Download - Lessons learnt on Diaspora networks of the highly skilled Tanja Faller.

Lessons learnt on Diaspora networks of the highly skilled

Tanja Faller

Roadmap

I. Why do we care: Impact of the diapora of the highly skilled

II. How do search networks succeed?

III. Towards a strategy: Nourishing the exception

Market for the highly skilledWill become even more globally integrated Increasing returns to skills will continue to favor spatial concentration: clustering phenomenon The brain drain will increase, both from developed and developing countries Expansion of far-flung Diasporas – networks of expatriates abroad

Motivation

©Knowledge for Development, WBI©Knowledge for Development, WBIHow do search networks succeed? Why do we care? Towards a strategy

Be productively employed in the country: growth of clusters and non-traditional exports

Leave the country and be lost for it: brain drain

Leave the country yet be engaged in projects at home: brain circulation

Leave and come back: return migration

Four Scenarios for Skills

©Knowledge for Development, WBI©Knowledge for Development, WBIHow do search networks succeed? Why do we care? Towards a strategy

Highly skilled Diapora:Talent is a small segment of the diapora,

yet with a significant impact

©Knowledge for Development, WBI©Knowledge for Development, WBI

A more analytical framework

Evidencia:Trabajo analitico (K4D), Conocimiento tacito

Appreciative TheoryHypothesis based on a set of very different stories

Como?Diseno institucional de initiativas –

Si es que algunos de estos funcionan, porque ?

Evidence:Analytical Work (K4D), Tacit Knowledge

How?Institutional design of initiatives–

If some work, why?

How do search networks succeed? Why do we care? Towards a strategy

Chile: Developping a biotechnology industry

In 1997 Ramón L. García, a Chilean applied geneticist and biotechnology entrepreneur with a PhD from the University of Iowa, contacted Fundación Chile, a Chilean private-public entity charged with technology transfer. Ramón is the CEO of InterLink Biotechnologies, a Princeton, New York-based, company he co-founded in 1991. After jointly reviewing their portfolios of initiatives, Fundación and Interlink founded a new, co-owned company to undertake long-term R&D projects. These projects are needed to transfer technologies to Chile that are key to the continuing competitiveness of its rapidly growing agribusiness sector. Without Ramón’s combination of deep knowledge of Chile, advanced US education, exposure to US managerial practice and experience as an entrepreneur, the new company would have been inconceivable.


Professional networks shaping public service delivery in health: Evidence from Ethiopia

The Ethiopian North American Health Professionals Association is a professional

Network of the Ethiopian Diaspora that is very active in promoting knowledge transfer

and medical state of the art technology in medicine to Ethiopia.

• Mission and vision are to assist in improving healthcare standards, quality, access and delivery to the citizens of Ethiopia.

• ENAHPA is also involved in creating centers of excellence in medicine in Ethiopia.The HIV/AIDS community-centered holistic care enjoyed continued growth and is currently treating 5000 patients. The approach is innovative in Ethiopia for is focus on holistic care and on treatment of HIV. The All Leprosy Education Research Training (ALERT) Campus was designated by the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health as a center of excellence for training healthcare professionals in the specialty of HIV medicine.

• First Maternal and Child Health Center in Awassa, Ethiopia which will serve as a “pilot” program for the nine other centers in different regions of the nation was achieved.

• Distance learning partnerships with top-schools in the USHow do search networks succeed? Why do we care? Towards a strategy

Instrument • to identify and link exceptions • to institutionalize exceptions• to solve concrete problems: Six grades

of separations

Diaspora-networks as search networks


Diaspora-part of the country, but yet “ bird-perspective”

Antens to construct a strategic vision of the future



Studies, conference, and databases vs. projects that last‘Tiny flowers blooming’: a lot of promise once tiny but then hit the wallProjects of philanthropic nature and financial transfers (Armenia and other countries)Excitement with technology: digital networksFocus on matchmaking. But the opportunities need to be created before one can match anythingInstitutional fragility: once individual champions are gone, the program becomes a ‘living dead’

First Generation of Diasporas Initiatives

The majority of governmental initiatives to create brain circulation networks failed



Reality tells…


Talent networks-Initiated from accidental accidents

Network asProject development facility

Diaspora initiativesMore social focus;

Lost in planning and conferences planificacion

Lack of tangible actions:No demonstration effect

Lots of initial enthusiasm that dissipates quickly


GlobalScot

Highly innovative and successful network of about 850 high-powered Scots from all over the world who use their expertise and influence as antennae, bridges, and springboards to generate projects in Scotland.

