Innovation key to growth

WINDHOEK – Innovation is a key to economic growth and social development, said the Governor of the Bank of Namibia (BoN), Tom Alweendo.

Alweendo said this when he officially launched the Innovation Marketplace (IM), which is part of the Polytechnic of Namibia’s Namibia Business Innovation Centre (NBIC) on Tuesday.
The Innovation Marketplace Centre is aimed at promoting and stimulating innovation in the country by providing an interesting and empowering environment for all sectors.
Alweendo said at the launch that economic growth can be promoted and achieved through a number of ways such as education and training, an educated workforce, stimulating capital investment and a reallocation of resources from low productivity to higher productivity industries, and by promoting technical progress and innovation.
Alweendo said technological progress and innovation are the greatest engines of economic growth.
‘Business leaders today understand that to continue to be successful, they need to continuously search for new and better ideas that lead to innovation,’ the governor said.
‘Countries that are innovators will benefit from the global innovation economy process while those who are bystanders will stagnate.’
Alweendo said the global innovation economy is driven by ideas and is, therefore, to some extent different from the industrial economy of the past.
The industrial economy might have focused on large corporations in order to achieve economies of scale, whereas in the ideas economy, it is all about innovative entrepreneurs utilising efficient distribution networks.
He added that productivity plays a key role in economic growth and prosperity, and growth in productivity leads to rising real wages for workers, increasing returns to shareholders and increasing per capita income.
‘Growth in productivity is impossible without innovation. Businesses are, therefore, only likely to increase their productivity by finding new and better ways to use natural, human and capital resources,’ Alweendo said.
The Rector of the Polytechnic, Tjama Tjivikua, said the centre has a vision to offer a comprehensive platform for business innovation and development that positions Namibia as a new economy through enhanced entrepreneurship, innovation, job creation and income generation.
He said the centre will be a pioneering environment where new ideas, theories, systems, goods and services will be facilitated through three main components namely a business incubator, technology park and science park.
‘An innovation centre is the environment [where] we need to focus on rethinking our value propositions, leveraging full commercial potential to achieve sustainable commercial markets and enhancing our understanding of financial and non-financial metrics locally and globally,’ the rector said.
-Nampa