Page 45 - Rockefeller Lockstep Document

Scenario Narratives SMART SCRAMBLE

currencies designed to boost local trade and or philanthropic support — did help, enabling
bring communities closer together. Nowhere was students in isolated pockets in the developing
this more true than in India, where localized world to access knowledge and instruction
experiments proliferated, and succeeded or through the written word and other media like
failed, with little connection to or impact on video. But the development of tangible devices,
other parts of the country — or the world. products, and innovations continued to lag in
places where local manufacturing skills and
These developments were encouraging, but also
capacities had not yet scaled. More complex
frustrating. In the absence of enduring trade and
engineering solutions proved even more difficult
FDI channels, local experiments and innovations
to develop and diffuse.
could neither scale nor boost overall growth. For
those looking, it was difficult to find or access By 2025, collaboration was finally improving,
creative solutions. Scaling was further inhibited with ecosystems of research and sharing — many
by the lack of compatible technology standards, of them “virtual” — beginning to emerge. Yet
making innovations difficult to replicate. Apps without major progress in global economic
developed in rural China simply didn’t work in integration and collaboration, many worried that
urban India. good ideas would stay isolated, and survival and
success would remain a local — not a global or
High-speed internet access — which gradually
national — phenomenon. •
Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development
emerged in some areas despite weak government

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