KDI - Korea Development Institute - RESEARCH - Research Areas

Summary

Research Monograph KOR Cultivating and Scaling Innovative Firms: Strategies for Creating New Growth Engine in Korea

Scale-up firms play a pivotal role in injecting new vitality into the economy and enhancing national competitiveness. Given the stagnant growth potential, it is increasingly important to create an ecosystem optimized for scale-up firms to grow and to establish an environment where high-growth firms can continuously emerge. However, in reality, many firms in Korea face various barriers during the scale-up process, including difficulties in securing skilled talent, utilizing digital tools, and expanding into global markets.

In response, this study examines whether Korea’s business ecosystem provides an environment where innovative and competitive firms can continuously grow beyond the domestic market into the global market. And by focusing on areas where such an environment is insufficiently provided, it presents policy directions and implementation strategies for transitioning to a more desirable ecosystem.

Consisting of four main chapters, the study emphasizes the following policy suggestions. First, as the decline in the proportion of high-growth firms weakens economic dynamism and job creation, the government must shift toward scale-up policies and establish an integrated management system to support these firms. Second, to enhance the global competitiveness of startups, it is essential to introduce a specialized visa focusing on innovation and growth potential, streamline permanent residency pathways, and expand tax benefits. Third, to encourage firms to pursue sustained growth in export markets, it is necessary to design export promotion programs that are performance-based and tied to their success in export markets. Fourth, revitalizing industry-academia-research collaboration requires a demand-driven policy approach, increased participation from large and mid-sized firms, patent box incentives, and strengthened industry linkages with public research institutes.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Path to National Champions: Transforming Support Policies for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs)

South Korea’s ‘national champion policy,’ designed to foster global enterprises, has yet to deliver measurable outcomes in sales and productivity, suggesting inefficiencies in resource allocation linked to ‘the risk of picking winners.’ Accordingly, the incentive structure of growth policies for Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) needs an operational shift, moving away from conventional subsidy assistance toward a bespoke model that integrates private investment, consulting, and networks to address their business challenges collaboratively. Furthermore, in order to enhance policy accountability and effectiveness, it is crucial to consolidate support details and performance outcomes while ensuring transparency through public disclosure.

- Amid intensifying competition for technological dominance, advanced countries are stepping up the reintroduction of targeted industrial policy to concentrate support in specific industries or firms.

- Korea provides substantial subsidies to firms through its national champion policy, but studies on its effectiveness remain limited.

- This study analyzes the effectiveness of Korea’s national champion policy and offers recommendations for improvement by comparing its operational approach with those of other countries.

- Korea’s flagship national champion policy program, World Class 300, provided targeted annual subsidies to 30~56 firms selected through a government-led process.

- The declining share of high-growth firms led to a large drop in the number of firms satisfying WC300’s sales growth criterion, making it harder to identify eligible firms.

- An analysis of WC300 outcomes reveals no significant impact on sales, value-added, or productivity, suggesting that resources may have been allocated to firms misaligned with the project’s objectives.

- Korea’s national champion policy aims to foster innovation and promote exports among SMEs to drive growth and job creation.

- However, concentrating resources on less competitive firms through selective support risks undermining economic efficiency and distorting market dynamics.

- Relational support is likely more effective than transactional support for high-potential firms.

- Effective business growth support requires tailored assistance that meets the diverse needs across the growth stages of individual firms rather than focusing on a single activity.

- The time has come for Korea to shift gears in its national champion

- To enhance the effectiveness of the national champion policy, its framework―including firm selection and support measures―should transition to a private-sector-led approach.

- Enhancing policy accountability and effectiveness requires centralized management of support details and performance data alongside transparent public disclosure.

- Given the low incentives for actively restructuring government support projects, institutionalizing independent evaluations is crucial for improving future outcomes.

- New policy initiatives should operate systematic pilot programs to enhance effectiveness.

Summary

Policy Study KOR National Champions and Industrial Policy: An Examination of the Effectiveness of Picking Winners Strategy in Industrial Policy

Amidst evolving industrial environments characterized by intensified technological supremacy competition and the transition to carbon neutrality, targeted industrial policies are re-emerging as a significant tool for major countries. This study focuses on the national champion policy, a key instrument of targeted industrial policy. Specifically, it analyzes the effectiveness of South Korea's 'World Class 300' project. In addition, it draws implications from international policy cases for creating national champions. The aim of this study is to propose improvement measures for designing effective targeted industrial policies.

