Articles

Triple Helix-based Institutional Analysis for Regional Innovation: Comparison of South Korea and Taiwan’s Science Parks

Sunyoung Yun, Joosung Lee

Abstract

Since the global economic crisis in 2008, the necessity of reorganizing national and regional innovation systems has risen in macro perspectives. In particular, the regional innovation system is beneficial to understand the network among national economic constituents such as government and industries. Therefore, this paper examines the regional innovation system and its applications to Korea and Taiwan’s science parks. Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) suggested that in a knowledge-based economy, knowledge sharing and interaction among system participants are key sources of innovation. The Triple Helix model of university-industry-government helps to understand the regional knowledge creation, utilization, and technology transfer effectiveness (Etzkowitz et al., 2007). This research aims to diagnose the regional innovation institutions’ roles and relations and to define the characteristics of the Asian science parks’ innovation models. Therefore, we first quantitatively measured the two regional university-industry-government network density and structure of collaborative knowledge generation. Secondly, we qualitatively analyzed regional innovation participants roles of knowledge, consensus, and innovation creation suggested by Triple Helix model. Finally, this result brings regional innovation policy through the comparison of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park and South Korea’s Daedeok Innopolis. This study is meaningful in that it presents an analysis on regional innovation institutions as micro units of Triple Helix qualitatively and quantitatively. This case study also provides regional innovation policy implications for designing other developing countries’ regional innovation system.

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