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BOOK REVIEW On Linsu Kim’s Imitation to Innovation: The Dynamics of Korea’s Technological Learning (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997) Hyungsub Choi Received: 16 July 2007 /Accepted: 16 July 2007 / Published online: 30 January 2008 # National Science Council, Taiwan 2008 How does a nation transform itself from an imitative one to an innovative one? This is a challenge that most catching-up countries face as they make their way up the ladder in the world economy. In the twentieth century, however, examples of countries that successfully made the transition are rare, South Korea being one of the very few. In this book, the late Linsu Kim analyzes Korea’s experience of rapid industrialization (1960-1995) and identifies the late 1970s and early 1980s as the critical turning point at which the Korean nation made the transition from “imitation to innovation.” If you are in search of a clear-cut answer as to how the Koreans managed to make that transition, this is not the book for you. Kim enumerates a long list of “factors”— “government, chaebols, education, export policy, technology transfer strategy, research, development policy, sociocultural systems, and private-sector strategy” ( p. 194)—that interact with one another to create a complex dynamics of change. The author’s intention is to provide a comprehensive overview of how this dynamics of change played out in three key industries (automobiles, consumer electronics, and semiconductors), with an additional chapter on small and medium-sized enterprises. Korea’s technological trajectory, as Kim observes, has been in the reverse direction compared to that of advanced countries. Scholars in technology studies have long debated whether technology determines human action. If the tenet of technological determinism holds anywhere, it is at the catching-up countries constrained by the technological trajectories set by advanced nations. As particular technologies go through stages of development in advanced countries—emergence, consolidation, and maturity—developing nations typically take the opposite route, beginning with mature technologies and gradually moving onto emerging ones. (Figure 4-2, p. 89). If this strategy is successful, the catching-up country acquires the capability to conduct indigenous development and research activities. East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal (2007) 1:259–261 DOI 10.1007/s12280-007-9017-2 H. Choi (*) Center for Contemporary History and Policy, Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut, Philadelphia, PA 19106-2702, USA e-mail: hchoi@chemheritage.org No analysis of a developing country’s technological capability would be complete without a comment on the role of the government. Indeed, the Korean government employed an array of policy measures to facilitate the firms’ technological learning, including promotion of chaebols through subsidies and incentives, export policy, and technology transfer policy. These measures, according to Kim, were carefully designed to move the nation’s technological capability along the stages from technology importation to indigenous R&D. Government intervention does not account for the whole story, however: as Kim makes it clear, “[t]he government… provided a policy environment, but it was industry that made it reality” ( p. 21). The private industry began to eclipse the government circa 1980. If the government-funded research institutes were at the forefront of advanced technology during the 1960s and 1970s, industrial R&D took over the role in subsequent decades. This was a prolonged process of technological learning. Beginning with acquiring foreign technology through patent licensing and importing capital goods, firms gradually learned to substitute foreign parts with domestically manufactured ones, then eventually attained the capability to design the entire system. In order to accelerate the process, industry leaders periodically constructed “crises” that drove the workers to meet unrealistic deadlines. The government, for its part, provided the background—extension of loans, protection against foreign competition, and suppression of labor—against which the industry could set such audacious goals. Kim’s interest is in explaining how Korea made the transition from imitation to innovation (which he accomplishes in rather broad strokes), but not why it happened. There are some clues, however. His case studies indicate that the urge to acquire indigenous technological capability arose from very concrete needs, especially when foreign firms began to refuse sharing their technologies. For example, Mitsubishi, which provided the core technology to Hyundai Motors, suddenly refused...

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