Innovation as a Determinant of Growth in Outperforming Emerging Markets: An Analysis of South Korea

Abstract

Emerging economies and their speed of growth, competitiveness, and resilience are of great interest globally due to the high potential investors see in them. Innovation is one of the factors recognized to be the common ground of significantly outperforming economies. Therefore, identifying innovation benchmarks and how they impact economic success is relevant for a more straightforward evaluation of innovation in a country. This research focuses on the quantitative parts of innovation. Firstly, governmental interference, knowledge flows and networks, cultural and societal preconditions, and openness towards change are identified as notably relevant innovation enhancing factors in South Korea through case study analyses. Then, an analysis of the impact of quantitative innovation factors on the GDP in South Korea is conducted. The impact of quantifiable innovation factors, identified through literature review, on the GDP as the benchmark for economic growth is tested from 1995 until 2018 through a linear, multiple least squares regression to identify significant relationships between the chosen variables. Two out of five selected quantitative innovation factors have a statistically significant impact on the economic growth in the used model. The number of researchers per million people and the patent grants of residents is identified to be impactful innovation benchmarks.

Dynamics of Innovation Ecosystems: Orchestrating Actors and Interactions in Emerging Economies

“…Iveco has been provided with parts and components to produce the armored vehicle while allowing complementary innovations to the platform, such as the RCWS and C2 systems. Promoting such relevant innovations help emerging economies grow globally [57].…”

SDG9 and the competitiveness: Employing mixed methods to understand how countries can use science to compete

“…Yoon and Kwon (2022) gave competitiveness a technological dimension, measured by the number of patents. Patents issued in a country can be considered the result of investments in new and innovative ideas that contribute to economic success and growth (Hintringer et al, 2021).…”

“…Abt (2007) analyzed over 400,000 papers published over >30 years in the fields of physics, astronomy, geophysics, mathematics, and chemistry, showed that the publication rate of scientific papers depends only on the number of scientists and that there has been no increase in the average annual number of papers published per scientist in these fields. Hintringer et al (2021) showed that innovation, as measured by the number of patents, is strongly determined by the number of researchers. Phung et al (2019) showed that the number of researchers is relevant for the functioning of the science and innovation system and, through it for economic growth during 2006-2014 and involving data from 69 developed and developing countries.…”

Meeting global challenges with coherent policies producing more researchers

“…Similarly, the number of energy researchers in a country has been shown to be a key determinant of a country's productivity in green innovation, with the number of patents correlated to the number of energy researchers (Yang et al 2022). A recent study in South Korea that compared the applicability of R&D investment, number of people with tertiary education, number of patents by non-citizens, number of patents by citizens, and researcher density found that the last two quanti able factors were better indicators of innovation (Hintringer et al 2021). Therefore, researcher density is used as an indicator of science, technology, and innovation (STI) development in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Indicator 9.5.2) and OECD members (OECD 2021).…”

“…Increasing the number of researchers per million inhabitants (researcher density) is essential to meet global challenges (Hintringer et al 2021). This is probably because when many researchers address a common problem, they tend to differentiate themselves by searching for theories from other disciplines, which leads to the development of novel concepts, theories, and processes (Rothman et al 2001).…”