지역 R&D 효율성 향상을 위한 정책사업에 관한 연구: ‘연구개발지원단지원사업’을 중심으로

Abstract

Regional policies are strongly related to the devolution of power to local governments. This decentralization means that the local government becomes the main actor for the regional policies and is responsible for the regional innovation and development. At this time, regional innovation activities can be succeeded under the consideration of the regional characteristics and needs. Despite of the continuing expansion of regional R&D expenditure during the last two decade, however, its corresponding performances have been consistently questioned. The purpose of the paper is to make suggestions for improving the efficiencies of public regional R&D projects. In order to achieve this goal, we examined a regional R&D project which is positively evaluated both by the central and local governments and policy academia. First of all, we reviewed the definitions of regional R&D of the literature and investigated the current states of the regional R&D such as public expenditures and the number of researchers. Then we identified the challenges leading up to the low efficiency and productivity. Afterward, we focused on a case study. According to a qualitative methodology, the selection of a regional R&D project as the research object, the collection and analysis of the data, and finally the making managerial implications were followed. The main findings are as follows: First, a regional R&D project should include distinctive political needs and concrete purposes and substances to achieve through the project. Second, the project should be planed to provide synergy performances both for the central and local governments. In other words, the regional innovation project should contribute to the national and local industry development and or economic growth. Finally, the central and local governments should share their responsibilities in the regional innovation. Namely, the former gives the political directions in the regional R&D projects and the latter plans and executes the project under the regional specific conditions. This paper embeds inherent limitations such as construct validity and or external validity because it handles a single case study and is based on the characteristics of political projects.