Development of International Cooperation Maps for R&D Policy: Exploring National Factors in South Korea

Abstract

Many countries have suffered from a lack of long-term strategy for international joint R&D, which triggered foreign resources that have not been strategically utilised, through supporting short-term projects with a small sum, bottom-up approach. Thus, this article aims to develop international cooperation maps, considering relations with South Korea, through analysing factors for international cooperation and creating a strategy for international cooperation for a group of nations. In order to develop the cooperation maps, the current status of individual countries will be investigated on the basis of their science and technology policy, technical capability, scale of market and state of cooperation with South Korea. After defining cooperation-related factors in conjunction with a test of validity regarding each factor, the international cooperation map is developed by combining diverse factors for cooperation. Then, all countries are clustered with cooperative factors and international cooperation maps, and an international cooperation strategy will be created for each country by considering critical elements including technology fields and methods for cooperation. The results will be helpful for understanding new directions to go towards for international cooperation at the government and private level and for suggesting diverse strategies from the perspective of possible cooperative activities.

Introduction

AS Science and Technology has become larger and more complicated, R&D is increasingly regarded as a technical and financial burden with overloading capabilities for the individual or organisations. Considerable attempts have been made to reduce financial burdens as well as technical risks through either cooperation between countries or inter-firm collaborations. In particular, since software has recently been more emphasised than hardware, the exchange of human resources between scientific technicians and collaborative research has been more highlighted than transferring technology in the shape of traditional documents or equipment. Moreover, much has been said about fusion technology development as being the core of advance in science and technology, which is required to explore opportunities in fusion and combine diverse technologies, especially through intimate relationships with several corporations, universities and research institutes.

Technical cooperation has been emphasised in developing countries for resolving economic crises and the collapse of society caused by damage to the forest, or desertification, as fallout from thoughtless industrialisation (Takanashi, 1999). For instance, in South Korea, the importance of technology cooperation with various countries has been rapidly increasing because of limited underground resources and technological strategies. In addition, as there has been a changeover to the new economic orders, such as liberalisation, and national treatment has been applied into science and technology, this has created conditions for the deployment of R&D resources and the equal treatment for foreign research institutes or researchers with the original country. Viewed from the advancement of science and technology, significant progress in information technology and transportation has given rise to the remote administration of R&D activity that facilitates collaborative research and technology acquisition without the constraint of space. For this reason, governments and firms have attempted to revitalise conducting international R&D, which can be called the era of Techno-Globalism (Archibugi & Michie, 1995).

Traditionally, there have been overriding viewpoints that innovation was defined as a simple phenomenon occurring within an organisation. However, introducing an innovation by utilising only internal resources has been regarded as not efficient, making it impossible to practically do such an activity (Chesbrough, 2003). Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external as well as internal ideas and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology. This paradigm highlights the importance of external resources for innovation or inter-organisation collaboration by notably deviating from the organisation category (Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke & West, 2006). A recent trend is firms using their own ideas, as well as the external ideas, which is regarded as appropriate for their business models. In practice, the availability of external resources and knowledge of innovations were related to 65 per cent of products regarding innovation (Conway, 1995). In these new surroundings, national wealth needed to be increased through efficient collaboration of all innovation subjects to lead to economic growth. Such cooperation will be an efficient and effective foundation of the national innovation system, enabling the reproduction of intellectual property, which is called the ‘knowledge creation cycle’. Accordingly, creating a strategy and determining the direction for international collaborative technology development is required, which must be able to not only support globalisation but also improve internal technology capability by utilising superb overseas resources.

In South Korea, there is lack of long-term strategy for international joint R&D. Thus, foreign resources have not been strategically utilised through supporting short-term project with a small sum, bottom-up approach, or focusing on technology that companies have difficulty developing. Increases in the cost and risks of R&D activities and transition of technological property, such as becoming bigger and more complex, require posting signs for securing core industrial technology earlier at the government level. Identifying preferential technology is necessary, which requires international cooperation for the improvement of technical trade balance and strategic support of technology. Correspondingly, a strategy should be prepared. The development of a policy that is helpful to enhance domestic capability of technology is both especially required and needed to autonomously support technology development by encouraging international cooperation. Thus, the national support policy should be developed to help in early excavation and developing source technology that has a potentially high possibility for export.

Therefore, this article aims to develop international cooperation maps that consider relations with South Korea through analysing factors for international cooperation, and it will be utilised to make a strategy for international cooperation for a group of nations. To develop the cooperation maps, first of all, the current status of individual countries will be investigated on the basis of their science and technology policy, technical capability, scale of market and state of cooperation with South Korea. Second, after defining cooperation-related factors in conjunction with a test of validity about each factor, the international cooperation map is developed through combining diverse factors for cooperation. Although there will be several types of cooperation maps generated through taking a few stances, the most suitable maps for international cooperation will be extracted from the diverse maps. Third, all of the countries are grouped by cooperative factors and international cooperation maps that reflect their relationships with South Korea, its current state and the collaboration needs of each nation. Consequently, an international cooperation strategy will be created for each nation; critical elements, including technology fields and methods for cooperation, are deducted earlier and national strategy is then suggested in light of these elements. It is especially helpful to recommend new directions for international cooperation from the viewpoint of either the cooperation subjects—private and government—or collaborative actions.

