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This article investigates R&D collaboration between universities and firms by looking at R&D outsourcing of private firms to universities and vice versa. It was found that universities are an important research partner of private firms, although industrialists often do not trust the research capabilities of universities. It is evident that universities are accustomed to receiving agents rather than giving agents in R&D activities. This fact implies that a give-and-take culture should be cultivated in universities in order to develop university–industry R&D collaboration. It may bring about university-generated cooperative R&D with private firms if universities contract out more of their research projects to private firms. The results of our study also revealed that government policies to promote university–industry R&D cooperation have been strengthening. Two cases of government policy programmes showed that policy targets, especially to promote university–industry R&D collaboration, tend to be included not only in incumbent policy programmes but also in newly designed policy programmes. The government R&D budget has been increasingly allocated to specific policy programmes focusing on interdisciplinary cooperative R&D activities between universities and private firms.

This paper deals with the cluster concept for understanding the status of formation and development of innovation clusters in Korea. It identifies the patterns of clusters through overall review of the various clusters in Korea. The study revealed that production clusters were built either by government policy or by investment of large chaebols during the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s and 1990s formation of more advanced types of clusters like those of R&D was also initiated by the government. Although there are various types of clusters in Korea, innovation clusters in which firms and related supporting institutes closely inter act and stimulate the innovation process are at a primitive stage. Most clusters are per forming parts of a value-adding chain, lacking many essential capabilities and technopoles needed to sustain regional economic activities. Moreover, there are a number of hurdles for further development of the clusters that leads to innovation clusters.