How do search networks succeed? Why do we care? Towards a strategyWhy do we care?

Source: Kutznetsov 2008

The search role of Diaspora members: ExamplesAn inward investment project identified by one of the first members to join GlobalScot brought an Internet licensing company to Glasgow. The company, which initially employed eight people, will “quickly become a multimillion pound business,” according to the company’s founder.A GlobalScot member who is Chief Scientist and Vice-President for Research and Development for a California biotechnology company undertook a two-day tour of the Scottish biotechnology sector that directly influenced Scottish Enterprise’s Biotechnology Framework for Action. Back in California, he engaged other life sciences members in implementing his report, resulting in a program to develop internships for Scottish life science students at Californian firms.

Chile Global

Talent network for innovation: ChileGlobal, an international network of successful Chilean business owners and high level executives (or those with an affinity to Chile), living and working abroad, who have an interest to contribute and share in the Chilean economic development. The coordination of the project was given to Fundación Chile, a privately owned, non-profit institution.Mission: Support the development of innovation, highly qualified human capital, and business creation at home. Network members offer their time, experience, contacts, knowledge and skills for this purpose. Objective is to facilitate incorporation of Chile into the knowledge economy, leverage the international experience, ideas and contacts, create a mechanism of transferring technology and know how.


ChileGlobal: who is in?



Managing and Leading talent networks: Guiding serependity requires complementary roles


Need to create opportunities before matching them: Neccesity to create a win-win situation :

MagnetsIndividuals with a compelling idea or vision and will set out to realize this

vision.

Project Brokersfacilitate connections among disparate

network members to help them

articulate a joint project

Knowledge managersMaintain internal memory and keep tacit

knowledge


And what about the Public Sector?

Two-prong approach: Facilitate a diversity of initiatives from the bottom-up (‘let one

thousand flowers bloom’) Provide a framework for information sharing and lessons-

learning


Public sector should not be directly involved in diaspora programs, yet its role is critical

Initiatives: Contests between domestic NGOs to leverage diaspora

members for long-term projects. Examples: Russia, Mexico Similar programs in Morocco and Tunisia for temporary return

of researchers .



Towards a strategy: Humble and ambitious… …

Ambitious: Vision the collaborative relationship in the long rung

Humble: Focus on win-win transactions

Tangible projects

Institutionalization

Framework for information sharing, lessons-learning and diversity of initiatives


Some conclusions…

Small group of dedicated Champions

Tangible Projects

Exclusiveness

Institutionlisation

Nourishing

Accept and learn from failure Venture Capital Logic:

Support a Portfolio pf projects :


Thank you


Venture capital logic:Project-Portfolio

“Some succeed, some fail, some remain living dead”

100 ideas10 Projects

Portfolio-startegy

Benchmarking BenchmarkingBenchmarking

Top Skilled Emigration Countries

Non-OECD countries1 INDIA 996,8132 PHILIPPINES 886,6533 CHINA 799,8344 S. KOREA 425,1525 VIETNAM 342,7446 TAIWAN 263,0867 IRAN 260,2708 USSR-RUS 256,2299 CUBA 221,05110 ALGERIA 215,10811 MOROCCO 209,43617 S. AFRICA 157,60120 EGYPT 146,34525 ARGENTINA 105,21126 LEBANON 103,80647 TUNISIA 68,02850 CHILE 62,072

All countries of origin

1 …………1,051,885

2 INDIA 996,8133 PHILIPPINES 886,6534 GERMANY 855,8155 CHINA 799,8346 MEXICO 473,9237 S. KOREA 425,15214 TAIWAN 263,08615 IRAN 260,27016 USSR-RUS 256,22918 CUBA 221,05119 ALGERIA 215,10820 MOROCCO 209,43628 S. AFRICA 157,60131 EGYPT 146,34540 ARGENTINA 105,21164 TUNISIA 68,02867 CHILE 62,072

data on tertiary-educated foreign-born residents in OECD (2000)

