How South Korea became the most innovative country in the world: The Korean catch-up.

Abstract

In this dissertation, what will be treated is the development of the Innovation system of the South Korean Republic, its input and output and will be made a comparison with the Italian system of innovation. In the beginning of the work it will be made a brief introduction about what is meant as “System of Innovation”, and its evolution as “National system of Innovation”. Then what will be analysed are the actual methods to measure innovation, such as R&D and Patents of new products. The work will go on with the second chapter and an introduction about Korean history: some acknowledgments that are dutiful to better understand the evolution of the country. It will be introduced the concept of “Chaebol” i.e. Korean big industrial conglomerates that are typically leaded by big and influent families of the country. Will be analysed the “Chaebol problem” and the relation of these conglomerates with the government. At the end of the second chapter will be shown the outputs that the organisation of the Korean system produced. The third chapter will be structured as the second one, but with data that refer to the Italian system of innovation and its outputs. The last and fourth chapter will see a comparison between the Korean system, leaded by the big “Chaebol” conglomerates and the Italian one, leaded by small and medium enterprises.