Knowledge policies and universities in developing countries: Inclusive development and the “developmental university”

•There is a main structural change in our time related to knowledge.•This structural change is not occurring in developing countries, mainly by lack of commercial demand of knowledge.•We characterize this trait as the problem of knowledge in underdevelopment.•Knowledge is among the main prevailing power relations.•Knowledge policies molded by commercial interests do not consider problems of the most excluded part of the population.•We characterize, thus, most current knowledge policies as non-democratic.•We posit that to redress the problem of knowledge in underdevelopment we should aim at the democratization of knowledge.•One tool to achieve this are some processes associated with information and communication technologies.•Another tool is to widen the scope of research and innovation agendas to address demand stemming from social concerns.•Universities should promote these broader agendas and commit themselves to the path of “developmental universities”.

This paper links development approaches with innovation systems theory and social inclusion concerns. In exploring the relationship between development and knowledge, we propose a sequential analytical model that considers values, facts and policies as a coherent whole. This allows us to go deeper into the question of how policies for promoting the production and use of knowledge able to foster different facets of social inclusion can be formulated and implemented. We propose to call such policies “democratization of knowledge policies”; they are one of the means to achieve inclusive development. We provide examples of how these policies work in practice, and explore how the university, a vital part of any national innovation system, can play a role in the emergence and consolidation of the democratization of knowledge. Universities that embrace that role may be considered developmental universities. They fulfill it in great part by providing effective incentives to include in their research agendas the kind of problems whose solutions can lead to an enhancement of social inclusion. However, developmental universities cannot function in isolation. It is argued that their effectiveness depends on the rise of a sustained and strong demand that is able to put knowledge at the direct service of shared social goals, among which diminishing inequality is particularly important. The paper presents a case in Uruguay that illustrates an ongoing transformation towards a developmental university.