Beyond the Hype: Rethinking Innovation Ecosystems in Central Asia

Shamil Ibragimov

Scholar-in-Residence

Let’s be honest. In much of the developing world, like my own region of Central Asia, startup entrepreneurship has become a one-way ticket out.

Too many of our brightest founders treat startups as launchpads to Silicon Valley. The dream isn’t to solve a local problem, build a sustainable business, and contribute to national prosperity. The dream is to get into an accelerator in San Francisco, raise a few rounds, and relocate. And once that happens, everyone back home celebrates as if we’ve all won.

But have we?

This mindset is a problem. It creates a quiet kind of digital colonialism where value, recognition, and innovation only matter when they’re validated abroad. The local ecosystem becomes a training ground for exportable talent, not a foundation for solving local challenges.

I don’t blame the entrepreneurs. I blame the model.

What we’ve built in many emerging markets is a Startup Ecosystem, not an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (I&EE). It is important to recognize that I&E Ecosystems bring both dimensions together: innovation and entrepreneurship. That distinction matters. A startup ecosystem is about deal flow, accelerators, VCs, and unicorns. It’s fast-paced, transactional, and outcome-driven. But it often misses what matters most in a developing context: long-term value for the home country.

An I&E ecosystem, by contrast, is built for staying power. It connects universities, policymakers, corporations, research labs, and startups into a broader system that generates, diffuses, and applies knowledge. It’s not just about the next app, it’s about solving systemic challenges like education, energy, agriculture, and financial inclusion by building capacity across sectors. It is about building equitable wealth for the benefit of many.

A healthy I&E ecosystem can nurture startup ecosystems—but the reverse isn’t always true.

Right now, our region is too focused on startup hype. There’s a lack of conversation about local solutions to local problems. We see few innovations addressing local needs. Rather than tackling context-specific challenges, startups often replicate global models, chasing scalability and investor appeal.

This behavior isn’t just about ambition, it reflects deeper structural issues: weak domestic capital markets, limited R&D infrastructure, and narrow local demand. Success, in this framework, is measured by how far a venture gets from home. Can it raise money from an international investor? Can it enter a Western market?

And when it does, what does it leave behind?

Often, not much.

Meanwhile, local problems go unsolved. Founders are incentivized to chase global validation, not design solutions for their communities. It’s no surprise we’re seeing high levels of brain drain and low levels of transformative innovation.

This isn’t innovation. It’s exit. And exit is not the goal.

When the most talented people in our economies see success as relocation, we hollow out our own potential. To be fair, the reason for relocation isn't just the search for venture funds, for many, it’s an escape from an environment that doesn’t demonstrate enough potential for ambitious minds.

Eventually, we build ecosystems that serve other markets, other investors, other agendas. We become dependent again on someone else’s system.

This is a new form of colonial dependency. The raw material is talent. The extractive model is global validation. And the result? Developing countries remain stuck on the margins of real innovation.

I’ve seen this firsthand. I work at MIT. And I believe the solution isn’t to tear down the startup ecosystem, but to upgrade it. We need to build full innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems, rooted in local context and built for long-term resilience. We need to grow the geography of our I&EE beyond our national borders and into regional collaboration.

That means:

• Investing in research and universities, not just accelerators.
• Creating regulatory frameworks and programs that reward solving hard local problems at national and regional levels.
• Strengthening domestic capital markets and attracting VC investment into locally grounded ventures, so innovation doesn’t depend on validation abroad.
• Fostering collaboration between government, academia, and industry.
• Encouraging regional cooperation to build shared capacity.

In other words: we need to stop thinking like founders and start thinking like system-changers.

This isn’t just about economics. It’s about identity. It’s about refusing to accept that our highest aspiration is to be accepted by someone else’s ecosystem. It’s about proving that world-class innovation can, and should, happen at home.

Let’s stop asking, “How do we get to Silicon Valley?”

Let’s start asking, “How do we build something impactful here?”