Wahiduddin Mahmud, Having done decades of research, economists have not got a clue of how a present-day less developed country can become a developed industrialised one, beyond prescribing that it should follow the examples of East Asian "tiger" economies; but that is like saying that if you want to play good cricket, play like Sachin Tendulkar.

In the post Warld War II era, only one major country with sizeable population has achieved this distinction, South Korea. Chile, and very recently Colombia, are the only other developing countries that have now become members of the OECD (an organisation of industrialised countries), but they started with a higher economic base.
(Quoted from the chapter: "Thinking like an economist" of my book manuscript: Market, Morals and Development: Lectures on Economics from a Developing Country Perspective.)