Enhancing National Economic Competitiveness through the Commercialization of Intellectual Property A Conceptual Framework and Evidence from Uzbekistan

This thesis asks how commercializing intellectual property can raise the competitiveness of a national economy. Commercialization is treated as a four-stage chain - creation and protection, transfer and licensing, market deployment, and the competitiveness effect - and the argument is that competitiveness gains hinge on the weakest middle links, not on the number of patents filed. Global Innovation Index profiles of Uzbekistan for 2025 and 2026 show a front-loaded pattern. Patents by origin stand at 1.3 and 1.2 per billion PPP$ of GDP (43rd) and utility models rank 14th, yet PCT patents rank 100th and 101st, intellectual property receipts are only 0.04% of total trade (87th) and high-tech exports 0.6% (87th), even though the knowledge diffusion score rose from 16.0 to 21.8. The priority therefore lies in licensing, transfer and market deployment, not in further filings.