Bolivia’s Economic Pivot: Unlocking the Mining and Lithium Potential
Bolivia’s mining sector holds exceptional potential. The country possesses one of the world’s largest lithium resources, ranks fifth in global silver production, and is the fourth-largest zinc exporter. Yet output has stagnated for over a decade: no large-scale mine has entered production since 2014, and export growth reflects rising prices, not increased output. The regulatory environment is the central constraint: administrative contracts cannot be transferred or used as collateral, large areas are reserved for state enterprises, and Bolivia’s withdrawal from international arbitration has weakened investor protection. Cooperatives and private firms coexist without a framework for formal collaboration, generating conflicts and fiscal distortions. Roughly 60% of Bolivia’s territory remains geologically unexplored, raising exploration risk and limiting the discovery of new deposits. This publication proposes a reform agenda spanning the regulatory, institutional, and fiscal dimensions of the sector, with particular attention to lithium as Bolivia’s most significant untapped opportunity.
Un Giro Económico para Bolivia: Desbloqueando el Potencial Minero y del Litio
El sector minero de Bolivia alberga un potencial excepcional. El país posee una de las mayores reservas de litio del mundo, ocupa el quinto lugar en producción mundial de plata y es el cuarto mayor exportador de zinc. Sin embargo, la producción ha estado estancada por más de una década: ninguna mina de gran escala ha entrado en producción desde 2014, y el crecimiento de las exportaciones refleja el alza de precios, no un aumento de la producción. El entorno regulatorio es la restricción central: los contratos administrativos no pueden transferirse ni usarse como garantía, grandes áreas están reservadas para empresas estatales, y el retiro de Bolivia del arbitraje internacional ha debilitado la protección al inversor. Las cooperativas y las empresas privadas coexisten sin un marco para la colaboración formal, lo que genera conflictos y distorsiones fiscales. Aproximadamente el 60% del territorio boliviano permanece sin explorar geológicamente, lo que eleva el riesgo de exploración y limita el descubrimiento de nuevos yacimientos. Esta publicación propone una agenda de reforma que abarca las dimensiones regulatorias, institucionales y fiscales del sector, con especial atención al litio como la oportunidad sin explotar más significativa de Bolivia.
Un Giro Económico para Bolivia: Oportunidades y Desafíos en Agricultura
El sector agropecuario de Bolivia ha crecido más rápidamente en las últimas dos décadas que en cualquier otro período desde 1960, pero ese crecimiento ha estado impulsado por la expansión de la superficie cultivada más que por mejoras en la productividad. El régimen de políticas públicas ha restringido las exportaciones y ha desaprovechado un gran potencial. Los rendimientos de cultivos clave continúan por debajo de los de otros países pares en la región, y la expansión sostenida de la superficie cultivada implica riesgos tanto de costos ambientales como de una menor inserción en mercados internacionales, ya que éstos penalizan más los productos vinculados a la deforestación. A través de análisis comparativo, casos de estudios sobre los principales cultivos de Bolivia, y lecciones sobre la diversificación agrícola del Perú, este análisis identifica un conjunto recurrente de restricciones. Entre ellas, las limitaciones al uso de semillas transgénicas, la debilidad de la investigación y desarrollo y de los servicios de extensión, las brechas fitosanitarias y logísticas, y la falta de riego con orientación comercial. Dado que estas restricciones interactúan de manera distinta según la diversa geografía agrícola de Bolivia, proponemos poner en marcha una Estrategia Nacional para el Potencial Agropecuario que permita a cada una de las distintas regiones agrícolas del país alcanzar su frontera productiva. La diversificación de las exportaciones surgiría como un resultado natural en la medida en que más regiones de Bolivia logren desarrollar su potencial, generando divisas adicionales que son necesarias para aliviar la crisis macroeconómica que actualmente atraviesa el país.
