R&D and industrial districts in Asia: an application to Taiwan

Abstract

This research analyses the role of public policy and the state in science and technology industries in Asia. The research is based on field studies undertaken at the Hsinchu Science and Industrial Park (HSIP) in Taiwan. The state has been seen as crucial to the phenomenal economic success of capitalism and the business systems in Asian countries such as Korea and Taiwan (Wade (1990) Governing the Market, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA). On the other hand, entrepreneurship has been seen to flourish in countries where the state's role has been minor (in Hong Kong for example), and as concluded in the paper, the state has played a major role in nurturing entrepreneurship in Taiwan. The contributions of this paper are twofold: first, to better understand Taiwan's success and lessons for R&D management, and secondly, to raise the potential role of public policy for entrepreneurship and its close relationship with Asian business systems (Phan (2004) 'Entrepreneurship theory: possibilities and future directions', Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp.617–620).