Tuesday, July 8, 2008

New book: Mexico's transition to a knowledge-based economy

New book about Mexico's transition to a knowledge-based economy from the WBI. I have not read the book yet but will do so in the following weeks. Here is the link for download. Here is a snapshot:

Mexico's Transition to a Knowledge-Based Economy provides a broad assessment of the country's readiness to join the global knowledge economy, highlighting the importance of education and institutional reform, and of creating an environment that is conducive to innovation.

This transformation, however, is not only about shaping the reform agenda from the top down. It is also means trial-and-error experimentation to test what works and what doesn't in the Mexican context, and then taking successful bottom-up initiatives to scale. The book takes a dual approach in its analysis and recommendations. It tackles both the strategic long-term agenda, which entails many difficult changes and choices, while also proposing a diversity of pragmatic, short and medium-term entry points to initiate and promote the transition within the current institutional structure.