Bolivia’s Economic Pivot: Agricultural Potential and Challenges
Bolivia’s agricultural sector has grown faster over the past two decades than in any period since 1960, but this growth has been driven by the expansion of cultivated area rather than by improvements in productivity, while the prevailing policy regime has restricted exports and left significant potential unrealized. Yields for key crops continue to underperform regional peers, and continued expansion of the agricultural frontier risks both environmental costs and reduced access to international markets that increasingly penalize deforestation-linked products. Drawing on cross-country comparisons, case studies of Bolivia’s major crops, and lessons from Peruvian agricultural diversification, this analysis identifies a recurring set of production- and market-side constraints, including restrictions on transgenic seeds, weak R&D and extension services, phytosanitary and logistics gaps, and the lack of commercially-oriented irrigation. Because these constraints interact differently across Bolivia’s diverse agricultural geography, we propose launching a National Strategy for Agricultural Potential to enable each of Bolivia’s distinct agricultural regions to reach its productive frontier. Export diversification would emerge as a natural outcome as more of Bolivia’s regions realize their potential, generating the additional foreign exchange needed to ease the country’s ongoing macroeconomic crisis.
Un Giro Económico para Bolivia: Un Diagnóstico de Crecimiento del Sector Turístico
El turismo representa una oportunidad estratégica para que Bolivia genere divisas y promueva un crecimiento más inclusivo. Este informe busca dimensionar esa oportunidad, identificar sus restricciones más vinculantes y proponer soluciones a ellas. Utilizando un modelo de gravedad del turismo internacional, encontramos que Bolivia tiene una brecha de más de 370 millones de dólares frente a su potencial. Nuestro diagnóstico identifica dos restricciones principales. A nivel nacional, la escasa conectividad aérea internacional limita el acceso de Bolivia a mercados clave. Recomendamos un paquete de reformas para mejorar la competitividad del sector aeronáutico y ampliar el acceso aéreo. A nivel local, las fallas de coordinación y los problemas de gobernanza dificultan la consolidación de ecosistemas turísticos, particularmente evidenciado en el circuito del Salar de Uyuni. Proponemos una nueva arquitectura de gobernanza a nivel de destino para facilitar la coordinación, alinear incentivos y generar mayores beneficios para las comunidades locales.
Bolivia’s Economic Pivot: A Growth Diagnostics of the Tourism Sector
Tourism represents a strategic opportunity for Bolivia to generate foreign exchange and support more inclusive growth. This report aims to quantify the opportunity, identify binding constraints and propose solutions. Using a gravity model of international tourism, we find that Bolivia performs significantly below its potential with an unrealized gap of more than USD 370 million. Applying Growth Diagnostics heuristics, we identify two constraints and suggest policy responses. At the national level, weak international air connectivity limits Bolivia’s access from key source markets. Accordingly, the report recommends a package of reforms to improve aviation competitiveness and air access. At the local level, coordination failures and governance issues hinder the emergence of strong tourism ecosystems, particularly in the Salar de Uyuni circuit. We propose a new destination-level governance architecture to facilitate coordination, align incentives, and deliver stronger benefits for local communities.
The Cube: A Lawful, Incremental Framework for Using Public Procurement to Pull Innovation
Governments already spend large sums to promote innovation through grants, tax credits, loans, equity instruments, incubators, prizes, and advisory programs. Yet public procurement is vastly larger than conventional innovation-policy budgets. In OECD economies, procurement is roughly 13 percent of GDP, while direct support and tax relief for business R&D together are only a fraction of one percent of GDP. This asymmetry matters. Even a very small innovation-oriented tilt in procurement can represent a material increase in the effective scale of innovation policy.
Yet procurement systems are rarely used this way. Most public procurement organizations are designed to secure timely delivery, preserve integrity, ensure equal treatment of suppliers, and obtain value for money. They are not designed to explore technological uncertainty, nurture early markets, or orchestrate experimentation with new solutions. Procurement officers are typically judged on compliance, continuity of service, and avoidance of visible failure. Under those incentives, the safe equilibrium is predictable: detailed specifications, strong threshold requirements, large established suppliers, price-dominant competitions, and risk transfer to vendors wherever possible.
This report argues that governments do not need to choose between lawful procurement and innovation policy. They can make procurement more innovation-friendly without abandoning core procurement principles. The relevant question is not whether procurement law should be suspended in the name of innovation. The relevant question is how familiar and lawful procurement tools can be reframed so that public buyers learn about technological possibilities, reduce uncertainty, validate solutions, and scale what works.
This is the purpose of The Cube.
