It’s really fascinating to hear and to learn about Kerala’s experience. It’s also given an opportunity to reflect from the environment in South Africa. It is also helping to think about our own ecosystems and highlight how important it is to have this collaboration and sharing of experiences.
I was very glad to listen to the presentations about the innovation ecosystem. Two initial presentations that spurred the discussion and it appears that the state has done a lot in pioneering to support the startups at various levels. I can see from the presentations that there is quite a good and deep understanding that supports the local innovation system, not only about creating incubators and accelerators but also requires the broad understanding of the resources and the actors at different levels that they are, and also have an in-depth and real time understanding of the challenges affecting the business community and the local entrepreneurs. I think, this has become very evident in the time of COVID. I just had a quick look at the news which show that the support for entrepreneurs has been quite intensive during the pandemic in Kerala.
I would like to just make three points and some of them have been raised by the previous commentators.  The first point relates to the time span of the commitment that we need to build local innovation ecosystem. Supporting an innovation ecosystem is not a once off initiative. It requires a long-term commitment, and it is quite challenging when the conditions are changing. Sustainability of this effort is also being raised by others that has to do with implementation. I would like to emphasize here that for local ecosystems to be sustainable in the long run and survive the changes over time in terms of prioritization and financial resources, it’s important to empower not only the local businesses, but also the whole constellation of organizations and actors that’s around. This includes the entrepreneurial centers, training organizations, the chambers of commerce, the NGOs, the tech communities, the centers of institutional research, the providers of funding and so on. The empowering and supporting of these organizations is essential because they will carry the load and they will fulfill the functions that are needed for a local ecosystem to thrive and survive even in the absence or in cases where government support may be weaker than others.
I think from my point of view, there is a very important role that government can play in terms of empowering the constellation of actors that surround firms. Another important role that government can play, as raised by others, is to guide the direction of this local innovation ecosystem. So, a lot has been discussed about the outcome. Preserving the quality of natural and social ecosystems must be a part and parcel of the way in which innovation systems are conceptualized, supported and maintained. Others have talked about environmental sustainability as the natural environment and society cannot only be seen as resources but also as part of the outcomes. So, do we maximize profit only for firms? or do we also maximize profit for environment and for society? Here we bring up all dimension of inclusion and this is a point that I would like to reflect on the context in which I am.
We often talk about the needs to create entrepreneurs and I usually sit uncomfortable when I hear that expression. Because I only need to step out of my house and go and buy bread and I walk past at least 20-30 entrepreneurs. Many of them are informal and many of them are survivalists but some others are testing and trying new ideas. And we often leave these actors out of the way in which we think about entrepreneurs in local innovation systems.  And again, I think there’s a lot of room to think about how do we bring in this new and emerging technologies, including digital technologies but also more advanced technologies that we are referring to here. And with this large pool of entrepreneurial resources that we have in our context in being formal economy and this brings us ideas about how to make our local innovation systems more inclusive and how to think about upscaling reproducing and so on. Some of these businesses and connecting them more successfully with their new and emerging technologies.  
The final point that I want to say again is a stronger rooting of our local innovation systems with the reality that we live in, in the sense of connecting to the informal economy and bringing that inclusion into it. I don’t think there is a contradiction between supporting and routine local innovation systems with the global dynamics. I think there’s a lot that can be gained in terms of exchanging ideas. I see a lot of room for south-south collaboration for fusion of ideas and social innovations. There is quite a lot of similarity and a lot of room to share and to learn and embedding these dynamics in how we conceptualize and support local innovation systems is also very important. I’m going to stop there. Thank you.