Chapter 2 examines the status and role of targeted industrial policies within the conceptual framework of industrial policy and introduces the current policies in Korea. It also discusses the effectiveness of targeted industrial policies. Chapter 3 reviews Korea’s industrial growth trajectories over the past decade by analyzing corporate activities and productivity patterns by industry and firm size. Chapter 4 assesses the effectiveness of national champion policy, focusing on the World Class 300 project as a representative case. It provides an overview of the implementation processes and analyzes the project's effectiveness. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses implications from similar international policy cases and proposes improvement measures for targeted industrial policies.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Labor Market and Policy Implications

This report provides an overview of the recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and examines its potential to automate jobs in the Korean labor market. Through an analysis that merges expert assessments of AI capabilities with the skill profiles of occupations in Korea, it is found that, as of 2023, 38.8% of current jobs are at risk of having over 70% of their tasks automated. Predictions for 2030 suggest that nearly 90% of tasks across 90% of existing job types might be subject to automation, if the current task structure should remain as it is.

Nevertheless, the technical feasibility of automation does not directly translate to an imminent risk of automation. As of the end of 2021, only 2.7% of private firms with more than ten employees had adopted AI according to official statistics. When considering the differential AI adoption rates by firm size, it is estimated that about 10% of the workforce is exposed to AI.

In pursuit of a more nuanced understanding of the actual risk posed by automation, this research delves into the impact of increased AI exposure within local labor markets. The findings suggest that while AI's introduction does not meaningfully affect total employment, it tends to lower earnings, with women's average earnings disproportionately affected. More granular analyses indicate that an increase in AI exposure, driven by plausibly exogenous factors, has primarily resulted in diminished employment and earnings opportunities for younger workers at the nascent stages of their careers.

Drawing from these findings, this report proposes policy recommendations to navigate the challenges posed by AI in the labor market effectively.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR Digital Transformation Strategy for Digital-Based Growth

COVID-19 has caused many changes socially and economically. While closing their workplaces and stopping face-to-face meetings, companies expanded non-face-to-face activities such as working from home, webinar. In addition, consumers switched activities such as education, daily necessities purchase, food delivery, and fitness to online or mobile methods. COVID-19 caused a rapid change in the existing supply and demand system, and the changed pattern of economic activity is more likely to continue in the future.

The rapid transformation of lifestyle in the global pandemic situation was possible thanks to digital technology that has continued to develop over the past 30 years since the spread of the Internet in the 1990s. Digital technology has become a general-purpose technology that causes fundamental changes in economic, industrial, and social environment, including education, jobs, and lifestyles, beyond the level of limited use for specific products or services.

In particular, digital technology has undergone a rapid commercialization due to the expansion of infrastructure for high-speed transmission and computation of large amounts of data, the emergence of data-based applications, and the simultaneous development of hardware technology. The demand for digital technology has soared due to COVID-19, and it has emerged at the forefront of our society.

This phenomenon, also called digital transformation, is felt as a rapid and overall change in society. However, Companies has been feeing the impact of digital transformation before Covid-19. Advances in digital technologies such as the Internet of Things, Cloud, Big Data, and Mobile have provided companies with opportunities to innovate through new business models, while causing fundamental changes in the way companies work.

Digital transformation is expected to be positive for productivity improvement and economic growth by promoting the emergence of new products and services and enhancing work efficiency. In addition, digital transformation will promote the expansion of digital trade, thereby expanding export opportunities for products and services through digital. On the other hand, while the risk of cyber security is expected to increase due to high dependence on digital technology, there are also concerns that automation and digitalization of work may have a negative impact on employment.

Accordingly, this study examines tasks for digital transformation and policy directions for stable transition to a digital society in six dimensions: corporate, government policy, regulation, job, education, and global environment.

Chapter 1 identifies the key elements and expected effects of a company's digital transformation, and presents the patterns and levels of digital transformation of domestic companies. Chapter 2 examines policy challenges for digital transformation of SMEs so that SMEs can grow into small and medium-sized enterprises by using digital to increase productivity and strengthening innovation capabilities. Chapter 3 preemptively examines all problems related to the emergence of new industries using digital technology to seek ways to improve regulations that help the smooth growth of new industries. Chapter 4 quantitatively analyzes whether industrial robots, a specific form of automation, replace domestic jobs. Chapter 5 discusses the transition to digital education using artificial intelligence and its tasks as an alternative to solving the problems of our public education. Chapter 6 analyzes the current situation centering on digital trade, a new economic opportunity in the digital era, and examines recent trade issues.

This report summarizes the policy directions that can minimize the side effects that may be caused by digital tansformation while using digital transformation as a stepping stone for the growth of the Korean economy.

