Industrial Development Report – serie

This report looks at how technology and innovation achieves inclusive and sustainable industrial development (ISID). Its main finding is that ISID is feasible and technology can simultaneously serve all three dimensions of sustainability, including economic, social and environmental. Rapid inclusive and sustainable industrialization can happen more frequently provided that policymakers firmly steer the industrialization process with opportune policies and avoid past mistakes. In some cases, the spread of technology has not materialized in concrete growth opportunities because of the lack of technological capabilities. Innovation needs to be supported by interventions strengthening the process from invention to adoption, as capabilities are developed and high tech manufacturing sectors are created, seeing higher rates of sustainable growth.

The emergence and diffusion of advanced digital production (ADP) technologies clustered around the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) is radically altering the nature of manufacturing production, increasingly blurring the boundaries between physical and digital production systems. The significant requirements of ADP technologies are opening questions on whether industrialization is still a feasible or even a desirable strategy to achieve economic development. This publication contributes to this debate by presenting fresh analytical and empirical evidence on the future of industrialization in the context of a technological paradigm shift. According to the report, it is by engaging with industrialization that countries can build and strengthen the skills and capabilities needed to compete and succeed within the new technological paradigm.