Elsevier

Technovation

Volume 22, Issue 8, August 2002, Pages 485-491
Technovation

Building a national innovation system through regional innovation systems

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4972(01)00035-9Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper deals with the effective formulation and implementation of a national innovation system. It emphasizes that a concept of regional innovation system is a good tool to generate an effective national innovation system, as it can effectively create different sectoral innovation systems in different regions. Based on this theoretical review, this paper analyzes Korean regional innovation systems in terms of mapping of innovation actors. It concludes that the Korean national innovation system is relatively weak, as it has only three advanced regional innovation systems. However, it tells that there are six fast developing regional innovation systems and seven less developed regional innovation systems. They should be refined and further developed based on the active support by the central government, some policy measures for activating interactive learning between innovation actors, and also the close cooperation between the central and regional governments.

Introduction

Many experts argue that this century will be a knowledge-based society. It will be characterized by very active generation, diffusion, and appropriation of new technologies. Under this background, a new concept, national innovation system (NIS), has been raised and studied intensively. In these days, some experts also argue that this century will be a century of regionalization. Nation-state has been losing its importance in economic, R&D, and innovation activities in the globalized society. Instead, region-state gains an importance as it is expected to bring up their regional economies more effectively in terms of systematical promotion of innovation activities.

Since the end of the 1980s, there have been many studies on the NIS on the one hand. However, they have rather concentrated on theoretical discussions or superficially on the composition of innovation actors. There have been no active discussions on how to formulate a NIS. On the other hand, influenced by the concept of NIS, there have been discussions on RISs since the beginning of the 1990s. However, they have been focused on analyzing region itself and so the relationship between regional and national innovation systems have been ignored.

This paper, therefore, aims at bridging regional and national innovation systems. National economic performance is closely related to the regional economic performances in a nation. Therefore, we will show that a NIS will be easily formed and implemented in terms of effective RISs (Section 2). The NIS can be depicted as a matrix of regional and sectoral innovation systems. The concept of RIS is a good tool to generate effective sectoral innovation systems. Therefore, by generating different but competent SISs in different regions RISs can build up an effective NIS.

Based on this theoretical discussion, this paper analyzes the Korean regional innovation systems in terms of geographical mapping of innovation actors and discusses their relationships with the Korean national innovation system (Section 3). Finally, we classify the Korean regional innovation systems according to their development stages and draw some strategic implications to strengthen the Korean regional and national innovation systems (Section 4). This paper is based on our long studies on Korean regional and national innovation systems (e.g. Chung, 1995, Chung, 1999, Chung and Lee, 1998, Chung et al., 1997, Chung et al., 1999). Our discussions will also be helpful for other countries that have tried to formulate their effective regional and national innovation systems.

Section snippets

National innovation system and regional innovation systems

In order to understand RISs, we need to know NIS first. The concept of NIS has been discussed frequently in S&T policy research (e.g. Freeman, 1987, Nelson, 1993, Lundvall, 1992, Patel and Pavitt, 1994, Chung, 1996, Chung and Lay, 1997, OECD, 1996a). There are several definitions for NIS. They can be classified into broad and narrow definitions. The broad definition encompasses all interrelated institutional actors that create, diffuse, and exploit innovations, while the narrow definition

Korean regional innovation systems

In order to understand a country's RISs and NIS as a whole, we need to investigate three innovation actor groups in regions. In this section, we will discuss Korean regional innovation systems based on these three actor groups.

It was only when Korea introduced a regional political system for the first time in 1995 that it has begun to recognize the importance of regional innovation activities. Since then, the Korean central and regional governments have made a great effort to develop their

Conclusions

A systems approach is needed to effectively strengthen national innovation capabilities. In this paper, we emphasize that the concept of RIS is a good tool for this purpose. Efficient RISs build up a competent NIS by generating competitive SISs in respective regions. We also argue that a RIS should be composed of appropriate number of relevant innovation actors in three groups: academia, public research sector, and industry. Therefore, it would be very interesting to investigate the mapping of

Sunyang Chung is a Professor of Technology Management at Sejong University, Seoul, Korea. He received his PhD degree from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, writing a dissertation on the comparative impact analysis of country-specific frame conditions on technology policy for new production technologies between Korea and Germany. During his study in Germany, he carried out several research projects at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI) in Karlsruhe,

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    Sunyang Chung is a Professor of Technology Management at Sejong University, Seoul, Korea. He received his PhD degree from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, writing a dissertation on the comparative impact analysis of country-specific frame conditions on technology policy for new production technologies between Korea and Germany. During his study in Germany, he carried out several research projects at the Fraunhofer-Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (FhG-ISI) in Karlsruhe, Germany. He had worked more than 10 years at the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) in Korea as a senior research fellow. His research areas are technology management and policy, regional innovation strategies, environmental management and policy, and the integration of the South and North Korean innovation systems. He has published several books in Korea and Germany and has written many articles for Korean and international journals.

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