First of all, in order to produce a good performance for digital transformation of domestic SMEs, it is necessary to diagnose the readiness of SMEs for digital transformation and provide necessary policy support to SMEs while conducting consulting on what digital technologies and capabilities to be equipped with. In addition, policy integration and coordination is needed so that the government's various digital transformation policies for SMEs can be linked to each other.

Second, it is necessary to clarify regulations in order to harmonize newly emerging technologies and industries with the existing system in the process of transition to a digital society. Regulatory reform has been recognized as deregulation, but the current rapid digitization requires clarification of regulations, preemptive modification and timely provision of regulations, and advancement of regulatory quality.

Third, the trend of robot increase is expected to continue due to continuous digital transformation and industrial structure reorganization, so it is necessary to protect the vulnerable, centering on mid-skilled jobs in the manufacturing industry. It is necessary to expand vocational education so that workers can move smoothly to areas where labor demand is expanding, and to help higher education acquire robot utilization skills and complementary skills.

Fourth, the educational gap should be narrowed by using artificial intelligence. It is analyzed that non-face-to-face education due to COVID-19 has decreased academic ability and widened the educational gap. In order to solve this problem, policy efforts to improve the quality of education, such as strengthening learning feedback, spreading customized education at each student level, and introducing a continuous academic diagnosis system, are considered to be feasible through transition to digital education using artificial intelligence.

Finally, in order to expand the market through digital trade, digital trade statistics should be advanced, digital trade agreements should be expanded, systems should be established to preemptively respond to overseas data regulations, and support measures should be prepared to resolve digital trade disputes for SMEs.

Summary

Policy Study KOR A Study on Effective Innovation Policy: Focusing on Vaccine R&D

Vaccines can be an effective means to cope with infectious diseases from a social point of view, but investment by private firms in the development of new vaccines could be suboptimal. First, this study briefly discusses a typical vaccine development process and the characteristics of a vaccine product to explain the causes of this market failure.

Next, this study analyzes the optimal use of ‘push incentives’ and ‘pull incentives’ to enhance R&D incentives for a vaccine development firm. More specifically, here, push incentives can lower R&D costs and alleviate the firm’s financing constraint (regardless of R&D result); pull incentives can raise the level of reward from a successful R&D result. This study shows that (i) it is optimal to use only push incentives if the firm faces severe financing constraints, and the social planner’s budget is relatively small; (ii) It is optimal to use both push and pull incentives if the firm faces severe financing constraints, and the social planner’s budget is relatively large; (iii) It is optimal to use only pull incentives if the firm does not face any financing constraints; (iv) In cases where the rewards that the firm can obtain from a successful R&D result are quite limited (i.e., the market size is small), providing push incentives alone is not sufficient to enhance the company's R&D incentives.

Lastly, after examining vaccine R&D support policy in Korea and a few other foreign countries, this study provides relevant policy implications, including the circumstances under which providing pull incentives play an important role, the need for a vaccine innovation policy for harmonious use of push and pull incentives, and institutional improvements required to use pull incentives more effectively.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR Job Creation Strategy in an Knowledge-based Economy

Job creation is now at the top position in the Korean government’s agenda. But the means for achieving this goal as well as general understanding on the issue lag behind Korea’s rapid transition to a knowledge-based economy. Direct job creation constitutes an important part of government policy, and the business calls for labor market flexibility. This reports shows that Korea’s job creation mechanism has shifted from one of a manufacturing economy’s to that of a knowledge economy, and knowledge has been the major driving force of job creation since the 2000s. Manufacturing employment has peaked as early as in 1990, and job creation thereafter has been fueled by the growth of knowledge intensive service industry jobs as in any advanced economies. If we presume two sectors in an economy, tradable and non-tradable, a knowledge intensive service job in the tradable sector creates twice as many jobs in the non-tradable sector as a manufacturing job. The knowledge intensive jobs themselves are created by innovation in manufacturing as well as in services and by business profits. Higher service to manufacturing jobs ratios, the growing share of investment on intangibles, concentration of jobs in the Seoul metropolitan area, all such major changes are phenomena in a knowledge-based economy. Job creation has been active with a rapid transition to a knowledge economy and has slowed down with its weakening.

The nontradable sector is larger in numbers of jobs, but the tradable sector is the engine and the determinant of quality of jobs in an economy. Hence the focus of this report is on the latter. Paradoxically the nontradable sector is less related to the economy’s competitiveness, which allows rooms for labor market policies in the sector.

