Managing Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development: Strategies, challenges, and opportunities in emerging and developing economies

This paper examines how technology and innovation management can advance organizational performance and sustainable development in emerging and developing economies. It integrates the Diffusion of Innovations, Technology Acceptance Model, dynamic capabilities, open innovation, and disruptive innovation perspectives with recent firm-level studies and evidence from the World Bank, OECD, WIPO, UNCTAD, and Asian Development Bank. The central argument is that invention, technology acquisition, and digitalization are inputs rather than outcomes: performance depends on complementary capabilities to sense needs, assimilate knowledge, redesign processes and business models, mobilize partners, and scale responsibly. Evidence from South African micro and small enterprises links selected digital communication tools to innovation and, conditional on innovation, labor productivity; a meta-analysis finds a positive but heterogeneous association between technological capability and firm performance in developing economies. M-Pesa illustrates how a locally fitted service and agent network can generate economic and social value, while the Tata Nano and Nokia cases show that engineering achievement and incumbent resources cannot compensate for weak market positioning, organizational learning, or ecosystem adaptation. The review concludes that resource-constrained organizations should pursue staged, inclusive, and mission-linked innovation, supported by finance, infrastructure, skills, open partnerships, and outcome measurement across economic, social, and environmental dimensions.