37th International Scientific Conference on Economic and Social Development - Socio Economic Problems of Sustainable Development, Baku, Azerbaijan, 14 - 15 February 2019, pp.312-319
Building a successful innovation ecosystem is a key factor in innovation, growth, and development. Formation of a favorable innovation ecosystem remains an essential policy priority for the government of Azerbaijan too. President of the Republic of Azerbaijan signed a decree on the establishment of the Innovation Agency under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of the Republic of Azerbaijan on November 6th, 2018. The Innovation Agency to be established in 2019 will be a coordinating body to draft and implement an innovation roadmap of an Azerbaijani ecosystem. This paper reviews world practice, including an Israeli practice of success to deduct results and models to build an ecosystem in Azerbaijan. The aim is to determine factors that made the Israeli ecosystem successful and study if these factors can be applied to the development and implementation of similar benchmarks in Azerbaijan. The methodology that is used for this research is the case study from Israel. Through systematic analysis and logical generalization, the paper analytically discusses and deducts conclusions from Israel's experience to spell out some key public policy lessons. While the paper finds out that the R&D grants, venture capital policies, developing skilled human capital and public private partnerships were the reasons of the success of Israel, this paper also determines that government played a key role in stimulating these policies with successful outcomes in successful practice. The limitation of the research with the case is the generalizability of the case study. The practice of Israel does not mean that the similar practice will be successful in Azerbaijan.