Innovators around the world face significant barriers to scaling up their innovations. In August – October 2020, Global Innovation Exchange (GIE) conducted a survey to investigate the largest barriers to scale for country-based innovations and the types of support that is most helpful in addressing those barriers.
The survey had a total of 531 respondents including 70% innovators (n=359) out of which 60% were founding members of the innovation team (n = 240). Out of the remaining 30%, 18% were innovation supporters such as funders and accelerators/incubators (n=98).
Before setting out on this initiative, the GIE team reviewed around 70 documents, articles, and existing data. This literature review contributed to the Barriers and Types of Support and were used as a starting point in order to investigate what was missing, and to validate if in fact, these were the largest barriers that innovations were struggling to overcome.
The barriers investigated include the following:
- Talent: Team capacity and capabilities (e.g. specialized staff) to scale the innovation is lacking
- Local partnerships: Difficulty creating strong local partnerships in the implementing countries
- Local buy-in: Lack of support & buy-in for scaling the innovation from gov’ts & other local stakeholders
- Global networks: Innovation team does not have strong connections in the Global North (UK, USA, etc.)
- Financing: Insufficient financing to grow sustainably, cover costs e.g. to hire talent, & monitor impact
- External support: Lack of access to innovation support or information from external entities e.g. accelerators
- Evidence: Insufficient evidence to prove that the innovation is making an impact
- Demand: Lack of demand for the innovation and/or the customers do not see the value in it
This infographic includes the key data from the survey results.
The key findings that this survey data points to is the following:
- Financing is reported as the largest barrier to scale
- Global networks, external support & local buy-in are also significant barriers for innovators but vary by regions
- Early stage innovators struggle with connections to global networks
- With 25% of the innovators experiencing discrimination, it might be the root cause for many of the barriers
- Global entities can help country-level innovators address these barriers by providing funding, mentorship, and other support
This research project that this survey was part of also included a complementary qualitative component. A soon-to-be-published paper combines the key findings from this survey with the findings from 25+ interviews. The key findings include the seven largest barriers to scale facing country-based innovations, the linkages between them, and guiding principles for global entities looking to provide scaling support. A link to this paper will be added soon.
