By Asoka Seneviratne –

Asoka Seneviratne

According to an UNCTAD report in early 2023, the ten countries with the largest amount of inventions or patents are given as follows in the order of the highest first.

Switzerland, USA, Sweden, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Finland and Denmark. These are also the countries with some of the highest per capita incomes, meaning there is a definite relationship between economic prosperity and level of inventions.

An invention is when a new product, technique or even a service is developed and then patented. One area where inventions tend to be highest is in the field of medical sciences. One of the most outstanding inventions in the recent past has been the technique of Gene Editing which has been credited to American Jennifer Doudna and French Emmanuelle Carpentier which led to a massive industry of several billions dollars’ worth creating jobs and tax revenue. Among the most noteworthy inventions that helped the world to get rid of recent global pandemic Covid-19 was MRNA technology invented by scientists Weissman of USA and Kariko of Hungary.

Pfizer made nearly $ 38 Billion selling Covid vaccine. 

So why doe tiny Switzerland with a population of 8 million lead in partnts year after year? Switzerland has no natural resources except crispy clean water and beautiful mountains. So the smart leaders of Switzerland resorted to brain power. They developed top notch colleges that lead to the creation of new patents and trademarks  year after year. 

So how does patents lead to prosperity?

The patent holder enjoys protection for 20 years in USA for example. This enables the inventor to market the product unhindered for 20 years. The famous anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor invented by American scientist Bruce Roth and later developed by Pfizer enjoyed patent protection until 2011. Pfizer makes about $2 billion annually and is the largest selling anti-cholesterol drug in the world.

So why does not the poorer world not develop inventions and patents? Simply said, lack of awareness, lack of incentives and lack of leadership by governments.

Among these, financial incentives or greed play the biggest role. For example, a US inventor can benefit from its gigantic capital markets if the product developed makes a lot of money and then taken to the capital markets as a publicly listed company. Once a company goes public, the value of the company can go from several millions to several hundred million or billions even potentially. Once the company enjoys all these million- or billion-dollar valuations, they have the luxury to hire the smartest around the world and develop more products and even diversify into other areas. 

So it all starts from an invention incentivized by greed for the most part. A tiny and useful patented electronic device can generate a lot of money under patent protection for 2 decades in the USA, for example.

Take Amazon.com for example. A smart American borrowed $25000 from his stepfather’s retirement money and opened an On-Line bookstore in the garage. It took off and grew exponentially because of the massive purchasing power of the US public. Then Bezos took the company public and after struggling a few years tuned into one of the most valued companies of the world all thanks to the US capital markets. Today Amazon enjoys a massive market capitalization of US $ 1.57 trillion most of the shares being owned by the founder Bezos making him one of the richest people in the world. 

Due to this sea of millions Amazon now has, it has ventured into other cutting-edge industries like rocket science developing space tourism, yet another billion-dollar industry in the making.

A simple business of selling books on-line became a gigantic global powerhouse thank to the internet, consumer buying power along with most important capital markets. 

Same of the story of Bill Gates who invented Windows that lead to the development of personal computer through Microsoft who has been among the  richest in the world. Over a hundred billion dollars of personal wealth which he uses to diversify into other ventures creating patents and thousands of jobs along the way plus generating billions of tax revenue to the country.

Now what if Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates were born in Sri Lanka? What incentive would they have to make inventions or even start a business? Could they have gone public into the tiny Colombo stock exchange? Could they have generated millions of dollars selling to a tiny market worth a mere $85 billion? 

There are thousands of smart brains in SL or in the poor world. But what would drive them to invent? What would be the incentive?

To that matter what percentage of our young people know about capital markets and how they function? How many of them even know that the heart of capitalism is the capital markets?

Why is it that our education system does not teach the students from young age about the power of inventions and capital markets? Why is it that our young generations are not equipped with the right kind knowledge of high business and what creates them?

It all boils down to smart leadership. How else one can explain the once impoverished tiny Singapore turning in to the 8^th most inventive country with a $95000.00 Per capital within a mere 50 years? 

Food for thought for the third world and their leadership !