ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 crisis has accentuated global inequality in income and access to knowledge. This chapter focuses on the implications for innovation system studies of the emerging new world order where tech giants and big powers compete to develop digital technologies. Some of the most important theoretical elements that constitute the national innovation system concept emanate from empirical work and case studies combining qualitative and quantitative analyses. While the analysis applied both to the Global North and the Global South, his main concern was how low- and middle-income countries can erase poverty through building stronger national innovation systems. The emerging new world order, with the technology war between great powers and with global intellectual monopolies, undermines attempts to tackle the COVID-19 crisis as well as the climate crisis. Bringing tech giants under control would require strengthening of national innovation systems in developing countries and a movement toward a global innovation system.
