Catch-up process and underlying knowledge flows: focusing on geographic localisation at a national dimension

Abstract

One of the factors making technological catch-up possible has been suggested as an access to external technology or knowledge. Considering that just accessing external knowledge is not sufficient, this paper tries to approach this issue from the perspective of absorptive capacity building and enhancing and related knowledge and knowledge flows. From the perspective of national dimension, absorptive capacity enhancing can be regarded as having geographic elements in knowledge flows within national territory. This paper tries to utilise patent citation data made by USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) for finding out the characteristics of knowledge flows which has been underlying the catch-up phenomenon of catching-up countries. We can find out that even though there is a marked difference between advanced countries and catching-up economies in terms of strong or weak localisation of knowledge flows, it is evident that the geographic localisation exists in spite of the heavy dependence on external knowledge. In addition, even in catching-up countries, technological development accompanies a strengthening of the localisation of knowledge flows, from weak to strong as well as from low to high. Therefore, we discover that technological catch-up necessitates the active attitude toward available external knowledge, not just the passive attitude, and some mechanism to spillover the adapted knowledge to other innovative firms, and a way to innovate to confirm this attitude and mechanism.