Competition and innovation for smart and creative society (CISCS)

Abstract

The globalization of world economy has changed many aspects of economic structure, speed of technology development, patterns of innovation, competition between nations as well as between companies. In addition, humanity is facing a new historical crisis of global climate, which has prompted varied perspectives of the impact and implication of this crisis on socio-economic horizon of societies. However, despite these various perspectives, there seems to be a converging view that global forces of technology and innovation have strengthened globalization of economic processes. Given this positivist view, it seems that the globalization process will be further intensified regardless of neo-liberalist groups or political progressive groups. (Dicken 2011; Stern et al. 2006). While the intensification of the globalization process has made the world economy more integrated than ever, it has generated a harsh competition environment for smalland medium-sized corporations (SMEs) and multinational corporations (MNCs) in domestic and global markets. Such a severe competition pushes companies, regional and national governments, and universities to collaborate with one another for creating technological innovation and development that arise from R & D activities. In order to be competitive, many advanced nations and newly industrialized nations have built a system of triple helix collaboration that is corporatism between industry, academia, and government. The platform of the triple helix is an innovative cluster in a region, representing a symbol of regional competitiveness as well as that of a national competitiveness in a nation. (Park 2012; Shienstock 2007; Porter 1998). Although there may still be gaps in our understanding of the innovation processes, it is clear that the technological innovation has made a major contribution to the world economy, as well as to the globalization processes. In particular, information and communication technologies (ICT) and transportation technologies have played pivotal roles in improving productivity based on automatization and flexibility, as well as in global logistics based on a rapid transportation system. Additionally, frequent innovation shortens product life cycles that increase competition between companies on national and global markets. (Dicken 2011; Florida 2008). The expanding globalization process based on economic competition between major economic actors has lead to the emergence of global environmental issues that we have to tackle in the twenty-first century. As a result, sustainable development has become the uppermost important issue in the global community. To create sustainable development, proper energy consumption and protecting environment have become key parameters of the global environmental agenda. Therefore, many nations are keen to integrate technology innovation into low-carbon-based green growth strategies that can be the first step towards building a smart and creative society. (Kang 2012). Furthermore, the global economic environment has been changed fundamentally since the global financial crisis starting with subprime mortgage crisis in the US housing market in 2008. Since then the major world economies such as the USA, the EU, and Japan have been sluggish, while the new emerging markets such as China and India continue to generate a relatively high economic growths. Due to the global economic downturn, national economies have been facing challenges how to recover their economic S.-C. Park (&) Graduate School of Knowledge Based Technology and Energy, Korea Polytechnic University, Seoul, South Korea e-mail: scpark@kpu.ac.kr