ADAPTIVE GOVERNANCE FOR INNOVATION IN RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED ECONOMIES

In the early 2000s, both Rwanda and Vietnam faced daunting developmental challenges: shattered institutions,scant R&D budgets and a shortage of skilled human capital in the wake of crises and centrally planned stagnation. Yet, by 2024 they had both ascended the Global Innovation Index rankings, demonstrating that even the most resource-scarce environments can become fertile ground for technological and institutional renewal. This thesis sets out to explain how these two seemingly disparate nations operationalized "adaptive governance" to transform scarcity into a catalyst for innovation.At its heart lies a single, guiding question: How have Rwanda and Vietnam operationalized adaptive governance for innovation in resource-limited contexts between 2000 and 2024 in ways that reflect or extend dominant theoretical frameworks for innovation? . This inquiry emerges from a recognized gap in innovation studies, which traditionally focus on OECD contexts or large emerging markets, overlooking the "periphery" where institutional fragility demands new governance logics. To answer this question, the study employs a comparative, interpretive case-study design grounded in two streams of evidence. First, an extensive document analysis of national strategy documents-Vision 2020/2050, Rwanda's NICI ICT plans, Vietnam's ??i M?i reforms, successive Science and Technology Master Plans-and donor and legislative reports provides a rich narrative of policy evolution. Second, standardized comparative indicators (R&D intensity, ICT penetration, higher-education enrollments, entrepreneurship activity) drawn from the Global Innovation Index, UNESCO science reports and World Bank data anchor those narratives to observable trends. Analytically, the thesis weaves together three complementary frameworks. National Innovation Systems (NIS) maps the structural foundations (institutions, networks, funding flows) that underpin each country's innovation ecosystem; Adaptive Governance, operationalized through Gupta et al.'s Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) and Andrews et al.'s Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), diagnoses how governance bodies learn, iterate and re-calibrate policy levers under constraint; and finally, Effectuation theory illuminates the micro-level decision logic such as leveraging "bird-in-hand" resources, accepting affordable losses, and "making lemonade" of surprises, that drives entrepreneurial and policy improvisation in uncertain settings.The findings reveal two distinct yet converging pathways: Rwanda's state-centric model embeds visionary planning and performance contracts within tight feedback loops to scale pilot successes rapidly, whereas Vietnam's multiscalar approach leverages provincial experimentation and private-sector improvisation ahead of formal policy adaptation. In both cases, effectual practices, means-driven action, stakeholder co-creation, affordable loss, are scaffolded by institutional mechanisms that enable learning and recalibration. Through its research, this study shows that deliberate institutional flexibility and inclusive stakeholder engagement can generate resilient innovation pathways under constraint, and that a hybrid framework integrating NIS, adaptive governance, and effectuation offers a richer, context-sensitive theory for innovation in the Global South.