• Journal of the Korean Academic Society of Industrial Cluster
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2007

Regional innovation and cluster policies are the new agenda of regional policy, an agenda that began to spread over recent years throughout different countries and regions. In this context, our main question arises: how are we going to evaluate regional innovation and cluster policies? What models and methods are we going to use? Since 1990, regional and national governments have put more emphasis on evaluation as a tool directed to produce knowledge to design better policies. The objective of this article is to summarise the main challenges arising from the evaluation of regional innovation and cluster policies and make some methodological proposals that can contribute to produce better evaluations. In the first section, there is a brief presentation of regional innovation and cluster policies, followed by a more detailed analysis, in the second section, of their principal characteristics and of the main challenges posed by their evaluation. In the third section, some evaluation proposals that can help to improve current evaluation practice are presented. The paper concludes with a short number of general recommendations that we should bear in mind when designing an evaluation of regional innovation and cluster policies.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.195-214
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• 2003

Sweden's regional innovation system is built mainly on innovative clusters, several of them - in automobile, steel, new materials, information and telecommunication, and bioscience - world-class. Most successful clusters were developed at local bases imbued with local history. In fact, a cluster's competitiveness is intimately related to its closeness of fit with its local environment. Geographically dispersed clusters in Sweden - some national, others local, and some local but deemed members of a national cluster as well - have already created many new competitive products and services. In 2001, Sweden has eight national and nine regional clusters, and envisioned eleven national and five regional clusters more. The experience of Swedish clusters indicate several elements that determine the ability of cluster policies to promote and strengthen regional economic growth. Cluster policies require strong public sector support, particularly in the form of providing basic national conditions. Regional cluster policies place new demands on national and regional industrial policies. All policies must be closely interwoven without compromising their primary allegiance to their respective areas.

• Journal of the Korean Academic Society of Industrial Cluster
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2008

Despite growing recognition of the significance of industrial clusters to regional economic success, there has been only limited attention paid to the effectiveness of cluster policies in old industrial regions. Many of these regions still retain functioning industrial clusters, or have clusters which are adopting new strategies as part of a process of regeneration. This paper argues that the effectiveness of cluster policies in old industrial regions depends upon the extent to which they recognise the evolutionary nature of industrial clusters. It reviews the literature on the transformation of old industrial regions in Europe, and examines how cluster policies have risen to prominence as a policy tool. These strands ate brought together in an exploration of cluster policies in old industrial regions. A brief case study is presented of the evolution of the steel industry supply chain in north east England. The conclusions focus upon the data requirements that form a starting point for informed policy intervention into presses of cluster evolution.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.634-646
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• 2009

This paper critically examines cluster dynamics and development in a multi-scalar approach, criticizing both the argument overemphasizing local networks and endogenous development for regional development and the contention highlighting global networks and the role of global players. We argue that state policies, exogenous and direct, play a significant part in cluster dynamics and development especially in the case of Korea where the state government's strong policies have led to rapid industrialization. We analyze multi-scalar factors, especially the government policies at a national level, in the development paths of the three cases including Ulsan automobile cluster, Daedeok research cluster, and Dongdaemun fashion cluster.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.764-781
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• 2016

During the last two decades, industrial cluster policies for promoting regional economic growth and industrial development have been flourishing all over the world. Even though cluster policies have partly contributed to regional industrial growth and innovation capabilities, they have long been blamed for regional industrial lock-ins and declining regional industrial resilience because of applying homeogenous cluster policies and regional specialized strategic industrial promotion policies for various localities, which are based on so-called 'selection and concentration' principle. This paper suggests postcluster policy focused on placed-based smart specialization and regional business platform strategies.

• World Technopolis Review
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.102-112
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• 2017

In this increasingly globalised and rapidly-changing world, the various challenges that can arise are also increasingly globalised and complex. These may range from economic, environmental, societal or even demographic challenges. Solutions should therefore be applicable world-wide, but they need to be properly adapted to the specifications and needs at the regional and country level. This implies that past models of centralised innovation can be progressively substituted by new approaches based on openness and strategic collaboration between the various players involved. There are various models of openness and collaboration in research, development and innovation creating scientific networks at different levels. This paper is designed in a way to present the concept of smart specialisation and clusters and how they are linked and contribute to the support of Smart Specialisation Strategy in the Asian countries. The following paragraphs describe how smart specialisation is applied and the importance of clusters in developing a S3 strategy. In addition, the status of cluster policies in Asia as well as the steps towards S3 are also presented. The status of cluster policies and their steps towards S3 policies in Asia are described. The approach of China to adopt S3 in their R&I policy is also presented. The scope of this paper, is to demonstrate the policy framework of cluster and S3 policies in the region of Asia and how they are applied. China has been further analysed as a case, since they are more active in applying such policies.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.167-181
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• 2006

