To bring several strands of my talk together, I refer to two studies, one by the IMF and the other by the OECD, into how countries can avoid the middle income trap, which is defined as a period of slower growth or even stagnation when countries reach a GDP per capita of between $ and $ (in PPP terms).
These studies suggest that to break out of this middle income trap, countries need to move from being adapters of technology to being producers of technology. Countries that move up the value chain to capture a larger share of the intellectual property or innovation succeed in breaking the trap.