Many developing countries have resisted proposals to implement national innovation strategies, failing to recognize that innovation is a driver of sustainable growth and prosperity.

With Indonesia’s increasing international importance as a G20 country, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has the opportunity to embrace innovation based development as a catalyst for Indonesia’s future.

Why should Indonesia do this? The answer may lie in this simple statistic: 89.5 percent of all patent filings in the world are from inventors domiciled in one of ten countries in the following order of volume: Japan, United States, China, South Korea, Germany, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Italy. If you add the next five — Netherlands, Sweden, Canada, Australia and Finland — the percentage of the top 15 rises to 94.5 percent of the 185 member states of the World Intellectual Property Organization that reported statistics for 2011.

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