Building a national innovation system through regional innovation systems

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 toot 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. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.