Background

The International Cooperation

Cooperation in science and technology among industrialised countries has largely been regarded as a national or regional phenomenon over the past few decades (Georghiou, 1998). The concept of international cooperation in science and technology has varied in the diverse literature, such as the globalisation of technology, which is usually called science and techno (Archibugi, 2003; Archibugi & Michie, 1995), international scientific cooperation (Moed, De Bruin, Negerhof & Tijssen, 1991) and research collaboration (Katz & Martin, 1997; Vrgovic, Vidicki, Glassman & Walton, 2012). There were attempts to determine the concept of globalisation of technology and several studies have related it to international or global cooperation in science and technology as emerging phenomena (Archibugi, 2000; Archibugi & Coco, 2004; Bergek & Berggren, 2005). The term ‘techno-globalism’ was from the viewpoint of increasing international trade and might be measured by considering how firms protect themselves through patents in foreign markets. The second category was technological collaboration to develop know-how or innovations involving partners in more than two countries. In this category, the government, business sector and academy community had important roles in collaboration by taking the shape of international R&D joint ventures. It served as crucial evidence when describing the second category as collaboration and sharing know-how among governments, international organisations such as the EU and corporations. This could be measured by inter-firm technical agreements and co-authored scientific papers within the framework of actors who are separately in the business sector or academic and public research communities. Another category was limited to multinational corporations as key players for collaboration and defined as the global generation of technology (Faria & Schmidt, 2012). This means the development of firm-based strategies in research and technology in different countries for generating inventions through the ‘development of global research networks’ (Howells, 1990a, 1990b). In this research, the second category is similar to developing international cooperation maps in technology innovations from the viewpoint of collaborating and sharing technological know-how as well as innovations containing two or more nations in the science and technology area. Especially, it is appropriate to answer this sort of question—‘Which activities are conducted to maximise for mutual benefit at the each stage?’ and ‘Who is a key player in technological cooperation’—through mapping all nations through international cooperation maps in technology innovation.

Types of International Cooperation

Types of international cooperation in science and technology can be classified through diverse perspectives—the method (unilateral cooperation and reciprocal cooperation), contents (technology development, construction of infrastructure, exchanging human resource and information and creating new markets) and main agents (government and private) of technical cooperation. First of all, technological cooperation, in the viewpoint of the cooperative method, until now has typically been divided in both a unilateral way and reciprocal way through generalising the type of collaborative status of individual nations. This unilateral cooperation is primarily conducted through depending on one-sided support from countries that possess outstanding technological abilities or a huge market size to a nation with insufficient capability and infrastructure. In contrast, the balanced cooperation in the reciprocal way is carried out mutually, such as through joint research, collaborative technology development and holding international conferences. Reciprocal cooperation is especially sub-divided—bilateral and multi-lateral—through the number of participants for cooperation, which depends on whether two or more nations join or participate in cooperative activities.

The other perspective of classifying types in technological cooperation is the detailed contents or programmes run by countries participating in international cooperation. Georghiou (1998) categorised international cooperation in technology innovation as several detailed activities—human interchange, workshop, collaborative R&D project and network, utilisation of facility and cost sharing, funding and construction of research institutions. Narula and Hagedoorn (1999) classified types of agreements in the level of firms that reflect various degrees of inter organisational interdependency and levels of internalisation. This ranges from exclusively owned subsidiaries that show completely interdependency between the firms and full internalisation. The other extreme is in spot market transactions in which totally independent firms engage in arm’s length transactions wherein either firm remains completely independent of the other. They are included within the rubric of cooperative agreements, in two broad groupings of agreements that can be considered as representing different extents of internalisation. Equity agreements contain equity joint ventures and lesser equity agreements. On the contrary, the non-equity agreements involve activities, such as: joint R&D agreements such as joint research and joint development agreement; customer–supplier relations like R&D contract, co-production contract and co-makertship contract; bilateral technology flows involving cross-licensing, technology sharing and mutual second sourcing; and unilateral technology flows containing second sourcing agreements and licensing. Consequently, cooperative content is categorised as this way: technology development, construction of infrastructure, exchanging human resource and information and creating new markets.

From another perspective, main agents who play a leading role in technology cooperation are considered for identifying types of cooperation. Such viewpoint can generate two types such as government-driven and private-driven cooperation. Government-driven cooperation is conducted by government through agreement between countries, containing multi-lateral cooperation like as OECD, UN and regional cooperation such as ASEAN, APEC. In the case of private-driven cooperation, firms take the initiative in delivering technological knowledge and know-how or establishing a strategic alliance with foreign enterprises in the shape of licensing, reverse engineering and technical training.

Research Framework

Research Process

This research is in five phases as shown in Figure 1. First, the factors, which have an impact on international technology cooperation from the perspective of technology, market, cooperation and so forth, are extracted to develop an international cooperation map. The cooperative factors are chosen by evaluating the feasibility and accessibility of data. Second, the data of the considered country are collected for the derived factors through utilising the newest reports and statistical databases from several institutions. Third, the cooperation map is generated through the mapping of data of each nation. The structure of the technical cooperation map is predetermined, which depends on the visibility, clarity and diversity during this step. Each national data is mapped by setting up cooperative factors, such as market, technology and cooperation as axes of the cooperation map, generating three kinds of maps. Fourth, nations are grouped through the consideration of both gaps and relations among countries and then each group is entitled one of technology competitive group, market competitive group (which are accordance with the types considering technology-market-resource factor), group of enhancing cooperation, group of extending cooperation and group of vitalising cooperation (that are classified by collaboration factors). The title of groups is extracted from previous studies. However, new titles of national groups in view of cooperating relationships with South Korea have been added. In the next phase, the type of international cooperation is derived from literature reviews, which is utilised for making a strategy for cooperation between other countries. Consequently, the strategy for international cooperation is established with regards to an individual group by some strategy factors, which are types of cooperation, target, methods, etc.

