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The pathway of development: science and technology of NIEs and selected Asian emerging economies

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Abstract

Many emerging countries in Asia demonstrate a strong pattern of growth and potential of diffusion in science and technology that is dynamic and self-propagating. To elucidate the evolution in science and technology and the institutional dynamics that drive the self-propagating behavior, this paper examines the divergent models pursued by selected Asian economies in regard to science and technological catch-up. An analysis of papers and patents production for each nation was conducted to examine the indigenous science and technology capabilities. This study focuses on six major economies, namely China, Malaysia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. In addition, Japan, a country with advanced development of science and technology, is included for comparison. The findings provided insight and understanding of evolving science and technological waves and the dynamic potentials in science and technology. We demonstrate the pursued catching-up models that drive the self-propagating behavior and industrialization, thus providing a more complete understanding of the innovation systems than those examined in previous studies.

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Notes

  1. The learning processes are most likely to generate self-propagating behaviour of science and technology activities (Malerba et al. 1997). Therefore, the historical development of science and technology charters the direction of the cumulative learning processes as well as the related competencies of a nation (Lundvall 1992).

  2. Institutions as the driving forces to the growth of publications and patents of the NIEs are essential for national innovation development.

  3. A complete dataset for the economies included in this study is available from UNESCO (2009) and UNSTATS (2009) up to 2006. More recent data are only available for some but not all the nations included in the study.

  4. In the comparative analysis, we normalized the measures to control for population size in order to assess the per capita ability of the selected economies in science and technology development.

  5. In the analysis on the pathway of development, the total ability to produce was analyzed. The analysis on total numbers is adopted because for as long as the diffusion process is identical, a science or technology output produced by a country will impact its economy the same way as it would on another country that may have produced it, whether the population size of the two countries is comparable or not.

  6. The document provides details of inventive and innovative activities (Bhattacharya 2004).

  7. Many inventors have the tendency to apply for patents at the home patent office. The internal influence is highly attributed to the competitive environment in the US market. On the other hand, many Asian firms (local or MNCs) seek protection for their innovation to compete in the US market.

  8. The share of papers in the field of social sciences and humanities of the total publications is low. The share for the selected countries is approximately between 1.7 and 3.8%.

  9. We admit the shortcomings of the data, including the exclusion of the rejected applications that were also contributing to the innovation activities, and the time lag between application and approval that may misrepresent the actual year an innovation is made. The information, however, is not available.

  10. The findings support the theoretical propositions of Nelson and Winter (1982) and Malerba et al. (1997).

  11. Commitment and intervention of the national government (as the lead role in allocation of resources) in the industrial and financial sector is vital to support growth and development. The outstanding pace of economic growth in Asian emerging countries is discussed in Dowling and Valenzuela (2010, p. 31).

  12. The radial indicated the efforts of NIEs in developing their innovation system.

  13. This approach is introduced by Fagerberg et al. (2007) to identify the differences in economic performance across countries over time.

  14. These fields were heavily funded by the government.

  15. The establishment of TSMC had induced many returnees from abroad to start up their own Integrated Circuit (IC) design house and other high technology companies in Hsinchu Science Park of Taiwan (Lin 2009).

  16. These fields were heavily funded by the government.

  17. According to Keller and Pauly (2003), Taiwanese semiconductor firms were prudently managed, developing selective equity-based technology alliances with the customers.

  18. Science and technology policy was used to attract FDI for economic growth.

  19. Capability in processing technologies that supported the MNCs had advanced the manufacturing activities in Singapore.

  20. Chinese government has gradually reduced their funding to research institutions for operational costs, pushing them to acquire resources from the industry (Xue 1997).

  21. According to Chandran and Wong (2011), these foreign assigned MNCs’ patents comprised the major share of the total number of Malaysian patents.

  22. Knowledge is recognized as complementary assets and the central features for the development of science and technology in the Asian countries covered in this study.

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  1. Department of Science and Technology Studies, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Chan-Yuan Wong

  2. Department of Applied Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Kim-Leng Goh

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  1. Chan-Yuan Wong
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Table 6 Disciplines in science and concordance for technology classification
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Wong, CY., Goh, KL. The pathway of development: science and technology of NIEs and selected Asian emerging economies. Scientometrics 92, 523–548 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0622-z

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