This report covers firm productivity and knowledge capital, local job creation multipliers, patents and firm values, knowledge property right protection, and university-company research collaboration issues. But this list is not at all comprehensive and further research is called for in order to set up a knowledge economy jobs strategy, in areas such as place-based policies, R&D strategies for job creation, et cetera.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Smart Policies for Smart Factories

□ Smart factories have been found to enhance the productivity of the overall production process, proving to be an appropriate policy as a key strategy for domestic manufacturing innovation. However, to maintain its effectiveness even when the scale and recipients of policy support are expanded, there should be improvements in the policy details and action plans. Above all, making factories smart requires not only the adoption of relevant technologies, but also proper management practices and organizational operations necessary to utilize the new technologies. The government should place the policy priority on helping firms to align workers‘ incentives with the technological change. It is also necessary to smartize the governance system of the overall manufacturing innovation strategy which include smart factories.

- The scale of the smart factory fostering policy, a key element of Korea's manufacturing innovation strategy, is gradually expanding. It is time to check the effectiveness of the policy.

- This study provides policy implications by measuring the level of smartness at the factory-level, analyzing economic effects from enhanced smartiziation, and examining factors that can facilitate the smartization.

- Smart factory is a factory in which workers and equipment exchange information and thus can make better decisions.

- Recent technological progress is drawing much attention to smart factories, but adopting the technology is a way of helping factories become smarter, and not directly transforming them into a smart factory.

- The level of smartization in a factory can be measured based on their levels of system interconnection and data sharing and utilization.

- According to the analysis, the level of smartization in Korean firms is low overall with a huge gap between factories.

- Smartization is found to have varying effects on factories’ performance depending on the type of production process, but in general, smartization helps to significantly improve productivity.

- The US-China trade conflict could directly/indirectly reduce Korea's exports, which in turn, could lead to a fall in GDP.

- The nature of smartization is a fundamental transformation of the manufacturing system, using data as a proxy, and not replacing human labor through automation.

- Automation is likely to curtail labor demand while smartization is found to have different effects on different occupations. In particular, the demand for technicians specialized in process management is not expected to decrease.

- Responsive measures should be developed to support occupations that will likely experience a contraction in employment amid factory smartiziation.

- The adoption of technologies for smartization can be helpful only when it is well aligned with workers’ incentives.

- Technological and organizational factors that determine the level of smartization are complementary, meaning that it would be difficult to smartize by focusing on just one factor.

- To make the policy work more effectively, companies should be provided with management training and consulting support so that they can prepare for technological change. It is recommended support programs for consulting, training and human resource development are systemized.

- The government’s support system needs to be smartized to enhance the efficiency of support and to provide companies with more practical information.

- Effective educational and retraining programs should be provided, targeting occupations that will likely face a decrease in demand, through cooperation between large enterprises and SMEs and between suppliers and users.

- A public-private-academic network platform holding real authority should take the driving role in developing manufacturing innovation strategies and responding to the coming changes.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR Smart Factory: Economic Impacts and Policy Implications

Smart manufacturing, also known as Industry 4.0, represents the digital transformation that modern manufacturing is undergoing. Rather than employing individual technologies for traditional automation, firms try to make the whole manufacturing process more integrated and flexible to meet fast-changing demand. Collecting and utilizing data plays a crucial role in the integration of production.

As digital capabilities become more critical in firm survival and industry competitiveness, major countries put forward strategies to promote and support firms' digitization. The Korean government has also pursued policies to encourage firms, small and medium-sized in particular, to adopt smart manufacturing. The goal is to have 30,000 smart factories by 2022.

Despite its importance and difference from traditional automation, there has been little effort to understand the economics of smart manufacturing. This report is the first comprehensive study to measure the level of smart manufacturing, examine its economic impacts, and identify the determinants of adopting the smart factory. Based on the concrete quantitative evidence, this study provides policy suggestions for the effective digital transformation of manufacturing.

From a technical point of view, a smart factory is defined as "Digitization and networking of all processes, products, and resources." As the smart factory integrates the factory system to digitize and network all production activities―and thereby go beyond simple automation―it can improve the efficiency of the production process, flexibly cope with breakdowns and sudden changes in supply and demand, and even help to develop new products and predict future demands.

We first measure the level of the smart factory by two factory-specific characteristics: (1) the degree in which all the production activities in the factory are interconnected systemically (system integration) and (2) the degree to which the factory collects, shares and utilizes data for decision-making (data share and use). To collect necessary information, we surveyed about 1,000 domestic plants in the Korean manufacturing industry. From the survey result, we find that the sample factories were generally low in the smart factory level, but there was a modest improvement between 2015 and 2017. We also find a significant gap between factories in both levels and change.