Figure 1

Source: Authors’ own.

Table 1

The List of Possible Factors for International Cooperation

Factors	Detailed Factors		Data Collection
Technology	Level of technology	Technological Infrastructure Scientific Infrastructure	IMD World competitiveness yearbook 2011
Market	Market scale	Gross Domestic Product	OECD^a Statistics EU^b National Statistical Office
	Market growth	The average GDP growth in recent three years	OECD Statistics EU National Statistical Office
Resource	Volume of Energy resources	The average share of three energy resources (per cent)	Korea Statistical Office
	Volume of mineral resources	The holding number of mineral resources among 6 resources	World Mineral Production
Collaboration	Collaborative R&D Projects	The number of international joint research	Korea Institute for Advancement of Technology
	Technological Collaboration	The amount of technology trade	Korea International Trade Association
	Economic Collaboration	The amount of trade	Korea International Trade Association

Source: OECD Statistics (http://stats.oecd.org), Eurostat (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat), Korea Statistical Office (http://kostat.go.kr/portal/index/statistics.action), Korea Institute from Advancement of Technology (http://www.kiat.or.kt), Korea International Trade Association (http://stat.kita.net).

Notes: ^aOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Development

^bEuropean Union

Factors

Extracting factors for technical cooperation while considering the relations between South Korea and other countries is required when developing the international cooperation map. Thus, the factor candidates need to be enumerated. Every possible factor is largely separated through the following: technology, market, resource and cooperation, shown in Table 1. Technology and market factors are considered when mapping, and the resource factor will be adapted to seek a cooperative plan for nations that have difficulty cooperating with South Korea from the perspectives of technology and market. The other factor, cooperative factor, is used to reflect the degree of cooperation on the international cooperation map.

Data

Once cooperative factors are determined, national data are individually collected based on the latest yearbooks or reports published in institutions that have public confidence or the statistical database provided by each nation or public organisation from each factor.

Data for the first factor, technology, is collected from the world competitiveness yearbook published by the International Institute for Management Development. This annual yearbook analyses and ranks how nations and enterprises manage the totality of their competence to achieve increased prosperity, featuring fifty-nine industrialised and developing countries (IMD, 2011). It provides 331 criteria grouped into four competitive factors, which are economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and infrastructure. Among these competitive factors, the infrastructure is composed of subordinate groups, such as basic, technological, scientific, health and environment and education. We chose the technical and scientific infrastructures. These measures are appropriate for figuring out the technical level of countries. The scientific infrastructure can especially be utilised for evaluating whether the environment supports research activities, involving total R&D expenditure, the number of scientific articles and patent applications and so on. The technological infrastructure evaluates the extent of building up technical environments like as Internet bandwidth speed, the number of broadband subscribers, high-technology exports and so on.

Data related the market factor needs to be scaled to the growth rate of the national market. The GDP of each country is gathered from the World Bank. Then, the growth rate of the market is obtained by calculating the geometric average of GDP growth rate from 2008–2010.

The next cooperative factor is the resources that nations possess, and it is separated into energy resources and mineral resources. Data related energy resources are collected from Korea’s National Statistics office with regard to three types of resources, oil, coal and natural gas, through calculating average shares. The mineral resource–related data is collected from the World Mineral Production reports (British Geological Survey, 2010) about six kinds of minerals, iron, uranium, copper, nickel, bituminous and zinc; this measure is acquired through counting the number of minerals that the nations possess. Collaboration, another cooperative factor, consists of technological collaboration and economic collaboration. A factor related to technological collaboration is the cooperation status between South Korea and other countries, which is estimated by the sum of all international collaborative R&D projects of each nation based on the report published in KIAT. Other measures of economic collaborations can be identified by the point of technology and market. From the perspective of technology, a factor for economic collaboration is relevant to the R&D performance, which has appeared as the amount of technology trade, which means the transaction of technology and the sum of exports and imports. Similarly, market trade serves as an indicator for the economic collaboration factor in view of the market. It is obtained through exportation and importation from Korea International Trade Association’s database.

Visualisation

Fifty countries are chosen as cooperation targeting countries. Some of these nations are included in the Next Eleven,¹ the Volume Zone² and the MAVINS³ for the purpose of developing international cooperation maps. Countries in these groups are going to be in the limelight as emerging countries that will grow at a surprising speed and contribute to the global economy within the next decade from influential institutions or organisations. Thus, targeting countries for cooperation are organised through the development of international cooperation maps. As a result, this grouping will be utilised to make customised strategies in accordance with the distinct characteristics of each group.

