Fostering Knowledge-based Industries by Gyeonggi Technopark (GTP); A Case Study

Technoparks(TP) in Korea were initiated in 1997 by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry & Energy (MOCIE) as five-year project. The main initiators along with the MOCIE for TPs births were academia, local governments and industry. TPs were started with the mission of diminishing the problems occurred by pre-existing economic developments done for the past few decades. Initially, the 6 TPs including GTP were launched by the MOCIE. After their five-year projects, the MOCIE established ten more new TPs in other areas. Currently we have all 16 TPs in Korea. With government's decentralization policy, TPs have taken the position of the pivotal institutions for regional technology innovation.\nWhile Gyeonggi Technopark(GTP) started with other first 6 TPs in 1997, it has been one of a few leading TPs and one of the most frequently mentioned benchmarking targets to show a Korean model of the RIS by both developing countries and new-born TPs in Korea. GTP's mission is to lead on-going growth of the local economy, being a platform to accelerate technology innovation and its diffusion. For doing so, GTP has three goals: to make a cutting-edge technology industrial park for technology innovation, to upgrade the level of regional technologies, and to build a Regional Innovation System (RIS) by networking of different sectors. These three goals show a detailed business direction of how GTP could foster the knowledge-based industries at the local level. To accomplish the goals, GTP has carried out five core programs in the areas such as; R&D-based clustering  R&D supports SME's business supports commercialization of new technologies and the RIS(Regional Innovation System). GTPs 4 strategies are the driving force for its success. They are summarized as 4 initial Cs: Clustering, Commercialization, Coordination and Customizing. Clustering activity is the first priority in terms of its strategic importance. GTP has continuously extended its space to entice national R&D centers and global companies. For example, GTP allowed the chosen R&D centers to build their own buildings in the cluster area with a good deal of excellent conditions for them. In that way, GTP enticed KTL(Korea Testing Laboratory), KITECH(Korea Institute of Industrial Technology), KERI(Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute), and SOI Korea(State Optical institute, Russia). Also GTP attracted the global company-based research centers such as LG Micron co., Ltd, & LG Innotech co., Ltd., etc with the similar conditions. GTP has been putting on-going efforts to entice excellent R&D sector in the area. These institutions play the role to lead the cutting-edge technology, and play a key role to transfer and/or disseminate their high technologies toward the small and med-sized enterprise within the region. While GTP extended its physical space with-out to attract more R&D based insititutes (mentioned above), it has also expanded its clustering territory with-in. Eagerly participating in governments projects, GTP attracted the MBC(Micro Biochip Center), GTP Bio Venture Center, and Robotics Research Service Center. Enticing JCI(Johnson Controls Automotive Korea), a global auto-parts co., is another way to create better automotive cluster environment in the park. Though the roles of local governments and the universities have been great for clustering, major role has been played by GTP to create the landscape of the cluster. Owing to the strategies, GTP has 85 tenant companies and the space are fully occupied by them. The tenants gross sales are 350 million dollars per year. More than 1,000 employees are working in the complex. At the beginning, only 44 companies and 340 employees. While 7 years have been passed, more than 200 companies have been successful in their businesses and settled down in other places after leaving GTP. With its reputation of technology oriented programs, GTP has been recognized as the harbinger of the regional technology innovation and creation of knowledge-based industries. GTP has four internal and four external factors for its success. The internal ones are as follows; stable operation system, R&D oriented clustering scheme, closely working with the government's industrial policies, and good relationships with academia. The external factors of GTP's success are governments' innovation-oriented policies, localization mind for economical & industrial developments in the national 283 level, local governments' efforts for technology innovation, and regional SMEs' enthusiasm for technology innovation. Since its nature of the birth, GTPs journey for its mission has been very similar to other TP's in Korea. Not only on TPs starts, but also on their growing stages, the central government has used the same measuring stick in evaluating the outputs of them. After the 5 year fund raise was stopped in 2003, each TP was supposed to find its own best way to be accustomed to the feature of its neighboring environment. For instance, Gyongbuk TP has strengthened the power of technology innovation with university-oriented strategy; Daegu TP with the dispersion policy named 'pi-plan'; and Songdo TP with the policy of Economy Liberty Zone designated by the central government. Due to the central governments Localization policy (putting more resources to the region that does not belong to the capital-metro area), GTP has been alienated from the central government's support span, and tried to work more closely work with the local governments to hold its superior industrial capacities and location advantages to boost up the regional economy. As a result, GTP has been finding its own unique ways to work with other sectors. For instance, GTP is evaluating all BI centers(forty-seven BIs) in Gyeonggi Province. GTP is more focusing on Post-BI SMEs. To create several small-sized clusters in Gyeonggi province, GTP launched the Mini TP Project. GTP established and enticed professional information centers such as ECRC(Electronic Commerce Resource Center), GTTC(Gyeonggi Technology Transfer Center), Ansan Software Center, and Gyeonggi Ansan Intellectual Property Center. They are working together to accentuate the commercialization of new technologies.Though GTP is an example of the success, it is rather the time for GTP to be more concerned of the issues to resolve. First, as non-profit organization, GTP has not yet achieved financial independence. Second, the industrial environment has not been so great for Korean industries. The exodus of the companies to China is taking place everyday. The central government's localization policy has metro area companies move to other regions. The lack of original key technologies hinders us from moving on toward the knowledge-based industrial society. GTP believes the true success is not in a great operation system, but in capability of coping with these problems and providing proper solutions.