Chapter 2 examines the effects of factory smartization on the three key performance indicators (KPI) of the factory: productivity, cost efficiency, and product variety. For productivity, we find that daily production increases when the smart factory level increases. We find similar effects on other KPIs, which are heterogeneous by the type of production process. For example, we find a significant reduction in the lead time only from continuous-process factories, while we observe a reduction in the defect rates, a cost-efficiency indicator, only from assembly line-process factories. For product variety, we find the most substantial positive effect from the batch (and job shop) process.

Chapter 3 explores the employment effect of factory smartization and compares it to that of automation. While economists find negative impacts of individual technologies, such as robots and AIs, engineers argue that smartization, a system-wide change distinct from automation, creates new labor demand for constant reconfiguration and training of workers. This chapter tests the hypothesis by examining the relationship between planned smartization and predicted labor demand by worker groups (production workers, technical engineers, and office workers). The results support the engineers' prediction. While automation is expected to decrease the demand for all three classes, improvement in the production process is not likely to decrease the demand for technical engineers. Smartization in even greater scale - integration of all business activities - is expected to have no adverse effects on all three worker groups. Having said that automation and smartization are different in their job impact, this chapter also emphasizes that there is considerable heterogeneity across firms and workers. Production workers and office workers, young and old workers, and workers at low-level smart factories are those more vulnerable to production smartization. Policymakers should encourage firms to provide them with proper retraining and reallocation program.

Given the effects of the factory smartization on performance and employment, it is important to understand what factors determine the level of smartization. Chapter 4 investigates the determinants including the adoption of technologies relevant to the smart factory with a focus on the role of complementary organizational features. We find that there is a complementarity between human resource management practices and technology adoption in driving smartization. Technology adoption leads to smartization, and such effect magnifies disproportionately with the level of structured human resources management. We also find other magnifiers, such as the presence of an ICT division and CEO's willingness to upgrade the manufacturing system.

The complementarity between technology and organizational practices suggests the need to reconsider the current policy direction. First, before providing support, there needs to be an accurate diagnosis of the target firm's organizational practices, needs, and expectations for the effects of the smartization. This “pre-consulting & post-support” approach will be more effective than merely helping firms to introduce specific technologies. Second, we propose to build a platform that provides one-stop services for SMEs. Third, we make suggestions to make the government's support system smart (government smartization) to increase the effectiveness of the support.

Chapter 5 concludes this study by proposing a plan to reform the governance for manufacturing innovation. The key message is that the private sector should play a central role in both policy-making and implementation process for policies to be effective in this transforming digital era. We suggest to organize a council by benchmarking the Germany’s Industrie 4.0 platform. The council is a network of representatives from business, science, government ministries and trade unions. The council is expected to present the economy- wide digitization strategy. We also argue that cooperation between SMEs and large corporations is crucial in pursuing smart manufacturing in the Korean business environment. We discuss possible policy measures to facilitate their cooperation and make the environment more favorable to SMEs.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR Korea’s Road to an Innovation Economy: Enhancing Productivity through Structural Transformation and Institutional Reform

This study starts with two premises: first, business enterprises are at the center of the innovation economy and second, entrepreneurial activities are most effective within a well-functioning innovation ecosystem. Accordingly, the analyses are comprised of certain aspects of the innovation activities of business enterprises as well as the systemic aspects of the Korean innovation system (KIS). Policy implications are also presented for Korea’s innovation-driven growth strategy including enhancing the innovative capacities of business enterprises and upgrading the support systems surrounding them.

The first, analytical part of the study deals with some of the key aspects of business enterprises’ innovation activities, such as the patterns of business innovation, the relationship between industrial organizations and business innovation and that between M&A activities and business performance. The section also introduces the results of a management survey, which is the first one of its kind in Korea. The second, systemic part contains two chapters on Korea’s innovation system: one on the distinctive nature of the KIS and the other on its evolutionary process. Additionally, in regards to the importance of human resources as a permanent and ultimate source of innovation, one of the following chapters makes a cross-country comparison between adults’ skills and another deals with Korea’s re-training system.

Despite the necessity of the government’s involvement in building an effective innovation ecosystem, government intervention is not straightforward. Governments face the same uncertainties as the market― although often with much more intensity―caused by the rapid changing nature of techno-economic paradigms. In this regard, the fourth industrial revolution presents a prime example. Policies will be most effective when business enterprises respond to the government’s initiatives with their own investments. The list of such policies includes: creating open, competitive market environments; pursuing a two-thronged labor policy of strengthening labor competence and enhancing flexibility in the labor market and; redirecting science and technology policies in a way that enhances the linkage between innovation actors such as business enterprises, universities, and government-funded research institutes. The government should also strive to improve system efficiency with consistency over longer-terms.

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