A basic element for constructing cooperative maps is the axes that serve as standard mapping for each country with the consideration of cooperative purposes through literature reviews. As a result, the primary goal of international cooperation is identified, which is generally R&D collaboration, a secure foothold in the market and the exchange and procurement of resource. These cooperative goals are achieved through factors for international cooperation selected in section ‘Factors’—they are market, technology, resource and collaboration. The market factor is based on GDP and its growth rate, and the technological factor uses both the scientific/technological infrastructure index published in the IMD and growth rate. The number and share of maintaining resources is employed to reflect the resource factor.

This research additionally attaches a specific factor that is associated with collaboration with general factors, such as market, technology and resource. That is because all of the countries will be categorised by taking into account their current state of cooperation and partner’s needs for cooperation with South Korea. The present condition can be identified by the usage of data concerning general trade, technological trade and the number of international joint R&D activities conducted. In addition, the growth rate in the aforementioned data might be useful for the needs of cooperation. If a specific country has a higher growth rate from data for technological trade or number of collaborative R&D activities with other countries, the research is able to interpret that this country has high expectations and needs regarding international cooperation. In sum, this collaboration factor is enough to apply it to the axis of technological cooperation maps.

The international cooperation maps are developed under several principles—visibility, clarity and diversity. First, there is no need to develop maps in a complicated manner as they should be easily understood by the reader. Second, maps are simply constructed which can improve clarity and contribute to suggesting policy implications. Moreover, all of the main factors related to cooperation are involved because it is critical to group nations according to similar features in their cooperation with South Korea.

At this point, the structure of the cooperation map can be constructed in a two-dimensional space because the aforementioned factors are totally utilised. The most effective method takes a step-by-step approach in which a map is developed by axes of technology and market at the beginning. Then, nations are primarily classified according to the resource factor. In the next step, countries are secondarily re-grouped through a collaboration factor. Although this approach is appropriate for retaining both visibility and clarity while conserving the two-dimensional structure, there is a possibility that the collaboration factor might play an insignificant role for grouping countries solely through the segmentation of an initial map.

After the development of the primary map is completed with the help of technology, market and resource factors, a cooperation map is secondarily established by organising the current status and needs for cooperation. Here, the axes of the map are determined through detailed types of cooperation—technical cooperation, economic cooperation and R&D cooperation. In each type of cooperation, the scale of data, such as the market, technical trade, and collaborative work, symbolises the present condition, and the growth rate in those data reflects the needs of cooperation with other countries. Finally, the cooperation maps are individually developed from the technical, economic and R&D perspectives. Finally, the groups of countries are derived from a cooperative viewpoint.

All of the countries are grouped based on the definitive maps, and there are two ways of classification, through utilising either the gap or the relations between countries as shown in Figure 2. In this figure, the dots are differentiated such that a circle dot represents South Korea and each rectangle refers to other countries to identify differences between South Korea and other countries by pivoting on South Korea. The left-hand side of Figure 2 shows the concept grouping countries a reference to South Korea considering gap. Grouping through the gap is a relative approach that makes use of a technological gap or differential in the sizes or growth rates of the market. It shows that cooperation among nations occurs in relative gaps. Another way to group countries employs the relationship where each country is plotted on the map, relying upon technical capability and the size of market as shown in the right-hand side of Figure 2. Next, the absolute value which is obtained through re-mapping relations with South Korea is used. The absolute size of technology and market is believed to be a driver enabling cooperation with other countries. The possibility of cooperation additionally needs to be explored by analysing the current status of cooperation between nations and the potential possibility. In brief, by compiling these two ways, maps are developed by technology, market and resource factors and target countries are divided primarily by their gap with South Korea. Then, countries are re-grouped by establishing a cooperation map comprised of the present condition and cooperation needs secondarily.

Figure 2

Source: Authors’ own.

The group of countries is named through the gap and relations with South Korea as follows: technology and market competitive, technology competitive, market competitive, potential cooperation and preferred resource cooperation—group of nations. Furthermore, the promising cooperation group is subdivided as a subordinate group as technology and market cooperation, technology cooperation and market cooperation.

Analysis

The detailed process for constructing maps consists of three modules, as shown in Figure 3. This can be easily understood through the basic concept of this research as shown in Figure 4. The first module is to develop a technology-market map where the axes are the technology and market factors. Above all, national GDP data, which represent the scale of market and the level of technology, is collected. Then the x-axis of this map is set as the technological level and y-axis as the scale of market. A definitive technology-market map is completed through two-dimensionally mapping national information and fundamentally showing the current status. From this map, three groups—a technology and market competitive group, technology competitive group and market competitive group—are extracted with regards to the market size and technological level of each nation.

Figure 3

Source: Authors’ own.

Figure 4

Source: Authors’ own.

Next, the second module generates a growth rate map of technology-market, which can be interpreted as a dynamic analysis of each nation. At first, growth rate is calculated through the market size, and R&D investment represents the current level of market and technology. The x-axis is determined as the present state—the size of market and the R&D investments—and the y-axis as the growth rate from the perspectives of technology as well as the market. Based upon these axes, every country is plotted and clustered on the map, resulting in the derivation of a potentially cooperative group. The potentially cooperative group is sub-divided as three groups, technology, market and both technology and market, according to factors that have a strong possibility. Countries not involved in any groups are able to be classified as the country of preferred resource cooperation on the basis of the quantity of energy and mineral resources that each nation possesses and maintains.

