Approaching the innovation frontier in Korea: the transition phase to leadership

By M. Hobday, Howard Rush, John Bessant. 2004

289 citations recorded by the source corpus.

As leading East Asian latecomer firms begin to compete on the basis of new product development and in-house research and development (R&D), they appear to confront a difficult strategic dilemma. Should they compete as R&D and brand leaders on the international stage or should they continue with their tried and tested formula of low cost catch up competitiveness? Most studies of East Asian firms focus on catch up innovation processes. By contrast, this paper focuses on the challenges facing latecomer firms in the transition phase from catch up to leadership status, in order to assess the ‘strategic dilemma’ argument and examine the nature of transition innovation. Based on in-depth interviews with leading Korean firms, the paper contends that the strategic dilemma argument is a misleading oversimplification of the main innovation challenges facing most Korean firms as they become more technologically advanced. Most of the major exporters (or chaebol) offer a portfolio of products, some of which are technologically advanced and others less advanced. Corporate innovation strategies tend to be executed in relation to the needs of specific products (or closely related product families) rather than ‘the firm’ in its entirety. In addition, many firms in many product areas have yet to reach the innovation frontier stage and even the leading chaebol continue to produce large volumes of products under sub-contracting and licensing agreements. Firm strategies tend to embody a mix of leadership, ‘followership’ and latecomer positions according to the product portfolio of the company in question. The study identifies various strategic options and difficulties facing Korean firms during the transition process and points to promising future research on latecomer transition.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Political Science and International Relations, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7ae1b670a0c044c372d04bfeeec3b0246b88b5a7

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Citations in the corpus

Innovation capability building and learning mechanisms in latecomer firms: recent empirical contributions and implications for research (2012, methodology): “For example, in setting up the taxonomic framework for his study of capability development in India, Lall noted: “The above classification has dealt with strictly technical aspects of an enterprise.”
WHY 'OPEN INNOVATION' IS OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES (2009, background): “From this position, it is then possible to incorporate design improvements to existing products (Hobday et al., 2004).”