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Public Procurement for Innovation Policy: Korean Experience

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Abstract

Korea has been characterized as a developmental state with a strong emphasis on industrial policy. After achieving basic levels of economic development, Korea adapted and shifted its attention from industrial policy towards innovation and competition policy in the early 1980s. However, the developmental state tradition remained in various ways, and public procurement for innovation (PPfI) is evident in this context. PPfI is actively implemented particularly in the green industry, and shows the manner in which industrial policy and innovation policy are interconnected. The ‘New Technology Products Program’ was actively executed in Korea. However, critics argue that this program was more focused on protecting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) rather than strengthening their innovation as such. Separately, despite its potential as a PPfI tool, alternative bidding or design-build bidding was not widely used due to a lack of efficiency and transparency in these procedures. The Korean cases indicate that various objectives of public procurement, such as transparency or short-term efficiency, should be balanced with PPfI policy and a strategic approach to the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement (WTO GPA).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Constitutional Court of Korea, Hun-Ka1, 30 June, 2005.

  2. 2.

    See www.green.pps.go.kr (accessed March 2013).

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Correspondence to Dae-In Kim .

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Kim, DI. (2014). Korea. In: Lember, V., Kattel, R., Kalvet, T. (eds) Public Procurement, Innovation and Policy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-40258-6_10

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