This paper reviews regional innovation policy in Japan. 'Technopolis' policy, the first technology-based regional development policy in the world, was implemented in Japan. Nonetheless, technology-based regional endogenous development did not occur. Then, regional technology transfer was pursued. In order to make use of universities and public research institutes in a region for development, university-industry collaboration and cross-over, such as university spin-offs, were promoted. Within this background, new technology-based regional development policies have been introduced based on a cluster approach. These policies are the knowledge cluster Initiative and the industrial cluster program. However, existing companies have difficulty in carrying out innovation. This paper argues that a cluster to create new start-ups that carry out innovation is also needed and explains a new concept of venturing cluster. Based on this new cluster concept, this paper analyzes the situation of Sapporo in Japan, where many university spin-offs are being created in the biotechnology field.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.377-393
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• 2007

National balanced development and regional innovation have been one of the most important national agendas under the Participatory Government. National balanced development gives a central focus on realizing self-sustaining localization which is based on regional innovation. The core policy goal is to build competitive regional innovation system and innovative clusters in the regions of the country. In this vein, this paper aims to evaluate the present government's policies of regional innovation and innovative cluster. It needs to point out that the regional innovation and cluster policies show some critical problems. Firstly, the policy-making process is based on the top-down approach rather than the bottom-up one. Secondly, regional innovation policies, in many cases, expose the redundancy of similar policies and a lack of linkages between similar policies. Thirdly, the regional innovation policies are too much social infrastructure building-centered, even though the basic principle of regional innovation policy should be based on building superstructure such as networking and social capital.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-217
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• 2003

Since the early 1990s, cluster-based policies have been celebrated as the basis of successful regional industrial and technological development strategy by encouraging regional innovation and technological spillover. Most recently, the Korean government has also begun to seek to initiate some strategies for promoting industry clusters. However, it is problematic that the cluster policies still focus on attracting related firms and establishing supporting agencies and physical infrastructures rather than improving social and institutional dimensions for cluster development such as social capital, networks, social learning capabilities, the governance of regional innovation. In this paper we attempt to elucidate social and institutional dimensions for cluster development and suggest some policy agenda to promote innovative cluster.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.23-43
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• 2005

Industrial clusters are geographical concentrations of interconnected companies, specialised suppliers, service providers, firms in related industries, and associated institutions (for example, universities, standard agencies, and trade associations) that combine to create new products and/or services in specific lines of business. At present, the concept of industrial cluster becomes very popular worldwide, policy makers at national, regional and local levels and business people in both forerunner and latecomer countries are keen to implement the cluster concept as an economic development model. Though understanding of clusters and related promoting policies varies from one place to another, the underlying benefits of clusters from collective learning and knowledge spillovers between participating actors strongly attract the attention of these people. In Thailand, a latecomer country in terms of technological catching up, the cluster concept has been used as a means to rectify weakness and fragmentation of its innovation systems. The present Thai government aspires to apply the concept to promote both high-tech manufacturing clusters, services clusters and community-based clusters at the grass-root level. This paper analyses three very different clusters in terms of technological sophistication and business objectives, i.e., hard disk drive, software and chili paste. It portrays their significant actors, the extent of interaction among them and the evolution of the clusters. Though are very dissimilar, common characteristics attributed to qualified success are found. Main driving forces of the three clusters are cluster intermediaries. Forms of these organizations are different from a government research and technology organization (RTO), an industrial association, to a self-organised community-based organization. However, they perform similar functions of stimulating information and knowledge sharing, and building trust among participating firms/individuals in the clusters. Literature in the cluster studies argues that government policies need to be cluster specific. In this case, the best way to design and implement cluster-specific policies is through working closely with intermediaries and strengthening their institutional especially in linking member firms/individuals to other actors in clusters such as universities, government R&D institutes, and financial institutions.