universities and industry, and protection of intellectual property. As of 2018, four of the seven countries that are home to the top 100 digital companied were in Asia. The other three were in North America and Europe. In terms of figures, the global digital economy is worth $11.5 trillion, equivalent to about 15 percent of global GDP. This point is made relevant when considering countries in Africa. While Africans use technology, they face significant challenges accessing data, mobile services, and dealing with excessive data costs, among other broadband issues. These challenges directly impact social and digital sectors, e-commerce, e-health, and e-government capabilities, which prevent African countries from competing on an even footing globally.

Given the importance of innovation for long-term growth, innovation policy is currently very much at the center of economic policy in many countries. A key insight from these discussions is that innovation policies should aim to foster an environment which promotes entrepreneurship and innovation across the economic spectrum.