Javier Calero Cuervo and Vanessa Madalena Crestejo8 The Path of Innovation in Macau’sIntegrated Resort Companies: PastAssessment for Future ScenariosIntroductionGiven the Chinese’penchant for games of chance, it is not surprising that Macau’sprivileged monopoly position in being the sole provider of legalized gambling inChina, has led to being ranked 1stin the contribution of the“tourism and travel”sector to the region’s economy. It was reported by theWorld Travel & Tourism Coun-cilthat the sector’s direct and indirect contribution to Macau’s economy was 82.5%in 2008–the highest amongst 176 tourism destinations (World Travel & TourismCouncil, 2008). This high dependence of the economy from one market and on onesector has created greater vulnerabilities for Macau’s Integrated Resorts and econ-omy, such as from the disruption caused by the corona virus since late 2019.As early as 2006, the concern of one sector’s critical contribution to Macau’seconomy was given focus in the policy address of 16 November 2006 by the ChiefExecutive of the Macau SAR Government, Edmund Hau Wah Ho, who noted:“Re-cently, the rapid development of the local gaming industry has become a concernto more and more people, reflecting the maturity and far-sightedness of the wholecommunity. As we implement adequate diversification of the economy, it is impor-tant to determine how to review and manage the gaming industry’s development.”(MSAR, 2007). The call for diversifying the structure of Macau’s economy has beenin every year’s policy address but to no avail.To assess diversification, various statistical measures on diversification of Mac-au’s economy was undertaken by the Statistics and Census Service of the MSARGovernment with annual data starting only in 2016 as reported in theAnalysis Re-port of Statistical Indicator System for Moderate Economic Diversification of Macao2018(DSEC, 2019). To put things in perspective, in this trilingual report on diversifi-cation (in Chinese, Portuguese, and English), the word“innovation”or its relatedwords“innovative”,“innovations”,“innovate”, and“innovatively”, did not appearat all in the English translated part of the report; whereas diversification (or diver-sify) appeared 128 times.The current Chief Executive of Macau SAR Government, Mr. Ho Iat Seng spokecandidly in his first policy speech of 20 April 2020:“Since Macao’s reunification withthe motherland, although the economy has experienced a stage of relatively rapidgrowth, the dominance of the gaming industry has not been reduced, but intensi-fied.”He also observed that“The past MSAR Governments have made efforts to pro-mote economic diversity over the years but achieved little progress.”