Innovation: The Willingness is There, But Structuring is Still Lacking

Innovation is gaining ground in the discourse of Moroccan companies, but still struggles to establish itself as a true economic driver. This is the main finding of the 2025 National Innovation Survey, conducted by the Gen J Foundation and the Moroccan Observatory of Managerial Practices (OMPM), in partnership with the consulting firm W-Adviser.

Carried out with more than 370 stakeholders, including companies, academic institutions, and funding structures covering 12 regions and 14 sectors of activity, the study paints a nuanced picture: real momentum is underway, but it remains largely hindered by structural, cultural, and organizational obstacles.

The first observation: Moroccan companies do innovate, but mainly to respond to immediate market needs or competitive pressure. The innovations implemented are primarily commercial and organizational. They rely more on usage than on technology, and are often equated with digitalization efforts rather than genuine technological breakthroughs.

Only a minority of companies, namely 21%, allocate more than 10% of their turnover to research and development. This weakness in technological effort is reflected in intellectual property indicators: 72% of the surveyed companies have not filed any patents over the past five years, and among those that have, 90% are foreign entities. Under these conditions, innovation is rarely integrated at the core of corporate strategy. More than two-thirds of companies do not address it in a systematic and structured manner, and only 40% have a formalized process, mainly oriented toward commercial or organizational adjustments. As a result, barely a quarter of companies manage to generate more than 30% of their turnover from recent products or services.

Multiple and persistent barriers

The survey highlights three major categories of obstacles. The first concerns financing. Although funding options exist—particularly through banks, venture capital, or public subsidies—they remain poorly understood and are considered unsuitable by companies, both in terms of cost, the level of project maturity required, and the approach to risk.

The second is related to the environment: limited access to specialized skills, scientific knowledge, technical infrastructure (laboratories, specialized incubators, technology providers), as well as a nearby industrial base enabling prototyping and scaling up. Added to this is an administrative and regulatory framework perceived as heavy and not conducive to experimentation.

Finally, internal factors play a decisive role: a corporate culture not strongly oriented toward innovation, unsuitable organizational structures, and often limited involvement from leadership.
These constraints partly explain the low density of collaborative innovation ecosystems. According to the study, 77% of companies prefer to develop their innovative projects internally, using their own resources. Those that open up externally—about 48%, mainly multinationals—favor the use of innovation consultants or technology providers.

Collaboration with universities and research centers remains marginal, a direct consequence of the limited interest in breakthrough technological innovation. The public sector stands as an exception, with more pronounced open innovation initiatives led by major institutions such as OCP, ONCF, RAM, 2M, or OFPPT.

For Professor Saif Allah Allouani, chairman of GenJ’s scientific committee, the study primarily aims to produce “a reliable and actionable diagnosis of the Moroccan innovation system,” based on standardized questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and comparisons with the survey conducted by OMPM in 2018. This approach makes it possible to identify changes, but also persistent inertia and gaps between companies, academia, and the financial sector.

Toward an “innovation nation”?

Beyond the figures, the survey fuels a strategic reflection: Morocco lacks neither ideas nor initiatives, but rather an overall architecture. Innovation too often remains peripheral within companies, treated as a one-off project rather than as a central component of the business model, governance, and talent management.

The authors of the report therefore advocate for a change in scale: moving from a collection of scattered actions to a true national innovation system, based on three pillars: a culture of innovation embedded from the education stage, structured and measurable managerial practices, and a collective infrastructure bringing together companies, universities, financiers, and public authorities.
Concrete recommendations are put forward around the development of human capital, the simplification of the institutional framework, the regional integration of markets, and the establishment of unified governance of innovation, supported by a future national observatory.

Underlying the survey is a clear message: the need to move from a logic of defensive adaptation to a dynamic of deliberate, value-creating innovation. Without this systemic transformation, the authors warn, Morocco risks remaining confined to a catch-up economy, far from its stated ambition of becoming a true “innovation nation” by 2030.

Innovating to adapt, not yet to transform

The 2025 National Innovation Survey highlights a central characteristic of the Moroccan innovation model: companies innovate mainly in an incremental and market-oriented way. The innovations adopted are predominantly commercial and organizational, far ahead of technological or breakthrough innovations. Innovation thus appears as a tool for rapid adaptation to market needs and competitive pressure, rather than as a lever for structural transformation.

This distribution reflects a preference for low-risk, immediate-return approaches, based on improving internal processes, customer experience, or methods of commercialization. Innovation is often equated with digitalization and the use of existing technologies rather than the creation of new ones. It is an innovation of use, designed for the local market rather than scientific or technological innovation with export potential.

While this orientation is economically rational in a constrained environment (limited market size, difficult access to long-term financing, regulatory uncertainty), it carries major limitations. The low share of technological innovations reduces companies’ ability to build sustainable competitive advantages, file patents, and strengthen the country’s technological sovereignty. It also contributes to increased dependence on imported technologies and slows productivity growth. That said, the study thus reveals a paradox: innovation is progressing in practice but remains confined to a tactical scope. By prioritizing the short term, it improves immediate performance without deeply transforming business models and value chains.