The final phase is to establish the cooperation map, which depends on cooperative factors—technology, market and R&D collaboration. The current status and need for cooperation are derived from resultant factors where the current state is represented as the size or level of individual factors at present, and the rate of increase in factors reflects the needs for cooperation. They are in charge of axes in cooperation maps. Thus, cooperation maps are separately completed through the following: map for technology cooperation, market cooperation and joint R&D collaboration. Countries are divided into three groups in succession—groups of vitalising cooperation, extending cooperation and enhancing cooperation—from the perspective of cooperation of these maps. The title of the three groups in view of cooperation indicates the stage of cooperation based upon the current state and needs regarding collaboration.

Results

International Cooperation Maps

The technology-market map was first developed and is shown in Figure 5. The x-axis is the level of technology uses data for scientific and technological infrastructure published in IMD, and the y-axis is set as market size, which is defined as the national GDP. The size of circles represents the quantity of resources. Fifty targeting countries plotted on the map are categorised through gaps with South Korea—technology and market competitive group, technology competitive group, and market competitive group. France is mapped on the right-hand side of South Korea and thus, it is possible to interpret that the level of technology in France is higher than in South Korea. Since the market size of France is also bigger than South Korea, France is classified as the technology and market competitive group. Although India has a bigger market than South Korea, their level of technology is relatively lower than South Korea. Thus, India is involved in the market competitive group due to their market size.

Figure 5

Source: IMD World Yearbook (2011), The World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org).

The rest of them, not classified in the earlier mentioned groups, are involved in either the potential cooperation country or the preferred resource cooperation country through developing the growth map for the technology market. From the viewpoint of technology, the map is generated with axes set as the technological level and the growth rate, shown in Figure 6, to extract the potential cooperation country for technology. In this map, the standard degree of possibility to potentially cooperate is set as within the twenty-fifth rank in terms of the technological level or escalating more than ten ranks in the ranking list in terms of the growth rate. As a result, Israel and Norway are within the twenty-fifth rank of technology level with going up more than ten ranks. Portugal and Poland showed the rank increase with more than ten steps for five years but they fail to be ranked in the top twenty-five. In spite of low technological growth rate, seven countries involving Sweden, Denmark, Singapore, Belgium and Austria and so on are ranked in the top twenty-five.

Figure 6

Source: IMD World Yearbook (2011), The World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org).

Likewise, from the viewpoint of the market, the map is developed by setting axes as market sizes and the growth rate of the market in order to derive the potential cooperative country for the market, which is shown in Figure 7. The criteria for categorising countries are determined as within the twenty-fifth rank or escalating more than ten ranks in terms of the growth rate. Therefore, Venezuela and Indonesia are ranked in the top twenty-five in terms of market size as well as high growth rate (more than 10 per cent) in five years. Egypt has also highly grown for five years but it did not advance into twenty-fifth rank. Belgium and Sweden are ranked within twenty-fifth rank in the market size and in the level of technology, but their growth rate is below the 10 per cent in five years.

Nations that belong in any group are classified as the preferred resource cooperation country through analysing the amount of resources within the framework of potential collaboration-related resources. As a result, the preferred resource cooperation countries are as follows: South Africa, Malaysia, Colombia, Iran, Peru, Nigeria and Vietnam.

Figure 7

Source: The World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org), authors’ own findings.

Cooperation maps are generated in succession for categorising the vitalisation of the cooperation group, extension of the cooperation group and enhancement of the cooperation group from the viewpoint of the collaboration factor. There are three kinds of maps—technology, market and R&D activity—that are composed of axes, which are current states and needs for cooperation by each factor.

The technology cooperation map, which has axes of the size of technical trade and growth rate, is completed as shown in Figure 8 and then, three types of groups are deducted from this map. The enhancement of the cooperation group from the technological factor has a large technology trade but a low growth rate. Thus, it can be interpreted that the current cooperative activity is vigorous but not high in cooperation needs. Nations included in this group—the United States, China and Japan—need to enhance their cooperative relations with South Korea. The extension of the cooperation country group has low scale of technical trade but high growth rate, showing high needs for cooperation despite the current low cooperative activities. As France and Denmark are involved in this country group, technical cooperation with them would be enhanced if it were extended for the scope and cooperation relations from South Korea’s position. We excluded several countries, such as Mexico, Hong Kong and Brazil because their size of technology trade is less than ten million dollars with an extremely low growth rate. In short, the growth rate is high but the size of technical trade is relatively low as there is not a lot of need for cooperation. The other group is the vitalisation of cooperation country group and involves Germany and the United Kingdom. Most of Southeast Asia nations are also included, such as Thailand, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia and so on. They have few or no needs for cooperation and low intentions for activation in the current collaboration states.

Figure 8

Source: Statistics Report on the Technology Trade of Korea in accordance with OECD TBP Manual (2011).

