Technology leapfrogging in Sub-Saharan Africa: jumping the management capabilities gap

David Teece, Kieran Brown and Phil Alves

Chapter 1 in Technological Leapfrogging and Innovation in Africa, 2023, pp 17-32 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa is poised for growth, with large, dynamic populations in many of its economies. Technological and business advances in the rest of the world are available to African entrepreneurs to leapfrog past previous stages of business development. As governments attempt to clear various institutional and other hurdles to growth, they should not overlook the need to build and support the managerial capabilities of private firms. This chapter briefly reviews the leading strategic management framework, known as dynamic capabilities. It then summarizes the literature on management in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the current state of management education and support for entrepreneurs. We conclude by suggesting a set of generic interventions that can be adapted to local conditions: (1) support the development of firm-level dynamic capabilities; (2) reimagine how business school education is designed and delivered; (3) build learning and mentoring networks, including international connectivity opportunities for firms; and (4) encourage further research on fostering high-growth firms able to take advantage of leapfrogging technologies.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Innovations and Technology; Politics and Public Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800370395.00009 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:19935_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().