In the last decade, with the increasing momentum of the world economy, factors that will add value to our economy and help us get out of the middle income trap have begun to be discussed. Perhaps the most important of these factors is “INNOVATION”. Innovation (innovative thinking that brings profit) can be defined as the principle of "bringing a new tradition to the old village", which increases the added value of products and services. Innovation brings a new perspective in all processes of enterprises from production to marketing. Not every innovation made is considered an innovation. In order for an innovation to be accepted as an innovation, it must have a commercial return.
Today, when the world is going through a difficult period economically, two decisions stand out for businesses. One of them is efficiency and the other is innovation. Since we have discussed the obstacles in front of innovation in this article, let's first start by examining how we are in the world in terms of innovation.
Our country ranked 43rd out of 144 countries in the Global Competitiveness Level. 12 titles are evaluated in the report. Our country ranks below the average in only two subjects. Let me tell you one, you guess the other. The first title is the Efficiency of Labor Markets. The other is INNOVATION!
We can attribute our backwardness in R&D and technology to issues such as our inability to keep up with the industrial revolution, wars, backwardness in science, etc.
So why are we lagging behind in innovation? Let's list the barriers to innovation.
1- In our country, where the understanding of "not bringing new customs to the old village" is dominant in innovation, new ideas do not hold well. Because we know everything best. How would a young engineer know what you've been doing for 40 years?
2- R&D & Innovation are concepts that affect each other positively. Our lagging behind in R&D also negatively affects innovation.
3- We do not have many resources to devote to innovation activities. Although the incentive system of our country is developed, innovation projects are not sufficiently understood and cannot receive grants. It would be helpful if the organizations supporting this issue were a little more active.
4- In our institutions, top managers work with people who share the same opinion as them. When almost everyone is of the same mind, a different opinion does not arise, whatever the boss says will happen. We like critical thinking in words, but we do not apply it in essence, it does not work for us. This situation is closely related to the concept we call business blindness.
5- Since our education system trains test-solving machines, the number of our imaginative inventors who use the right part of the brain is few. Education education education.
6- A significant majority of our brightly intelligent students prefer guaranteed professions at universities in order not to have job anxiety in the future. Their own wishes are often secondary. Today, a significant portion of the students who are in the top 1000 in university exams are writing medicine. This preference is largely related to the expectation of future income. Indeed, they are not wrong. Considering that new engineers start to work with minimum wage today, we can say that students make the right choice.
7-Changing consumer habits is difficult for the old, if not for the new generations. This means that products and services count in place.
8-The thought that the working personnel cannot fully devote themselves to the work and that I will do the work given by this and the rest is not my concern. Unfortunately, due to the monotony of working in the same workplace for a long time and not meeting their expectations, the personnel unfortunately move away from the idea of making work easier (process innovation) or product innovation.
It is of course possible to extend the list. The items we discussed above are the obstacles that need to be examined on their own. I think that when we reduce the barriers to innovation, we will see that much better products and services will emerge from our country.