Mapping Economic Opportunities in Global Clean Energy Supply Chains
The energy transition offers countries that can manufacture clean energy technologies substantial opportunities for sustainable economic growth. This paper provides a framework for context-aware industrial policy by applying economic complexity theory to a newly constructed dataset of twelve key clean energy supply chains (CESCs). We find that CESCs are diverse but highly interdependent; they are also growing faster and are more concentrated than other industries. CESCs exhibit substantial entry, exit and competitive churn, and countries are more likely to enter CESC industries that are related to their existing productive capabilities. We also explore changing global competitiveness and country positioning in these industries, and draw out implications of these patterns for industrial policymakers.
Innovation Capabilities Outlook 2026
Knowledge is expanding globally, yet most countries struggle to harness this growth effectively. Global innovation remains strikingly concentrated: a small number of leading economies account for the vast majority of scientific publications, patents, trademarks, and advanced exports, whereas most contribute less than 1 percent to any innovation dimension. Success does not require a big push in all fields, but instead lies in strategically diversifying into complex skills while at the same time maintaining intensity in high-value areas – a balancing act that only the most sophisticated innovation ecosystems have mastered.
Mapping the global innovation landscape
The Innovation Capabilities Outlook (ICO) 2026 analyzes 2,508 innovation capabilities across four dimensions – science, technology, entrepreneurship, and production – using comprehensive datasets spanning 2001–2023. The analysis reveals that innovation emergence depends critically on connections between these four dimensions, with the most sophisticated capabilities emerging only in highly diversified ecosystems able to support complex, interdependent knowledge networks.
A tale of two innovation worlds
Global innovation output has expanded dramatically, yet this growth remains highly uneven and concentrated in no more than 30 percent of the world’s economies. Asian economies – led by China, India and Viet Nam – have mastered sophisticated capability development strategies, consistently achieving both smart diversification (gaining breadth and complexity simultaneously) and smart capability management (intensifying focus on high-value skills while protecting them with complementary knowledge). In contrast, many established and emerging economies struggle with this dual challenge: 46 percent of ecosystems have not meaningfully diversified, and complexity gains remain elusive for 70 percent of economies.
Strategic opportunities
The ICO 2026 identifies substantial untapped potential – only 10 percent of economies fulfill their technological potential. Ecosystems collectively underperform by 339,000 technological innovations annually. Regional patterns reveal distinct strategic pathways: Europe possesses strong foundations, but struggles with technological translation; Asia shows balanced capabilities, but faces entrepreneurial commercialization challenges; and Africa should focus on foundational capability building while gradually targeting more complex activities.
Policy implications
Innovation policy cannot rely on one-size-fits-all approaches. Success requires tailoring strategies to regional development levels, existing capability portfolios, and institutional contexts. Countries that align innovation investments with these evidence-based insights can break traditional development constraints and accelerate a transition toward knowledge-based competitiveness. The systematic nature both of diversification constraints and untapped potential suggests that targeted, level-appropriate interventions yield the highest probability of success.
The Innovation Capabilities Outlook 2026 was developed through a partnership between WIPO and Harvard University’s Growth Lab (HGL), under the general direction of Daren Tang (Director General) and Marco Alemán (Assistant Director General). The report was supervised by Carsten Fink (Chief Economist) and Ricardo Hausmann (founder and Director of HGL), prepared by a team led by Julio Raffo (Head of Innovation Economy Section, WIPO) and Muhammed A. Yildirim (Director of Academic Research, HGL). The team included Christian Chacua, Matte Hartog, Shreyas Gadgin Matha, and Federico Moscatelli.
Inventing modern invention: The professionalization of technological progress in the US
Over the course of the mid-19th and early 20th century, the US transformed from an agricultural economy to the frontier in technology. To study this transition, we digitize half a million pages of patent yearbooks that describe inventors, organizations and technologies on over 1.6M patents. We combine this with demographic information from US census records and information on corporate research from large-scale repeated surveys of industrial research labs. Our data reveal that in the early 1920s a new system of innovation — based on teamwork and engineers — started to rapidly replace the existing craftsmanship-based invention that had dominated innovation in the 19th century. We argue that this new system relied on an organizational innovation: industrial research labs. These labs supported high-skill teamwork, replacing the collaborations within families with professional ties in firms and industrial research labs. The systemic shift in innovation had far-reaching consequences: it changed the division of labor in invention, led to an explosion of novelty and teamwork, and reshaped the geography of innovation in the US.
For a deeper dive into the research and visuals, explore this analysis by the Complexity Science Hub.