The market cooperation map whose axes are the scale and growth rate of trade is generated and shown in Figure 9. The groups in the market cooperation map are similar to those in the technology cooperation map. The enhancement of the cooperation country group is represented as a large market size but a low rate of growth. Thus, they do not have much new needs for collaboration from the perspective of the market. This group involves the following countries—the United States, Japan and China—and has similarities with technology cooperation. The enhancement of the cooperation group is characterised as the high growth rate of the market, regardless of the inactive cooperation activity up to now. Thus, there is promising demand to collaborate with the related market, and the following countries are included in this group: Portugal, Colombia, Indonesia, Hungary and Norway. Their scales of trade are more than a billion dollars and have a 20 per cent growth rate. On the contrary, forty-two countries, such as Hong Kong, Australia, Germany and Singapore are classified into a group with low trade scale (below a billion dollar) and growth rate (below 20 per cent) at the bottom left-hand side in Figure 9. South Korea might make decisions to vitalise cooperation with this group by exploring possibilities with the aid of additional investigation.

Figure 9

Source: Korea International Trade Association (http://stat.kita.net).

From the perspective of R&D activity, the group of vitalisation for cooperation has thirty collaborative projects and has a large amount of R&D collaboration and a high growth rate. These countries—the United States, Israel, Russia, Germany and Japan—are active in R&D cooperation in comparison with other countries and they have high level of needs. The country group for the extension of cooperation shows a high rate of needs as it has not been energetic in R&D activities up until now. The Netherlands is in this group. In the vitalisation of cooperation group, countries have a low rate of growth and a small amount of R&D collaboration. This group contains forty-four countries, which include Canada and Italy.

Figure 10

Source: Korea Institute from Advancement of Technology (http://www.kiat.or.kt).

Country Groups

The definitive country groups are summarised as shown in Table 2 from the development of international cooperation maps. From the fifty countries, eleven countries—Pakistan, the Philippines, Hungary, Thailand, Chile, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Greece, Morocco, Bangladesh and New Zealand—are not involved. These countries individually need to establish types of collaboration or ways to cooperate.

To make a detailed cooperation strategy with a potential cooperation group, the level of science and technology is additionally analysed by using different data. This is helpful to infer the contents of cooperation within this group. The significance of cooperation is generally categorised by existing literature through the interchange of technology, manpower exchange, infrastructure construction and standard diffusion.

Table 2

Country Groups

Types Considering Technology-market-resource Factors	Types Considering Collaboration Factors
Types Considering Technology-market-resource Factors	Nation Group of Enhancing Cooperation	Nation Group of Extending Cooperation	Nation Group of Vitalising Cooperation
Technology and market competitive group	The United States Japan China	France	The United Kingdom Canada
Technology competitive group	–	The Netherlands	Switzerland, Taiwan
Market competitive group	Russia	–	Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Italy, India, Australia
Potential cooperative group	Technology-market cooperation	–	–	Austria, Poland, Belgium, Sweden
	Technology cooperation	Israel	–	Finland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Portugal, Norway
	Market cooperation	–	Indonesia	Turkey, Egypt, Venezuela
Preferred resource cooperation group	–	Columbia	South Africa, Malaysia, Peru, Nigeria, Iran, Vietnam

Source: Authors’ own findings.

The technical level is measured by the number of patents, and the corresponding countries are Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Israel and Denmark from the potential cooperation group. Their technological level is high as compared with other countries. Thus, it is appropriate to cooperate as a form of technology interchange. The national level in manpower is inferred as the number of researchers who participate in R&D activities. There were many researchers in Sweden, Turkey, Poland, Belgium, Austria and Indonesia, which enables these countries to cooperate with human resources. There are two types of exchanges of technology and manpower—a dispatch or transfer and interchange—which are decided by comparing levels within certain criteria. If a specific country is higher than the fixed standard in the level of technology or manpower, mutual cooperation and interchange will occur, because they are on an equal level; otherwise, they will collaborate through dispatching researchers or technology transfer, which might be regarded as a form of unilateral cooperative.

To identify the extent of constructing infrastructure, the IMD ranking data is utilised, which focuses on technological infrastructure. If these countries are ranked in the upper twentieth, it can be understood that these nations have built up the foundation for technology development or cooperation. For the rest of them, collaborative work will be performed by assisting them in establishing a foundation with countries such as Austria, Israel, Sweden, Singapore, Hong Kong and Norway. Another factor, which is the degree of standardisation, is estimated by the number of standard patents that researchers in the countries applied for with the International Standard Organization (ISO). It is possible to cooperate with countries, such as Norway, Finland, Singapore, Israel, Austria and Sweden because they are actively applying the patent-related standard in ISO or ITU. The collaboration is fulfilled with the diffusion of a standard patent to the other countries.

Cooperation Strategy

It is necessary to select strategic factors for systematically planning a cooperation strategy in South Korea. These factors are able to present distinctive characteristics through five separate groups.

The Technology and Market Competitive Countries Group

Countries within the technology and market competitive groups seek to expand the growth potential through joint R&D activities and the introduction of advanced technology, which aim to improve trade balance in technology. Their market size is considerable. They also have high technological prowess and government and firms are simultaneously investing enormous amounts into R&D activities. As these nations are evenly strong in most technology areas, international cooperation needs to move towards high-profit R&D collaborations with high risks, which focus on source technology for cooperation. In the early stage, technology is unilaterally initiated through training and education, which is expected to improve the fundamental ability of a nation. After attaining a certain level in a targeting nation, the technology owned by a technology and market competitive country is transferred to a target. The collaborative work is focused on source technology and advanced technology, aiming towards the joint development of technology as the final output. The collaboration with a technology and market competitive country requires the offensive effort of government for cooperation as this cooperation concentrates on high profit and risk. Moreover, to secure source technology early enough, the government may as well make an endeavour to perform joint technology development through a top-down approach by playing the leading role. Hence, developing technology is driven by a top-down approach that is led by government, which is helpful for overcoming this risk. If an expert network is additionally organised and operated through technology cooperation, it will help both countries effectively manage most of the collaborative work in the field of strategy.

