GICM with Innovation & Governance Development Index (IGDI): A Framework for Economic Governance and Innovation-Driven Development in the Coastal and Marine Industry

Abstract The coastal and marine industry, whose worth exceeds 3trillion dollars the world over, encounters new challenges in the balance between economic progress and environmental sustainability. Current governance arrangements and innovation systems, being independent of each other, lead to policy-implementation gaps that cannot support sustainable growth of the blue economy. The available measurement frameworks poorly reflect a synergistic linkage between the effectiveness of governance and innovation potential in marine systems. This paper presents the Governance Innovation Convergence Model (GICM), which includes Innovation & Governance Development Index (IGDI), a very new compound framework to gauge and improve economic governance and innovation-oriented growth in coastal and marine sectors. The framework of the GICM has formulated the roles of governance and innovation as complementary systems, whereas the IGDI offers a quantitative instrument incorporating the indicators of governance (regulatory quality, environmental compliance, stakeholder participation) and innovation (R&D investment, technology adoption, sustainability innovation) by means of weighted accumulation technologies. IGDI uses mathematical formulation: $$IGDI = \alpha (GI) + \beta (II) + \gamma (CI)$$ , where $$GI$$ are governance indicators, $$II$$ are innovation indicators, and $$CI$$ is the convergence interactions. There was a sample of 12 countries based on the development levels using the World Bank and WIPO statistics, and the marine statistics, and principal component analysis was done on the sample. Results indicate that IGDI has greater success in predicting sustainable marine outcomes, with Norway being the highest (0.89). China, the focus of this paper, exhibits great power and innovation-led growth, but also has governance alignment gaps. It can be seen that a comparative analysis indicates that the growth rate of the blue economy can increase by a mere 23 percent through governance-innovation convergence as compared to the traditional methods. In the case of China, the results indicate the policy recommendations to improve the institutional frameworks, reinforce ocean governance, and promote sustainable marine development. GICM IGDI framework will give policymakers an evidence-based tool in marine economic planning and tracking of sustainable development.