ABSTRACT
As a latecomer country, Korea has had to rely on technology transfer to upgrade its productive capabilities. From the 1960s to the 1990s, its breathtaking industrialization stemmed largely from imitation of products and processes pioneered by firms from developed countries, but it nevertheless strove to upgrade its R&D capabilities and gain technological autonomy. Since the 1990s, government policies and firms' strategies have been grounded on the conviction that Korea had to nurture more creative assets in order to graduate from ‘imitation to innovation’ (Kim, 1997).