Heterogeneity of diasporas of the

highly skilled

Heterogeneity of diasporas of the

highly skilled

Heterogeneity ofhome institutionsHeterogeneity ofhome institutions

Institutional development

of home countries

Reliance on Heterogeneity


How it can work: Guiding serependity in the case of Chile Global

Synergy between conventional and intrinsic motivation: Airplane hypothesis

Synergy between conventional and intrinsic motivation: Airplane hypothesis

Any Diaspora-led institutional change needs an Overachiever

Any Diaspora-led institutional change needs an Overachiever

Taking advantage of institutional heterogeneity: Working with local champions

Working with the willing

Sine qua non: Three and a half core lessons of Diaspora-induced institutional

change

Vision and PersistenceVision and Persistence

Remittances Remittances

DonationsDonations

Investments

Knowledge & Innovation

Hierarchy of Diaspora Impact


Institutional Reform

Ruanda: Growing Roses on Ashes

Trigger: After a 20 year career in poverty alleviation with the World Bank, United Nations and other development organizations, Ms. Gakuba returned to her native Rwanda in 2003. Unable to find the roses she wanted for her father’s funeral, she purchased Rwanda Flora in early 2004 as it was being liquidated

Using Search Networks: Mrs. Gakubata focused on a very narrow market niche of socially sustainable products and marketed her products strategically with the networks. However, her networks at home, such as for instance the support of her brother who was involved in the banking business also helped in making her venture a success.

Motivation: Beatrice Gakuba described her motivation as the desire to “grow beautiful roses on the ashes of genocide”.

Promising case: Rwanda Flora became one of Rwanda’s most thriving businesses and has been hailed by international leaders as an example of the potential success of entrepreneurship in economically revitalizing economies in African countries. With her knowledge of international markets and marketing she transformed the small farm into a socially responsible, six hectare operation that sells five tons of flowers at auction in Europe each week and employs almost 200 rural women.

Professional networks shaping public service delivery in health: Evidence from Ethiopia

The Ethiopian North American Health Professionals Association is a professional Network of the Ethiopian Diaspora that is very active in promoting knowledge transfer and medical state of the art technology in medicine to Ethiopia.

Mission and vision are to assist in improving healthcare standards, quality, access and delivery to the citizens of Ethiopia.

ENAHPA is also involved in creating centers of excellence in medicine in Ethiopia.. The HIV/AIDS community-centered holistic care enjoyed continued growth and is currently treating 5000 patients. The approach is innovative in Ethiopia for is focus on holistic care and on treatment of HIV. The All Leprosy Education Research Training (ALERT) Campus was designated by the Ethiopian Federal Ministry of Health as a center of excellence for training healthcare professionals in the specialty of HIV medicine.

First Maternal and Child Health Center in Awassa, Ethiopia which will serve as a “pilot” program for the nine other centers in different regions of the nation was achieved.

Distance learning partnerships with top-schools in the US

Institutialization of search networks is the major issue

How does institutional development occur?


Focus on exceptions first

Exceptions form search networks

Some sort of a critical mass emerge

This critical mass becomes an Archimedian lever to promote

further change

Multiple Incremental Contributions from diverse points

Moving the ladder…G

ive (

eff

ort

)

Get (results)

Resource Sink

Transactional

Relationships

Collaborative

Relationship

Resource Opportunit

y

Tension Between Individual Creativity and Organisational

Logic

Individual initiative and creativity Bottom-up impulse

Org

aniz

atio

nal s

uppo

rt

Top-down impulse

Living deadCapture or stifling by vested interests

Guided serendipityElusive synergyOrganizational

support of projects

Hit the wallUseful but tiny

Heroic successTalent moves walls

(Not replicable by definition)

ConclusionsParadoxes of diaspora engagement:1. Binding constraint: it is the strength and

flexibility of domestic institutions, not brilliance, size and resources of diasporas which is a key factor of the diaspora impact.

2. In the best of circumstances, diaspora becomes a part of the home country – a part of everyday practices

3. Success stories and role models of successful engagement are crucial

4. Guided serendipity as an elusive trade-off between bottom-up creativity and an imperative to manage it
