ABSTRACT
This chapter thus proceeds from the assumption now common among innovation theorists that catching up and keeping up involve not only capital accumulation, that is investment, but the building of technological capabilities at the firm level. Recent studies, moreover, have shown that to sustain the competitiveness of individual firms, a wide array of domestic linkages between users and producers and between the knowledge-producing sector (universities and R&D institutions) and the goods and services-producing sectors of an economy are required (Freeman 1988; Lundvall 1992; Nelson 1993). I extend these arguments to suggest that “keeping up” in Korea has involved a continuous process of learning not only at the firm level but also within government as it learns and unlearns past habits and practices with respect to public policy.
