Upgrading Non-Technological Capabilities

In recent years, Korean firms have struggled with slowdowns of both these world-first developments and their export to overseas markets. Despite technological development process, however, important questions remain with respect to how non-technological capabilities such as organizational, regulatory, and financial innovation affect accumulation and failure. To address these concerns, the key components of a conceptual framework for investigating non-technological capabilities for transition consist of the existing government, R&D organizations, and inter-firm relations. We analyze the performance and limitations of non-technological capabilities in the process of transition from the catch-up system to the innovation-based system in Korea. Using the case study of system rather than mass products, we hope that this research can contribute to the understating of non-technological features of energy-sector transitional dynamics in Korea. Finally this research would provide a new approach to the challenges from a non-technological aspect and can also provide differentiated science and technology policy strategies for the catch-up economies.

Analyzing Two Approaches in Interdisciplinary Research: Individual and Collaborative

We propose a method for measuring interdisciplinary research by dividing it into two approaches: interdisciplinary research conducted by individual researchers and interdisciplinary research involving the collaboration of multiple researchers. Using this method, a database of “KAKENHI,” which is a grant-in-aid for scientific research provided by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), is employed to measure interdisciplinary research from the perspective of the two research approaches, and the features of interdisciplinary research in KAKENHI are analyzed. The analysis results indicate the following: (1) the number of collaborative interdisciplinary research projects is larger than the number of individual interdisciplinary research projects, (2) the number of interdisciplinary research projects for each field and for each combination of fields differs among fields, and (3) the relationship between the numbers of interdisciplinary research projects in the two fields is asymmetric with regard to the main- and sub-fields of interdisciplinary research. As the proposed measurement method is capable of quantitatively measuring interdisciplinarity between fields and their research organizations, it will be useful for decision-makers in science and technology policy and strategy.