“Without innovation, Morocco will remain trapped in the middle-income trap”

Born from a book that became a movement, the Gen J Foundation aims to make Morocco a true innovation nation by 2030. For its president, Tarik Haddi, sustainably escaping the middle-income trap requires a profound transformation in the relationship to technology, with innovation now becoming collective.

What are the origins and ambitions of the “Innovation Made in Morocco” Foundation?
It began as a book, “Gen J: Generation Innovation Made in Morocco,” and gradually evolved into a structured movement within a foundation created in December 2023 as a non-profit association, carrying a clear ambition: to make Morocco an innovation nation by 2030.

Why this movement, and why this ambition?
Because Morocco is facing what development economists call the “middle-income trap.” Since 2010, we have been stuck at an average growth rate of 3% per year, while emerging economies exceed 5% (7% in Vietnam), and 7–8% would be needed to finance our development model endogenously.
These economists explain this phenomenon by the difficulty these countries face in getting close enough to the technological frontier to move from a catch-up economy to an “innovation economy.”
So the issue lies in our relationship with technology and innovation.

Is this inevitable?
Absolutely not. Many countries have successfully made this transition from far less favorable starting points than Morocco today. Japan, after World War II, saw its industrial base completely destroyed. China had not yet undergone its industrial revolution. India has gradually embarked on this path.

But the most striking example remains South Korea, which in the 1950s had a GDP per capita of $700, compared to $1,350 for Morocco at the same time, and is now one of the most innovative nations in the world. Outside Asia, Chile in Latin America and Kenya in Africa are also on the right track. Furthermore, experts unanimously agree that Morocco today has institutional, technical, and above all industrial resources—thanks to its industrial policies—to move toward an innovation economy. Our year-on-year progress in the Global Innovation Index (GII), particularly due to the development of high value-added sectors, clearly illustrates this. However, these same experts also agree that there can be no innovation economy without an organized and managed national innovation system.

In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world like ours today, innovation is no longer the product of the individual effort of an entrepreneur or even a single company. Radical innovation centered solely on internal R&D is over. Innovation is now a collective, distributed, interconnected, and often chaotic dynamic. Therefore, a national innovation system is needed—one that intelligently integrates all stakeholders.

What exactly do these national innovation systems consist of?
They are first based on public policies that are no longer purely centralized, but designed systemically to support collective innovation trajectories. They also rely on leading companies within their sectors, capable of driving open, collaborative innovation ecosystems throughout their value chains.

Added to this are essential cross-cutting dimensions such as a culture that fosters creativity and openness to new ideas, transdisciplinary and inclusive analytical frameworks, a critical mass of skilled, educated, and cultivated talent, and broader access to knowledge, data, and foundational technologies—with knowledge capital now as crucial as human capital. Financing is also a key lever, with mechanisms better adapted in terms of cost, maturity, and above all risk tolerance, as well as effective access to markets. Altogether, these components require unified governance of the innovation landscape, based on the participation of all stakeholders, structured dialogue frameworks, and a co-constructed evaluation system enabling continuous strategic adjustments based on collective learning.

How does the Gen J Foundation contribute to the emergence of a national innovation system?
The Foundation’s actions are structured around five major areas. The first focuses on large-scale awareness, through the publication of the first Moroccan book dedicated to the opportunities, challenges, and drivers of innovation in Morocco, as well as the organization of more than thirty conferences and the dissemination of over fifty contributions in the media and on social networks, reaching a broad and diverse audience.

The second area concerns the structuring of innovation ecosystems at regional and sectoral levels. A first initiative is currently underway in Fez, in partnership with OFPPT, under the leadership of our scientific committee president, Saif Allah Alouani, as part of the Chapter Fez Gen J. The third area is dedicated to deploying support mechanisms for public authorities, businesses, academia, and support and financing structures, with the eventual creation of a label recognizing organizations that best integrate the mechanisms of frugal innovation made in Morocco.

The fourth area focuses on developing a project to aggregate crowdfunding and crowdsourcing structures aimed at financing and supporting innovative, frugal, and locally rooted social entrepreneurship.

Finally, the fifth area is devoted to observation and evaluation, with the goal of producing reliable data to measure, understand, act, and transform. This will take the form of a national innovation observatory, which we aim to establish in partnership with the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research, and Innovation. This observatory will provide the co-constructed evaluation framework needed to adjust strategies based on collective learning.

In addition, a barometer and an index are currently being developed to track over time the evolution of the national innovation system, with the first operational component being the National Innovation Survey that brings us together today.