The Technology Competitive Countries Group

The technology competitive country group has outstanding capabilities in technology, and they are willing to invest in activities concerning technology development. Cooperation with the countries involved in this group aims to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of technology development by interchanging the countries’ powerful technology. They collaborate on developing not only trade-off technology, which nurture their strength, but also the technology that can penetrate large markets because countries in the technology competitive group have a small market relative to their technical level. At the beginning, collaboration, training, and education are executed in a relatively dominant manner through the technology owned by the technological competitive country. It will be converted to the introduction of technology and know-how when the receptive capacity of technology in South Korea is improved. This country possesses a relatively small scale of market, as was aforementioned. Thus, it needs to develop commercialising technology in order to enter the cooperating target and global market. The government plays a leading role in cooperation with the technology competitive country by supporting policies for aggressive collaboration, which involve the foundation of funding joint R&D, a cooperation centre for industrial technology, or enhancing the cooperative channel among R&D organisations. This is presented through operating the global expert’s advisory group or holding a technical cooperation forum, and these governmental policies will help to develop powerful technology and provide all related information.

The Market Competitive Countries Group

Nations of this group are characterised as having an enormous market with influential bargaining power and a low level of technology. Hence, the purpose of cooperation with a market-competitive country is to develop technology that is possible to commercialise as well as technology for R&BD (Research and Business Development), which enlarges the share of global market. Many of the firms in South Korea that play a role in the main country seek to enter the best market of the market-competitive country, namely, targeting a specific country. Entering this huge market requires developing a pioneering technology for commercialisation or a complementary technology that has an impact on the market-competitive country. As the level of technology in the market-competitive country is relatively weak compared to the scale of market, technological cooperation with the market-competitive country begins by consulting and transferring the target’s strong technology during the pioneering days. R&BD technology needs to be simultaneously developed through collaborative research to actively penetrate to the domestic market. Both countries are supposed to exchange information through interchanging activities, such as a joint seminar, workshop, or integrated symposium, because they have the economic ability and great potential to grow based upon the enormous market size from the beginning of the technical cooperation. For the purpose of making the most of the advantages in large markets, governments need to support private enterprises that want to advance into the global market. This will lead to the enlargement of market share. There will be a barrier to entry because at the beginning of cooperation both countries might want to pursue different tariff and trade policies. Hence, it is necessary to establish customised strategies according to the national properties of market and support policy, which enables to establish cooperation policies individually.

The Potentially Cooperative Countries Group

Cooperation with the group of potentially cooperative countries aims at supporting cooperation from the beginning stage to create a new market. Furthermore, these countries attempt to strengthen their foundations to advance the market while still efficiently keeping their market share. To do that, South Korea, which is a cooperative subject, needs to transfer either the manufacturing technology or know-how or technology. This is because that technology is useful for building up infrastructure on behalf of the potentially cooperative country. In particular, when cooperating with these countries, creating a collaboration channel between both countries’ governments and establishing a network among major industrial clusters is preferred because of the poor reputation despite the high-growth potential. It is important for the cooperative subject to train students and engineers to in science and technology at the beginning in order to improve the weak technical ability of a potentially cooperative country. At the same time, the superior technology-owned cooperation subject-country transfers its knowledge to the potentially cooperative country especially focusing on the manufacturing technology and useful technology for establishing infrastructure. After transferring technology, the country should conduct an investigation into promising areas for cooperation. Technology will be jointly developed in the promising area. In particular, governments should share this information, including basic national information, with private organisations and inspire cooperation at the private level. It should be noted that the potential-cooperative country has a high growth rate in market and technology, but they are at the beginning stage in terms of creating a market and thus have a low technology-receptive capacity. Therefore, establishing cooperation strategies focusing on manufacturing technology for supporting the creation of a new market and infrastructure is required for enhancing the low receptive capacity through building foundations.

The Preferred Resource Countries Group

This group contains countries that possess a small market size and low technological ability but hold abundant resources among preferred cooperation countries. Thus, cooperation with these countries involves building the foundation for retaining resource in the long term. The manufacturing technology or information technology, in which South Korea is competitive, will be the cooperation domains with the preferred resource cooperation group. In addition, at the national level, a survey is first conducted in order to evaluate possibilities of resource-oriented cooperation. Then, the government helps private organisations by enhancing accessibility to resources and establishing infrastructures. Most importantly, the survey by an executive research group is done, which requires the unilateral training and educating for laying a foundation for economic growth. In this sense, cooperation will be converted to transferring technology for developing resources and the superb technology owned by South Korea, such as information technology and manufacturing technology. Afterwards, collaborative technology development will be conducted in promising cooperation fields extracted from the identified survey when economic and technological advances are acquired. Cooperation with countries in the preferred resource-cooperation group needs to specialise in developing resources. This is instrumental for exploiting resources for free. Building a research centre is supported by collaboration in the field of a promising area, which is discovered through free surveys on cooperating areas.

