Middle Innovation Trap

Jeong-Dong Lee (), Chulwoo Baek (), Sira Maliphol () and Jung-In Yeon ()
Additional contact information
Sira Maliphol: Seoul National University (South Korea)
Jung-In Yeon: Seoul National University (South Korea)

Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015), 2019, vol. 13, issue 1, 6-18

Abstract: The middle income trap requires strategies for building technological capabilities to overcome it. This study focuses on the development patterns of two types of technological capabilities: implementation and concept design. A conceptual approach developed from evolutionary economics and innovation systems literature is constructed to distinguish between the types of technological capabilities and how they develop. The approach is mainly applied to the cases of Korea’s development and it highlights the differences in developing implementation and concept design capabilities.The findings of the study emphasize the need for the development of concept design capabilities, which requires (i) setting challenging targets, (ii) developing human resources, infrastructure and knowledge accumulation, and (iii) using an incremental process of trial-and-error and course correction. More broadly, sociocultural institutions may need to be changed to accommodate higher risk-taking but also require different approaches to change. The study extends the concept of technological capabilities by emphasizing the concept design capability that requires trial-and-error beyond R&D activities.

Keywords: middle income trap; middle innovation trap; technological capability; implementation capability; concept design capability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O21 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://foresight-journal.hse.ru/data/2019/04/02/1190791541/1-Korea-6-18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hig:fsight:v:13:y:2019:i:1:p:6-18

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Foresight and STI Governance (Foresight-Russia till No. 3/2015) from National Research University Higher School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nataliya Gavrilicheva () and Mikhail Salazkin ().