Triple helix dynamics of South Korea’s innovation system: a network analysis of inter-regional technological collaborations

Abstract

This study intends to unveil the current innovation landscape of South Korea in an attempt to examine the underlying patterns of inter-regional technology collaboration occurring at the triple helix level. Social network analysis techniques are used to quantify the structure of the four types of inter-provincial co-inventorship network between university, industry, and government (UIG). The findings confirm the declining centrality of Seoul as the primary research center with the emergence of new regional players such as Gyeonggi and Daejeon. However, they also reveal that these three main innovative regions have become strongly linked in recent years and constitute the core of the inter-regional collaboration networks. The poor linkage between the research core and the periphery, in turn, raises some concerns regarding the unfair geographical concentration of innovation resources and technology activities, hindering the synergy in the national and regional innovation systems. To create a dynamic innovative milieu for bolstering Korea’s national innovation system, therefore, interactive learning between the core and the periphery, as well as between the various UIG actors, must be further facilitated.