Conclusion

To conclude, international cooperation maps considering factors that have an impact on cooperation with other countries—technology, market, resource and collaboration—were created. From these international cooperation maps, five types of groups were deducted by regarding technology, market, and resource factors, and three types of groups were extracted by considering collaboration factors. This article proposed to establish a customised strategy for each individual group within the framework of cooperative purpose, domain, way, subject, risks, and solution, contributing to the big picture of international cooperation. It serves as not only an instrument steering national policy but also a tool for monitoring and evaluating status and possibility of each country to derive sub-sector policies.

Proceeding from maps, one could that lots of cooperation has been conducted between South Korea and other groups, which are the technology and market-competitive group, technology competitive country group, and market competitive country group. However, there has been a shortage of cooperation in South Korea with the potential cooperative country group and preferred resources cooperation group. For these groups of countries, it is necessary to determine collaboration programmes and activities through extracting strategic factors in detail and reflecting unique features of them additionally to make strategies more specific. To be exact, China is more competitive in the sectors of aerospace and national defence technology and needs the industrialised technology of South Korea. Both government and firms in South Korea want to enter a huge market in China and acquire the know-how of basic technology relevant to aerospace, defence technology and so on. Accordingly, two of countries would rather focus on those sectors through technical training, interchange of scientists, equipment support and so on. In particular, government needs to support firms to successfully enter a market when collaborating with technology and market competitive group like China. South Korea also has the advantages in information and communication technology (ICT) and Switzerland which is one of technology competitive nations is superior in the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology (BT) with superb research institutions and scientists. Consequently, collaboration with Switzerland will be primarily conducted in the ICT and BT by enhancing a network of researchers through collaborative R&D activities and symposiums from the viewpoint of South Korea. India included in the market competitive group encourages investing and cooperating technology. In contrast with their huge market, the foundation of production such as plants and infrastructure is weak compared to South Korea, avoiding active operations in manufacturing. Therefore, the collaboration with India would be better in commercial technology and it will make a market share increase by minimising direct penetrations to the market. In particular, it is critical to discover needs and issues that each country faces with, because cooperation occurs when there are weak points which have the potential for improvement through collaboration.

There are two approaches for establishing a strategy for international cooperation—nation oriented and technology oriented—and the nation-oriented approach which explores cooperative industries, firms and technology once the country for cooperation was selected in this study. It is a top-down approach from nation groups to specific sectors (from macro to micro level). Thus, nation groups were defined by developing an international cooperation map and then, a cooperation strategy with each country is formulated on the basis of group of countries. Although the scope of study is confined to extract nation groups and identify relevant cooperation strategies, it can be expanded to the firm and sector level in the future. It will require investigating a national innovation system, competitive corporation and key technology to shape a direction and create a detailed cooperation strategy. South Korea is in a turning point for transformation to the post-catch-up innovation system seeking to sustainable growth. There were attempts to improve technology or increase efficiency rather than develop totally new things. Moreover, government has been a leading role in export and compressed growth under organisational structure that large firms lead to invigorate the economy and small and medium enterprises serve as suppliers of components. However, South Korea pursues to transit the social and technological system and encourages mutual growth of large corporations and small and middle-sized firms. Accordingly, an organisational structure and features of sectors should be considered when making a policy for international cooperation in the future research.

Another approach, the technology-oriented approach, is to select key technology from the industry and then explore a suitable country for collaboration. If this approach will be applied, the results of this article may be utilised to mediate an action plan for technology cooperation at the national strategy portfolio level. Future research should aim at make strategies regarding the industry area and detail technology that requires international cooperation from the perspective of South Korea. This approach will make attempts to extract possible cooperative fields that have cooperation needs and analyse key technology and core corporations. Then, South Korea’s gap and characteristics will be investigated after grouping the possibly cooperative country by main industry, core technology and key corporations. Finally, it is possible to measure the possibility of cooperation with South Korea and the effects through a scoring method. And a technical cooperation portfolio can be developed on the basis of extracted cooperative strategies, resulting in an international cooperation plan that is organised by industry and technology.

From the viewpoint of a collaboration agent, government has been proactive in most countries and other agencies, such as firms, public and private research institutions have participated in cooperation under collaborative arrangement between governments of each country. An agreement is initiated by government provides an institutional strategy and supports for cooperation with various agents in contracted countries. Agencies sometimes may lead to negotiate their own collaborative arrangements but it is most important to harmonise between public and private sectors appropriately rather than leading unilaterally.

Although this article intended to make clusters relying on quantitative and objective data, criteria for subdividing groups might be still considered subjective. After countries were mapped by diverse factors, they were divided by intuitive criteria which can make the grouping process more distributable. Thus, it requires checking the validity of criteria by investigating related literatures supporting selection of criteria. It can be also solved with aid of clustering algorithms as well as other methodology that automatically generates groups based upon similarity like as PCA, SOM and GTM which are widely utilised to make clusters and identify vacuum. Data availability sometimes impedes to explore collaboration partners because a country which does not provide data for each factor cannot be mapped and included in any groups. This issue can be dealt with by revising value or utilising an approximate value with reference to countries that have similar characteristics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant, funded by the Korean Government (NRF-20141A1A2054892).

Notes

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