Government-led regional innovation: a case of ‘Pangyo’ IT cluster of South Korea

This paper investigates the effective formulation and implementation of ‘Pangyo Techno Valley’ (PTV), a regional innovation cluster led by Gyeonggi province in Korea. It emphasizes the historical, institutional and regional contexts to understand the concept of regional innovation cluster by using the framework of indicators of regional innovation. Especially this paper investigates PTV in terms of open innovation in supply chains. The development of PTV is theoretically interesting since the local government played an active role in providing with various incentives including physical space next to Seoul. This paper investigates the success factors for establishing PTV in the context of RIS and how a local government-led RIS can overcome the existing limits shown in other development policies the Korean government had pursued so far. This paper argues that the strategic investment and administrative support by Gyeonggi province and the location of PTV have played a critical role for the success of PTV by attracting abundant numbers of IT companies and competent talents. The finding is expected to provide an ample policy reference for other developing countries as they are eager to emulate the success of ‘Silicon Valley’ but have kept failing.