Diffusion of Precommercial Inventions

An IDRC Study examined the success of indigenous pre-commercial inventions in Nigeria and posits solutions to improve the structural inefficiencies within this important plank of industrial realization. They include that
"...The government should not fund R&D activities until it identifies specific social, economic, technical, and other kinds of problems that need R&D solutions. The next step should be to develop research programs with specific objectives and, after dialogue with R&D institutes, to evolve means for achieving the desired results. Funds should then be tied to specific research programs. R&D institutes should be made to sink or swim on the basis of the number of feasible need-oriented research programs they can attract and what they can do with the programs. This means putting an end to blanket funding for institutes..."also"...The R&D institutes should be allowed to sell their services to the private sector and thus become more relevant to the needs of the country. The institutes should be allowed to compete for research projects initiated in the private sector. For this to be effective, the government needs to provide the private sector with an incentive to use R&D services. A climate of liberal imports does not provide this incentive. The incentive should take the form of special tax rebates or outright matching of funds for private-sector users of indigenous R&D institutes..."